![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Friday , May 02, 2003
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ABIT IC7-G
The i875P, AKA "Canterwood", mainboards are starting to make it to market. We review ABIT's feature packed addition to the line up.
Subsystem Testing
Audio – CPU Utilization
The audio subsystem is one of the most critical subsystems on a motherboard. A well implemented audio subsystem can finish an already perfect board, while a sub-par audio solution can drag a good board down. An easy way to determine the quality of an onboard audio subsystem is by measuring system CPU utilization while the subsystem is in use. CPU utilization should be minimal at best, so that while operating, the audio subsystem does not affect any mission critical tasks such as graphical rendering while gaming. In order to best measure the real world CPU utilization of the audio subsystem, we use Ziff Davis’ Audio Winbench.
ABIT’s implementation of the audio subsystem is without fault and deserves praise. No matter the test, the CPU utilization stayed below 1% across the board. We will be expanding our sound testing to include a real world gaming benchmark soon that we will be able to share with you so you can run it at home as well.
Audio – Subjective Listening
CPU utilization is all well and good for a baseline measure of an audio subsystem’s performance. However, a subjective listening test needs to be done in order to adequately determine the sound quality of the audio solution. For this test, I chose Godsmack’s album Faceless for its combination of raw intensity and power.
Let me just say that I was impressed by the sound quality. ABIT again score top honors in their implementation of this audio subsystem. I could detect no hissing, crackling, or skipping in the audio tracks themselves, and the quality of the sound was pretty much unrivaled. You could easily use the onboard sound offering for gaming without a second thought.
USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394
In order to adequately test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 connections, we chose to use an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected first to the USB port and after to the IEEE 1394 port in conjunction with TCD Labs’ HDTach program.
The results are a bit of a mixed bag, but not wholly out of the norm for either connection type. Both connections had an RAT type just below 20ms which is not too bad for an external device. The IEEE 1394 device thrashed the USB2.0 device in read times, but both devices had similar write times. The gem of the test was the super low CPU utilization observed during the IEE1394 test of < 1%. USB 2.0 doesn’t even come close.
IDE/ATA Performance
Aside from the system memory and CPU subsystems, the IDE subsystem is critical in determining system performance. A lousy IDE implementation can make a speedy drive crawl, while a well designed IDE interface can speed up a seemingly slow drive. In order to test the IDE performance of this board, I used TCD Labs’ HDTach program. My test bench currently uses Maxtor 40GB ATA 133 model 6E040L0 hard drives on the IDE headers. On the SATA headers, I have Seagate 80 GB Barracuda SATA hard drives installed in the test bench. Multiple SATA drives were used for testing in a RAID 0 configuration on the Intel ports, while both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations where tested on the Silicon Image ports. Testing was also conducted using a single SATA drive and an IDE drive connected in a primary slave configuration.
The advantages of an integrated subsystem truly came to light in the 16k block size tests. The Silicon Image based SATA controller could just not keep up with the ICH5R. However, both managed to sustain an average read speed of above 65k which is nothing less than astounding. In all tests, the RAT times were very nice, coming in at around 13ms. But the Intel 16k block size RAID 0 array took the prize with the RBS of 132 MB/s. This level of performance comes at a cost though, with a CPU utilization of > 8%.
When seen in the light of the RAID 0 performance and the IDE slave performance numbers, the SATA RAID 1 and single drive configuration tests are a bit disappointing. All SATA tests showed almost identical performance, an RBS of around 85 MB/s, an RAT of 13ms, read performance around 38k and write performance around 20k. The primary slave test had much higher read and write performance, but was a bit slower with an RAT approaching 14ms. One advantage SATA does seem to have over IDE is its super low CPU utilization. In all tests, the SATA CPU utilization was around 1% to the IDE’s utilization of over 3%.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard Intel Gigabit NIC. DU meter was used to measure bandwidth, with Windows Task Manager to monitor the CPU utilization on the test system. For the test itself, a 760MB archive file containing various sized .WMA audio files for the large file transfer test and a 760MB worth of various sized .WMA audio files for the small files transfer test were used in conjunction with an Intel Gigabit NIC on the host system, and a crossover cable to connect the host system to the test system. A crossover cable was used to rule out any possible bandwidth losses due to hub or switch passage.
The Gigabit Ethernet performance with this board astounds me. In both tests, the NIC performed admirably, with the upload sustained rates coming in a bit faster than the download rates. In both cases, the CPU utilization hovered around 30-40%. Not a bad price to pay for such breakneck performance though.
The large file transfer test results mimicked the performance of the small file transfer tests. ABIT chose very wisely in mating this Ethernet solution with the board.
Test Systems
The following system configurations were used for the Sandra memory benchmark graph, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmark sections:
ABIT IC7-G (i875P) - Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU (clocked at 15x200) and Intel Pentium 4 3.3 GHz CPU (OCed to 12x275) - 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 - ATI Radeon 9700 Pro w/ ATI Catalyst 2.3 drivers - 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD - Allied 400w PSU - WindowsXP w/SP1
NOTE: For all benchmark tests done on the IC7-G motherboard, the optimized default BIOS settings were loaded for the benchmark tests. The following BIOS settings were also engaged during the tests: CAS Latency Time = 2; RAS Precharge delay = 2; RAS-to-CAS delay = 3; Active Precharge delay = 6.
Intel D875PBZ (i875P) - Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU (clocked at 15x200) - 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 - ATI Radeon 9700 Pro w/ ATI Catalyst 2.3 drivers - 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD - Allied 400w PSU - WindowsXP w/SP1
ABIT BH7 (i845PE) - Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHz CPU (clocked at 19x133) - 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 - ATI Radeon 9700 Pro w/ ATI Catalyst 2.3 drivers - 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD - Allied 400w PSU - WindowsXP w/SP1
ASUS A7N8X Barton (nForce2): AMD Barton 2500+ CPU (clocked at 11x166) and AMD AthlonXP 3000+ CPU (clocked at 13x166); 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200; ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, onboard nForce2 10/100 NIC; 40 GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Zalman 300w PSU. WindowsXP w/SP1, ATi Catalyst 2.3.
Graphs are labeled as follows:
Motherboard - CPU Clock - FSB Clock - Memory Clock
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Both the ABIT and Intel boards lead the pack at stock speeds, owing to their 800 MHz FSB coupled with 400 MHz DCDDR. The memory scores are extremely impressive once the FSB is upped to 275 MHz while overclocking.
We have interjected some OC scores along the way to show you what opening the bus can do with a bit of a CPU clock increase.