Intel P965: MSI P965 Platinum and ECS PX1 Extreme
by Gary Key on December 6, 2006 4:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Disk Controller Performance
The AnandTech iPeak test is designed to measure "pure" hard disk controller performance, and in this case, we keep the hard drive as consistent as possible while varying the hard drive controller. The idea is to measure the performance of each hard drive controller with the same hard drive.
We played back our raw files that are recorded I/O operations when running a real world benchmark - the entire Winstone 2004 suite. Intel's iPeak utility was then used to play back the trace file of all I/O operations that took place during a single run of Business Winstone 2004 and MCC Winstone 2004. To try to isolate performance differences to the controllers that we are testing we use the Seagate 7200.10 Barracuda 320GB 7200 RPM drive in both SATA and IDE offerings for our tests. The drive is formatted before each test run and a composite average of three tests on each controller interface is tabulated in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark.
iPeak gives a mean service time in milliseconds; in other words, the average time that each drive took to fulfill each I/O operation. In order to make the data more understandable, we report the scores as an average number of I/O operations per second so that higher scores translate into better performance. This number is meaningless as far as hard disk performance is concerned, as it is just the number of I/O operations completed in a second. However, the scores are useful for comparing "pure" performance of the storage controllers in this case.
The performance patterns hold steady across both Multimedia Content I/O and Business I/O, with the NVIDIA nForce 500 based SATA controllers providing a slight improvement in I/O operations over the Intel, JMicron, and Silicon Image SATA controllers. This has been a historical trend between the two manufacturers with the NVIDIA controllers generally having a higher throughput than the Intel chipsets. We look forward to seeing how well the ATI SB600 will perform with an Intel processor in the upcoming DFI ICFX-3200 based on the RD600 chipset.
Of note in our SATA tests is the excellent performance generated by the JMicron controller logic that scored higher than the Intel ICH7R or ICH8 based SATA controllers in the Business Winstone test. However, in the read and write heavy Content Creation tests we see the Intel SATA controllers placing ahead of the JMicron offerings. After reviewing the test script results we noticed the write operations of the JMicron JMB363 chipset was about 3% slower than the Intel ICH chipsets while being around 2% faster in read operations.
The VIA VT6410 controller offered the best performance in the IDE tests with the JMicron JMB363/361 finishing last. During initial testing with the JMicron chipset we noticed several boards having issues with the optical drives being stuck in PIO mode resulting in terrible performance. However, this issue was solved with BIOS updates from the motherboard suppliers. We also advise that unless you utilize the JMicron JMB363 for RAID operation then do not load the JMicron driver or allow Windows Update to install the newly released driver. Installing this driver will usually result in sporadic operation of the IDE port or failure to recognize certain optical drives.
The AnandTech iPeak test is designed to measure "pure" hard disk controller performance, and in this case, we keep the hard drive as consistent as possible while varying the hard drive controller. The idea is to measure the performance of each hard drive controller with the same hard drive.
We played back our raw files that are recorded I/O operations when running a real world benchmark - the entire Winstone 2004 suite. Intel's iPeak utility was then used to play back the trace file of all I/O operations that took place during a single run of Business Winstone 2004 and MCC Winstone 2004. To try to isolate performance differences to the controllers that we are testing we use the Seagate 7200.10 Barracuda 320GB 7200 RPM drive in both SATA and IDE offerings for our tests. The drive is formatted before each test run and a composite average of three tests on each controller interface is tabulated in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark.
iPeak gives a mean service time in milliseconds; in other words, the average time that each drive took to fulfill each I/O operation. In order to make the data more understandable, we report the scores as an average number of I/O operations per second so that higher scores translate into better performance. This number is meaningless as far as hard disk performance is concerned, as it is just the number of I/O operations completed in a second. However, the scores are useful for comparing "pure" performance of the storage controllers in this case.
The performance patterns hold steady across both Multimedia Content I/O and Business I/O, with the NVIDIA nForce 500 based SATA controllers providing a slight improvement in I/O operations over the Intel, JMicron, and Silicon Image SATA controllers. This has been a historical trend between the two manufacturers with the NVIDIA controllers generally having a higher throughput than the Intel chipsets. We look forward to seeing how well the ATI SB600 will perform with an Intel processor in the upcoming DFI ICFX-3200 based on the RD600 chipset.
Of note in our SATA tests is the excellent performance generated by the JMicron controller logic that scored higher than the Intel ICH7R or ICH8 based SATA controllers in the Business Winstone test. However, in the read and write heavy Content Creation tests we see the Intel SATA controllers placing ahead of the JMicron offerings. After reviewing the test script results we noticed the write operations of the JMicron JMB363 chipset was about 3% slower than the Intel ICH chipsets while being around 2% faster in read operations.
The VIA VT6410 controller offered the best performance in the IDE tests with the JMicron JMB363/361 finishing last. During initial testing with the JMicron chipset we noticed several boards having issues with the optical drives being stuck in PIO mode resulting in terrible performance. However, this issue was solved with BIOS updates from the motherboard suppliers. We also advise that unless you utilize the JMicron JMB363 for RAID operation then do not load the JMicron driver or allow Windows Update to install the newly released driver. Installing this driver will usually result in sporadic operation of the IDE port or failure to recognize certain optical drives.
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mostlyprudent - Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - link
I had been looking forward to the review of the MSI board. I can understand some OC limitation at the price, but then don't call it a "Platinum" board. I really don't do very much OCing, but always view the ability to reach high overclocks as a sign of a more well engineered board.Anyway, thanks for the review.
Beachspree - Monday, December 11, 2006 - link
I was wondering why the Firewire performance is so poor in these reviews:Firewire 400 gets a best throughput of 230.6Mb/s
It is known that Macs have poor USB 2 performance but look at the Firewire results by Barefeats:
http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html">http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html
http://www.barefeats.com/hard70.html">http://www.barefeats.com/hard70.html
Without the perfect conditions of a RAM disk and no cacheing they get real world performance of up to:
Firewire 400: 304 Mb/s (31% faster)
Firewire 800: 464 Mb/s (41% faster)
For comparison, Macs are getting lousy USB 2 performance. Intel Macs have improved it but that takes it from around 136Mb/s to 168Mb/s. That's 75% slower.
Given the importance of Firewire in critical multimedia applications and it's likely use for HD video camcorders does this poor performance not warrant a mention?
Beachspree - Monday, December 11, 2006 - link
To be clearer:Can we please have some real world figures for USB 2.0, eSATA and Firewire 400/800 transfers?
That should take the form of transfers of:
a) Many small files
b) One large file
under default settings and off an internal 7200 HDD you standardize on. That's what most people actually do when the backup, so that's what we need to see in order to make informed choices. I suspect these data rates you keep publishing are ones we will actually never see.
I suggest, also, that poor Firewire performance in Windows is more important than poor USB on Macs. They always have Firewire built in and tend to it on peripherals, while Windows users often make do with USB until they get into music or video editing when they then find the need for Firewire and hit this poor performance just when they start needing mission critical performance. I'm talking about dropped frames and music latency.
Why is that ignored in all your motherboard reviews?
Thanks.