Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard, Part 2
by Rajinder Gill on February 22, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Sorenson Squeeze 6
We are using Sorenson Squeeze to convert eight AVCHD videos into HD Flash videos for use on websites. This application heavily favors physical core count and processor clock speed.
WinRAR 3.9 x64
This benchmark compresses our AT workload consisting of a main folder that contains 954MB of files in 15 subfolders. The result is a file approximately 829MB in size.
Bibble 5.0
We utilize Bibble Labs' Bibble 5 v2 to convert 50 RAW image files into full size JPEG images with the program's default settings. This program is fully multithreaded and multi-core aware.
File Transfer to USB
In this test we use Sharkoon's USB 3.0 QuickPort with a 1TB Western Digital hard drive and transfer a 1GB and file from a 1TB HDD connected to the Intel PCH.
We've got a couple of stragglers in this test on the USB 2.0 interface; it seems BIOSTAR and MSI have some work to do on the USB side of operation. The general consensus is that USB 3.0 transfer times are around 10 seconds per gigabyte, while USB 2 delivers an average time of 36~40 seconds per GB. We did try some larger transfers and the scaling is fairly close to linear; a 6GB file transfer takes around 3mins 50 seconds on USB 2.0, while USB 3.0 manages the same file in 1 minute 16 seconds. Although the gains provided by the USB 3.0 interface are obvious, external drives only benefit if you use them for reading/writing large files or making complete drive images; random reads/writes are bottlenecked by the HDD seek times and USB latency.
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ReaM - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
Hey, you promised to test Quadcores 860 and 750 on the H55. I am wondering how those run and overclock on that chipset.You promised in Part1!
It all leads to: P55 for quads or H55?
ReaM - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Never mind, I bought the p55m ud2 from Gigabyte, also thanks to you review for that board :)Thanks for posting this free tests
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
wysiwygbill - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Contrary to the original announcements the H55-itx does NOT support dual link DVI and the maximum DVI resolution is actually 1920x1200.RodEvan - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Thanks Raja for the excellent review - I've held back on purchasing a motherboard awaiting 'Part 2'. I'm looking for a relatively low power consumption board for a windows home server setup.I was actually pretty amazed by the Gigabyte idle power results - as equal to the the MSIboard (44 watt).
For much of the time the CPU will be used minimaly - only rising for the occasional media decoding task - so for me the Gigabyte boatrd seemed ideal - partcularly since for some HD media sata3 speeds might come in useful.
But the section on power consumption concludes
"Best overall power consumption figures belong to MSI, while boards laden with USB 3.0 features and SATA 6G trail in both idle and load situations."
The Gigabyte board (H55-USB3), quite remarkably doesn't appear to trail at all on idle.... am I missing something here?.
jed22281 - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
what did you mean by:"particularly since for some HD media sata3 speeds might come in useful."
The board doesn't have SATA3 does it? Only USB3.
And what HD media would benefit from SATA3 speeds?
There isn't any HD media I'm aware of that'd come close to saturating sata2.
Or am I misunderstanding what your were trying to say?
Cheers
RodEvan - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
No misunderstanding - I probably need to say a little more.I currently one one Sagetv media extender off the server. But am about to install two more. The system should ideally allow for 3 HD videos to be streamed off the same HD at the same time.
I haven't done the calaculation - but having the option for SATA3 seemed like a good idea.
I've also re-read the review a note that this board has "Gigabyte SATA 2 chip: 1 x IDE, 2 x SATA 3Gb/s (RAID 0, 1 and JBOD)"
and NOT 2 *SATA3 g/bs ... my misreading,sorry for the confusion.
Rod
michal1980 - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
what are you streaming in hd? Blu-ray specs call for ~54Mbps Peak.3 times that is 162. Which is just barely over Sata1 spec, well under sata2. Sata3 @ 600Mps would allow for ~11 streams (not counting for overhead).
At that point I'd be more worried about drive/raid performace then saturating the bus.
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Hi,Thanks for the feedback. The comment was made considering all three scenarios (Idle/full load/video playback), the MSI board came out on top in all three, hence the comment 'best overall power consumption'.
Hope that clears it up..
regards
Raja
NickCardwell - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
I would love to see an Anand review of the Intel DH57JG and Zotac H55ITX-A-E motherboards. I am looking to put one of them (probably the Intel) along with an i5-650 into a Lian Li PC-Q07 case. I love to build powerful systems for others but stick to small and simple for myself.Ogopogo - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
How do the Intel boards compare to these other boards? My main main criteria is stability.I don't know if a third installment of this upcoming but it would be interesting to see a test with a displayport H55