![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Sunday , October 05, 2003
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
AOpen AK79D-400 MAX
The AK79D-400MAX is AOpen’s bid for dominance of the AMD arena. Read on to find out how well this board takes on the rest of the nForce and KT-600 based solutions…
Subsystem Testing
Audio – CPU Utilization
The audio subsystem has come under increasing scrutiny lately, with better quality audio solutions emerging and manufacturers building more of 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 death match play. In order to best measure the real world CPU utilization of the audio subsystem, we use Ziff Davis’ Audio Winbench.
The results were phenomenal to say the least. According to the synthetic benchmarks, the use of the on board audio subsystem has no effect on overall system performance whatsoever. These results are based on synthetic tests, and do not accurately depict the full picture as you will see in later tests.
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. This time, I chose to listen to tracks from a newer favorite of mine, Ill Niño. Their album, Revolution Revolucion, is a unique mix of subtle melodies mated to a hard hitting heavy metal core.
The audio solution performed superbly during playback. Not once did I detect distortion of any kind, with all sound reproduced in a clear and crisp manner across the entire audio spectrum.
Audio – Microphone Port Testing
The MIC-IN input was tested using a Labtec Desk Mic 524 during both music and gaming scenarios. Spoken word was also recorded and played back using Microsoft Sound Recorder, with the Microphone Boost option both disabled and enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the Advanced menu under the Microphone section within the Volume Control menu.
During all tests, the sound captured by the microphone was replayed accurately through the system speakers. Distortion was detected only when the sound volumes were set too high. Otherwise, no sound distortion was detectable during playback.
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, we took benchmark measurements with sound enabled and disabled using the following benchmarks: Quake3 Arena; Jedi Knight 2; and Serious Sam 2.
The in game test results are a bit surprising in light of the synthetic benchmark results, but not unexpected. As we can see from the graphed results, the sound subsystem affects the overall system performance during game play between 5 – 10%. This type of system drain is not a big factor when you’re getting over 100-150 FPS while playing, but can have a real effect on the in game rendering and performance if your FPS ever dips to 60 FPS or less. Based on these results, I have no problem recommending use of the on board audio solution as long as you keep the above warning in mind.
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.
In an unusual turn of events, the USB 2.0 drive almost performed on par with the IEEE 1394 connected drive. In both cases, the average write results were the same, with the USB 2.0 drive’s read results lagging the IEEE 1394’s by 8 MB/s. The RAT (Random Access Time) on both connection types was similar, with the RBS (Read Burst Speed) almost 10 MB/s higher on the IEEE 1394 connection. Even the CPU utilization was surprising, with the IEEE 1394 drive coming in a bit high and the USB 2.0 drive coming in a lot lower than expected.
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. Testing was conducted using a single SATA drive, a single IDE drive connected to the Promise based IDE connection, and an IDE drive connected in a primary slave configuration. No RAID testing was done due to the fact that the on board Promise SATA controller does not support hardware RAID.
Note on all RAID based IDE subsystem tests below: There is a known issue with the implementation of the Promise controller on the AOpen motherboard causing severe RBS (Read Burst Speed) measurement problems, as seen in the tests below. The issue has been reported, and is currently being researched.
As was expected, the SATA drive’s performance was well behind that of both stand alone IDE drives. However, even the IDE drive on the Promise controller did not perform anywhere near to the primary slave drive on the NVIDIA controller. Both drives lagged the primary slave drive by at least 5 MB/s during the read and write tests, with the SATA drive performing the worst of the three. The RAT (Random Access Time) across all drives was approximately the same, with that of the SATA drive just nudging out the primary slave drive. The one weakness of the primary slave was its extraordinarily high CPU utilization of just over 36%. Both of the other drives scored well below that when in use.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard NVIDIA based Realtek 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 a 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 ok for a 10/100 based solution, but its performance was nothing stellar. Its upload speed was almost a full 1 MB/s faster than the download speed, but neither seemed able to pass the 10 MB/s threshold. However, the remarkably low CPU utilization of around 10% was much better than expected.
The large file transfer results mimic those of the small file transfer, with neither the upload or download speeds able to cross the 10 MB/s threshold. With the extremely low CPU utilization though, the Realtek solution is a solid one that won’t get in the way when in use.
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:
AOpen AK79D-400 MAX (nForce2 Ultra 400) – 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 AOpen motherboard, the optimized 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
Shuttle SN45G (nForce2 Ultra 400) – 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 Ultra 400) - 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
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
ABIT IC7-MAX3 (i875P) - Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU (clocked at 16x200) - 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 P4P800S-E Wireless Edition (i848P) – Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU (clocked at 16x200) - 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 KV7 and the P4P800S-E results which support Single Channel mode only.
The AK79D made strong showing with the 3200+ speed CPU against the other AMD solutions. With the 2500+ CPU, the board seemed to lose its steam due to obvious bus limitations. Regardless, the Dual Channel might of the i875P chipset just cannot be beat, at least by our comparison set.