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- Date:
- Monday , September 15, 2003
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI KT6 Delta-LSR
The KT6 Delta-LSR is MSI’s entry into the fanfare and hype that centers around the VIA KT-600 chipset. Just how well was MSI able to engineer this solution to withstand the onslaught of the nForce2 based boards?
Subsystem Testing
Audio – CPU Utilization
The audio subsystem has come under increasing scrutiny of late, as better audio solutions have become available and manufacturers tend towards the all-in-one motherboard solutions. One of the better ways to measure the overall quality of an audio solution is by observing the system CPU utilization while various sound scenarios are executed. If the measured utilization is too high, the on-board audio subsystem will negatively affect the system’s performance during high stress situations such as scene rendering occurring during deathmatch play. In order to best measure the real world CPU utilization of the audio subsystem, we use Ziff Davis’ Audio Winbench.
According to the synthetic test results, the C-Media based audio solution chosen by MSI performs admirably. In most cases, the CPU utilization remained under 3% with it spiking to the 4 to 5% range during a few tests. Even though the numbers look very good from these results, keep in mind that the results are based on synthetic tests and may not accurately depict actual performance during a real world gaming scenario.
Audio – Subjective Listening
CPU utilization is good for a fast analysis of an audio subsystem, but by no means illustrates the actual audio quality produced by the subsystem. Ideally, a sound test should test the subsystem across the entire audio spectrum, from subtle harmonics to pulse pounding rhythm. For this test, I chose to listen to tracks from various albums from the band Fear Factory. Although the band has ceased producing new material, their older stuff remains unmatched for its subtlety twinged with a harder edge.
The audio solution continues to impress me with this board. I detected no distortion during playback at all, with all sound produced in a clear and crisp manner across the entire audio spectrum.
Audio – In Game Testing
In addition to CD or MP3 playback, users most often rely on the audio subsystem for gaming, whether it be the standalone first person shooter type or online deathmatching. 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.
The in-game test results are as expected, with no difference in measured gameplay under high quality settings with various sound and no sound scenarios. The C-Media solution really shined with EAX sound extensions enabled. The sound reproduction was some of the best that I’ve heard, almost rivaling that of an nForce2 based sound solution. Further, I detected no distortion at any time during the game tests. Based on the results, I have no qualms at all with recommending the use of on-board sound while playing your favorite deathmatch game.
Audio – Microphone Port Testing
The MIC-IN audio port was tested using a Labtec Desk Mic 524 during both music and gaming scenarios. In all cases, the sound captured from the microphone and replayed through the speakers was crisp and clear. No distortion was detected at any time during resulting sound playback.
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.
As is common with the results of the USB 2.0 drive test, the performance witnessed was OK but nothing stellar. The measured RAT (Random Access Time) was about on par with expectations, coming in a bit over 21 MB/s. The RBS (Read Bust Speed) was a surprise, coming in at an astounding 29 MB/s. This is not quite up to snuff with IEEE 1394, but gets pretty close. The average read and write speeds were in line with expectations, coming in neither high nor low.
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 both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. Testing was also conducted using a single SATA drive, and an IDE drive connected in a primary slave configuration.
As expected, the RAID 0 array with 16k block size led the pack in this test, with the other drive test performances not even coming close. However, the RAID 0 64k block sized array did perform well. Its write performance was on par with that of the 16k block sized array, but its read performance lagged that of the 16k block sized array by over 25 MB/s. The RAID 1 array results were nothing special, matching those seen in the standalone SATA drive results. The most impressive measurement from the 16k block size array test was the RBS (Read Burst Speed). The array’s RBS came in at just under 146 MB/s, which is about as close as you can get to the 150 MB/s theoretical maximum for the connection. Also of note is the 8% CPU utilization measured for the 16k block sized array.
As is commonplace in the single drive tests, the standalone SATA drive’s performance fell well behind that of the primary slave drive. The average read performance of the SATA drive lagged the IDE drive by almost 10 MB/s, while the average write speed lagged it by almost 13 MB/s. The RBS (Read Burst Speed) on the SATA drive was equally as dismal, coming in at just over 85 MB/s. On the other hand, the IDE drive’s RBS (Read Burst Speed) was measured at 110 MB/s, very close to the expected speed out of an ATA-133 drive. The one shocker with the IDE drive test was the CPU utilization. The drive’s utilization was measured at just above 32%, which would definitely cause some pain if you needed to use the system while the IDE drive was being accessed. This was the one area that the SATA drive really shone, coming in with a CPU utilization of just under 6%.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard Broadcom based 10/100 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.
The onboard NIC performed extremely well for a 100 MB/s based solution. The average upload speed hovered just above 10 MB/s, with the download speed coming in at just under 10 MB/s. The CPU utilization was found to hover around 20% during both upload and download testing, which is in line with expectations.
The large file transfer test numbers mirrored those of the small files transfer tests. All in all, a solid 10/100 based implementation that will not disappoint.
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:
MSI KT6 Delta-LSR (KT600) – AMD AthlonXP 2500+ CPU (clocked at 11x166), and AMD AthlonXP 3200+ CPU (clocked at 11x200) - 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 ABIT KV7 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 = 2; Active Precharge delay = 6; Write Recover = 1T; Command rate = 1T; Burst Length = 8
ABIT KV7 (KT600) – AMD AthlonXP 2500+ CPU (clocked at 11x166), and AMD AthlonXP 3200+ CPU (clocked at 11x200) - 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 (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.
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe (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 IS7-G (i865P) - 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
Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Clock - FSB Clock - Memory Clock
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode, with the exception of the KT6 and the KV7 results which support Single Channel mode only.
The KT6 make a very strong showing against the other AMD boards, with it taking the lead against similar classed chips at both the 2500+ and 3200+ speeds. The Intel boards continue to lead by a fair margin though.