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- Date:
- Sunday , July 13, 2003
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
EPoX 4PCA3+
The 4PCA3+ is EPoX’s entry into the fiercely competitive Intel motherboard arena. Our review will show how well it can hold its own against the onslaught of the current i875P and i865PE-based speed demons…
Subsystem Testing
Audio – CPU Utilization
The quality of a main board’s audio subsystem can greatly effect the performance and marketability of the board itself. A poorly implemented audio subsystem can cause an otherwise good board to seem less than desirable, while a well implemented subsystem can be the finishing touch to a great board. The easiest way to determine the subsystem’s quality is by measuring the CPU utilization under a variety of circumstances. A well designed audio subsystem should have minimal impact on the CPU while operating, thus freeing up the precious CPU cycles for other tasks such as scene rendering during an online death match. In order to best measure the real world CPU utilization of the audio subsystem, we use Ziff Davis’ Audio Winbench.
According to the synthetic benchmark numbers, EPoX chose well in pairing up the C-Media based solution with their board. The CPU utilization numbers rarely went above 3% during most tests, with it spiking to as high as 5% in some tests. Basically, the subsystem should impact the system minimally, if at all, while in use. Be aware however, that these results are based on synthetic tests and may not accurately depict what you see on your home system.
Audio – Subjective Listening
CPU Utilization is a good baseline measurement for subsystem quality, but does not reveal anything concerning the actual sound produced by the audio subsystem itself. An ideal sound test requires sounds that cover the full audio spectrum, from subtle melodies to pulse pounding bass. I chose a current favorite of mine from a band called Powerman 5000, the album Tonight the Stars Revolt!. Powerman 5000 covers the full range of audio experiences through this album in their own, uniquely science fiction tinged ways.
The board did not let me down during this test. I was impressed with the quality of the audio playback from the CD, and detected no skipping, crackling, hissing, or other distortion. Furthermore, the high and low frequencies were reproduced very crisply and clearly through my speakers.
Audio – In Game Testing
In addition to CD or MP3 playback, users most often rely on the audio subsystem for gaming, whether it be stand alone first person shooter type or online death matching. To adequately test the quality of the audio subsystem during game type scenarios, I used a custom designed benchmarking script based on recorded bot matches developed by our own Brent Justice. The benchmark tool runs through three loops of each demo, one with sound disabled, one with normal 3d sound enabled, and the last with EAX 3d sound enabled.
As is common during this type of test, the performance differences were more extreme during the low quality testing as opposed to the high quality results. The high quality results are far more telling, in that there were no measurable performance differences with the sound disabled or enabled. The sound quality itself was superbly better with the EAX extensions enabled, being reproduced crisp and clear. I detected no sound related distortion at all during any of the tests run.
USB 2.0
In order to adequately test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 connection, we chose to use an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected to the USB port in conjunction with TCD Labs’ HDTach program.
The USB drive's performance was ok, but nothing to get too excited about. The measured RAT (Random Access Time) was just above 21ms which is a bit higher than it should be for this type of device. The average read and write speeds were a bit low, coming in an average of 5 MB/s lower than expected numbers for the drive. The utilization was not bad though, coming in at 14%. This is a good 6% lower than expected CPU utilization while using this device.
IDE/ATA Performance
System performance relies very heavily on three major subsystems: the CPU, the system memory, and the system IDE interfaces. 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 ICH5R based ports. For testing on the HighPoint controller, multiple IDE drives were used in both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. Testing was also conducted using a single SATA drive on the ICH5R controller, a single IDE drive on the HighPoint controller, and an IDE drive connected in a primary slave configuration.
As is expected in the RAID 0 array tests, the 16k block size arrays are much faster performance wise than the 128k block size arrays. The real surprise here was the HighPoint controller performance. Out of all the types of RAID 0 arrays tested, the IDE 16k block based array using separate IDE cables and IDE ports was the fastest, even beating out the SATA based 16k block arrays in average read performance. The average read speed of the IDE different cable array was just under 88 MB/s, while the SATA array topped out at 67 MB/s. The SATA array beat out the IDE array in write speed by a bit less than 3 MB/s, as well as with its RAT (Random Access Time) and RBS (Read Burst Speed) scores as expected. The IDE array's performance comes at a price, that being a 10% CPU utilization while in use. The SATA drives utilization was not much better, coming in at just under 8%. The results speak for themselves, supporting the using of 16k block sized arrays on either controller.
Both types of RAID 1 arrays tested scored identically across the board. The read and write averages were almost identical, coming in at 51 MB/s for read and 27 MB/s for write. Also, the RAT (Random Access Time), RBS (Read Burst Speed), and CPU utilization numbers were all almost identical. The RBS (Read Burst Speed) was most impressive at just over 100 MB/s, about what you would expect from ATA-133 performance.
From the IDE drive test results, you can see that both drives performed very similarly to each other and to the RAID 1 arrays as well, with the exception of the RAID 1 array’s high RBS (Read Burst Speed) numbers. Both drives scored an average of 51 MB/s for reads and 28 MB/s for writes, with RAT (Random Access Time) scores of a bit over 15ms, and RBS (Read Burst Speed) scores around 86 MB/s. The SATA results are another story however. As has been seen before, SATA drives just do not perform as well in single drive mode. The RAT (Random Access Time) of the drive was great, coming in at just under 13 ms. However, the read and write averages are another story. The read average trailed that of the IDE drives by almost 13 MB/s, while the write average trailed by 7 MB/s. Across the board, the CPU utilization was great, with the SATA drive edging out the IDE drive scores by about 1%.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard Broadcom Gigabit NIC. DU meter was used to measure bandwidth, with Windows TaskMan to monitor the CPU utilization on the test system. For the test itself, a 750MB archive file containing various sized .WMA audio files for the large file transfer test and 750MB 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.
I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the Broadcom adapter. In both the upload and download tests, the average transfer speeds were admirable, almost approaching hard drive read and write speed. The price of such performance is an almost 30% CPU utilization, but is well worth it for the performance obtained.
The large file transfer results bested those of the small file results by at least 5 MB/s during download and upload. I continue to be very impressed with the GigE Ethernet solutions. Further, I am even more impressed that the Broadcom solution is able to deliver performance on par with the integrated Intel GigE solution as measured with other boards.
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:
EPoX 4PCA3+ (i875P) - Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz CPU (clocked at 12x200), Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU (clocked at 15x200), and Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU (clocked at 12x250) - 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 EPoX 4PCA3+ 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 = 5.
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe (i875P) - Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz CPU (clocked at 12x200) and 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 IS7-G (i865PE) - Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz CPU (clocked at 12x250) - 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 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
Note that all results above, with the exception of those from the BH7 board, were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode.
The 4PCA3+ makes a beeline for the top spot immediately, edging out the 250 MHz IC7-G. At stock speeds, the 2.4 and 3.0 GHz board are equally matched, the one exception being the 4PCA3+ with the 3.0 GHz processor. It manages to pull ahead of the stock pack by a good 200 points. Obviously, EPoX did some PAT tweaking of their own.