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- Date:
- Monday , March 15, 2004
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI PT880 Neo-FISR
VIA's PT880 shows up in a value oriented form but will it lend itself to amazing the enthusiast and keeping up with the likes of i875 boards? This may be one inexpensive upgrade you do not want to miss.
Subsystem Testing
Audio – Subjective Listening
One of the easiest ways to determine the quality of the audio subsystem is via a subjective sound test. Ideally, a sound test requires audio covering the entire spectrum, from subtle to intense. For this test, I chose the Pantera inspired stylings of DAMAGEPLAN, with their debut album New Found Power.
The board’s audio reproduction was phenomenal. At no point was there any detectable noise distortion, with playback coming through crisp, clear, and intensely loud.
Audio – Microphone Port Testing
The MIC-IN input was tested using a Labtec Desk Mic 524. Spoken word was recorded and played back using Microsoft Sound Recorder, with the Microphone Boost option disable and enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the Advanced menu under the Microphone section within the Volume Control menu.
As seen with the audio playback tests, the microphone tests were top notch. Overall, the quality was better with the Microphone Boost option enabled. Just make sure to carefully set the MIC volume. If set incorrectly (read, too loud), you will get distortion.
Audio – In Game Testing
In addition to CD or MP3 playback, users most often rely on the audio subsystem for gaming, whether it be for stand alone first person shooters 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: Jedi Knight 2 and Comanche 4.
Yet again, the audio performance was very good. In both games, the performance with audio enabled seem to suffer just under 15%, which is an acceptable compromise. This performance loss would be neglible during real world game play, virtually unnoticeable unless your in game frame rates drop below 30-40 FPS. MSI’s implementation of the audio subsystem was top notch, and I would definitely recommend giving it a shot.
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 Simpli Software’s HDTach program.
Unfortunately, the board would only function correctly with the USB 2.0 drive connection. When I attempted to run the test with an IEEE 1394 type connection, the HDTach program would crash with a read error. I would also get read and write errors when attempting to format the IEEE 1394 connected drive through the WindowsXP drive formatting utilities.
The USB 2.0 device performance was better than average, with a decent RBS (Read Burst Speed) of just over 27 MB/s, average read speed of 21 MB/s, and average write of 12 MB/s. Couple this level of performance with the super low CPU utilization of 12%, and you have a very fast and solid USB 2.0 implementation. As far as the IEEE 1394 device failures, MSI has been alerted to the issues encountered and is currently researching them. Most likely, a fix will be found and issued in the form of a BIOS update.
IDE/ATA Performance
System performance relies very heavily on three major subsystems: the CPU, the system memory, and the system IDE interfaces 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 Simpli Software’s 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 and IDE drives were used for testing in RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations on the VIA VT8237 controller. Testing was also conducted using a stand alone SATA drive on the VIA VT8237 controllers, and an IDE drive connected in a primary slave configuration.
No other RAID configuration could even come close to the performance of the 16k block sized RAID 0 array. It blew away the competition, with its RBS (Read Burst Speed) of 141 MB/s, coming very close to the 150 MB/s theoretical limit of SATA. It almost doubled the average read performance of both the RAID 0 64k and RAID 1 arrays with a sustained average of over 70 MB/s, while also besting both in the average write speed department as well. All array types achieved sub 13ms RAT (Random Access Time) scores and super low CPU utilization of less than 1%.
While making a strong showing, the standalone SATA drive could not keep up with the IDE primary slave drive. Both had excellent scores across the board, with the IDE drive coming in especially strong with its super low CPU Utilization percentage and higher than average RBS (Read Burst Speed).
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the onboard Realtek 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 a 750Mb worth of various sized .WMA audio files for the small files transfer test were used in conjunction with an Intel PRO/1000 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 small files transfer results with the Realtek NIC were a bit surprising. Both upload and download speeds were ok, with the download beating out upload speeds by over 5 MB/s. However, the 40% CPU Utilization observed during the transfer does not justify the sub 30 MB/s sustained speed seen.
The large file transfer results were more of the same so so performance, coupled with an unusually high CPU Utilization. Don't get me wrong, the Realtek NIC is a decent solution, but it does have a very apparent Achilles heel.
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 PT880 Neo-FISR (VIA PT880) - Pentium 4 3.2C & Pentium 4 2.4C, 1GB (2x512MB) Kingston PC3500 HyperX DDR400 (2,2,3,5), ATI 9800XT (ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
Intel D875PBZ (i875P) - Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz, Pentium 4 3.2E (Prescott) & 3.2C (Northwood), 1GB (2x512MB) Kingston PC3500 HyperX DDR400 (2,2,2,5), ATI 9800XT (ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
AOpen AK86-L (VIA K8T800) - Athlon64 3400+ (2.2 GHz), 1GB (2x512MB) Kingston PC3500 HyperX DDR400 (2,3,2,5), ATI 9800XT (ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
Asus SK8V (VIA K8T800) - Athlon FX-51 (2.2 GHz), 1GB (2x512MB) Muskin PC3200 ECC Registered DDR400 cas2 (2,3,2,5) at DDR400 and DDR333 speeds, 1GB (2x512MB) Kingston PC3200 ECC Registered DDR400 cas3, ATI 9800XT (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, with the exception of the AOpen AK86-L board, were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode. The AOpen AK86-L results were obtained with the installed memory running in Single Channel mode.
While nothing seems to come close to the AthlonFX’s performance, the PT880 Neo makes a very strong showing. It seems that VIA’s PT880 P4 chipset may be able to give the i875P a good run for the money.