![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, January 21, 2004
- Author:
- Keith Dugger
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
ASUS further strengthens their nForce2 Ultra 400 position with the new A7N8X-E Deluxe. Can the enhanced motherboard for AthlonXPs keep pace with today’s speed champions? That’s what we are here to find out.
Subsystem Testing
Audio – Subjective Listening
The SoundStorm audio subsystem has been one of the on-board systems of choice since release. I have used the SoundStorm available in my own system for over a year and have been extremely pleased. In order to validate the perceived quality, I chose a little known blues singer named Shannon Curfman. Her sultry voice and driving blues from her only CD, Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions , brings out subtle nuances of any sound subsystem.
I have zero complaints concerning the ASUS implementation of the SoundStorm. All of the bass, midrange, and treble at any volume was recreated perfectly by this audio subsystem. I couldn’t be more pleased.
Audio – Microphone Port Testing
I used a Labtec Desk Mic 524 to test the microphone port. I recorded audio with the Microphone Boost option both enabled and disabled and then replayed this over and over at various volume settings. I didn’t notice any problems with the quality of the port’s ability to record accurate sounds using the Labtec Mic. As usual, it is probably better to use the Microphone Boost option on to properly enjoy the use of the MIC jack.
Audio – In Game Testing
An audio subsystem that sounds terrific, but hurts performance is of no use. To make sure performance isn’t affected too much, we use Jedi Knight 2 and Comanche 4 benchmarks with sound both enabled and disabled to give you a representation how the sound subsystem impacts true system performance.
We have learned to allow about a 10% drop in performance in Jedi Knight II with sound enabled and the A7N8X-E Deluxe lands close to that target. This is perfectly acceptable at these frame rates. A 5% drop in Comanche 4 performance maintains an excellent showing and proves that system performance should not be affected much at all.
The ASUS implementation of the NVIDIA SoundStorm is perfectly executed, but remember that these results are that of my opinion and performance numbers from our test bench and may not represent what you find with your own A7N8X-E Deluxe board.
USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394
Pairing a USB 2.0 / IEEE 1394 external drive from ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD with TCD Labs’ HDTach program gives us the ability to evaluate the capabilities of the onboard USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 controllers. The first test is with the drive connected to the USB 2.0 port and the second is with the drive connected to the IEEE 1394 port.
A CPU utilization of 20% is right on target for a USB connected drive. The results are good for the USB connection.
With only a 3% hit to CPU resources and a read average of 30MB/s, the IEEE 1394 test turns out great. The other numbers are on target for this technology.
IDE/ATA Performance
The performance of the CPU, RAM, and hard drives affect overall usability of a system. Using the same TCD Labs’ HDTach, I tested the IDE performance of the A7N8X-E Deluxe. My test bench has Maxtor 40Gb ATA 133 model 6E040L0 hard drives on the IDE controllers and Seagate 80 Gb Barracuda SATA hard drives for SATA testing. My first test pass included the primary slave IDE test and single SATA.
Attaining a 112MB/s Read Burst Speed (RBS), but needing over 11% CPU utilization to do it, the primary slave test was a surprise. Read averages were great and a write average of 28MB/s is not too bad. The only poor results from this test is the Random Access Time (RAT) and higher than normal CPU utilization. Otherwise, right where we’d like to see IDE.
All around the single SATA drive test met our expectations. RAT and CPU utilization were right on target with only the write average falling behind.
A read average of 62MB/s when configured as a RAID0 (using 16K block size) and an acceptable 35MB/s write average, the SATA controller comes out on pace with other controllers we have seen. The CPU utilization is a bit high, but shouldn’t get in the way.
Surprisingly, the RAID0/128K takes a lesser toll on the CPU while the read average fell as expected for this block size. The write average performed better than at 16K, but only slightly. The normal results for the 128K block size is a drop in read, but a dramatic increase in write averages. I didn’t quite get to that here.
RAID 1 falls short, in my opinion. Overall, the numbers don’t change greatly from a single SATA drive, but the write average drop might be noticeable.
If you have a RAID set already configured on hard drives and would like to move them to this motherboard's controller, please use caution. In my testing, this board would not work if my test drives were configured from another installation. This is not inline with how hardware RAID is expected to work as you should be able to take a RAID set from one system to another (especially when both systems use the same controller and block size). Just a thought.
The performance of the IDE and SATA controllers generally doesn’t disappoint on the A7N8X-E Deluxe. There isn’t really a speed demon here and I feel this board will satisfy most day-to-day users.
Network Utilization Tests
With both a NVIDIA 10/100Mbps and Marvell Gigabit LANs available, the ASUS will face most home network challenges. I connected a cross-over cable between this board and an Intel Gigabit NIC in my home machine to properly test their performance. I ran two series of tests on both controllers. First, I transferred approximately 600MB of various-sized MP3 audio files both upload and download and, second, I transferred a single, large file of approximately 600MB both upload and download. To measure performance I used both Window Task Manager to get CPU utilization and Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter gauge the network subsystem itself.
First, the Marvell Gigabit.
During the small files tests passes, the Marvell fell below our expected 50MB/s. 36MB/s or so isn’t terrible, but is under the performance expected. A welcome note is the minimal CPU resources needed to drive these adequate transfer rates.
The large file tests on the Gigabit link are similar to the small files tests. A small CPU hit, but sub par transfer rates.
The NVIDIA controller may only be a 10/100Mbps connection, but it hit our target numbers with ease. A transfer rate of 10MB/s average with almost no CPU requirements puts this controller just where expected.
There isn’t much to add for the large file tests except that the NVIDIA controller is consistent.
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:
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400) – AlthonXP 3200+ CPU (clocked at 11 x 200), (2X512MB) 1GB Corsair CAS 2.0 DDR400 (2,3,2,5), ATI Radeon 9800XT w/ ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
DFI LANParty NFII ULTRA B (NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400) – AthlonXP 3200+ CPU (clocked at 11 x 200), (2X512MB) 1GB Corsair CAS 2.0 DDR400 (2,3,2,5), ATI Radeon 9800XT w/ ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
AOpen AK79D-400MAX (NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400) – AthlonXP 3200+ CPU (clocked at 11 x 200) and AthlonXP 2500+ CPU (clocked at 11 x 166), (2X512MB) 1GB Corsair CAS 2.0 DDR400 (2,3,2,5), ATI Radeon 9800XT w/ ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
ABIT KV8-MAX3 (VIA K8T800) – Athlon64 3200+ (2.0 GHz), (2X512MB) 1GB Corsair CAS 2.0 DDR400 (2,3,2,5), ATI Radeon 9800XT w/ ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
Intel D875PBZ (Intel i875P) – Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU (clocked at 16 x 200), (2X512MB) 1GB Corsair CAS 2.0 DDR400 (2,3,2,5), ATI Radeon 9800XT w/ ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
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 memory in Dual Channel mode except for the ABIT KV8-MAX3 (Single Channel).
To discount the memory bandwidth of the i875 would be ludicrous as it is clearly dominating here. However, the A7N8X-E Deluxe performs very well against the other AMD competition in this very synthetic benchmark.