![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, October 20, 2004
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum
The 915P Neo2 Platinum is MSI’s premier of the Intel 915P chipset and DDR2. We put the 915P Neo2 through our usual benchmarks, stress testing, and BIOS tweaking suite and give you the results.
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 dug deep in my collection for the Trust Company album The Lonely Position of Neutral.
The board’s clarity in reproducing the audio track was top notch. I heard no distortion of any type during audio playback, with all music coming through very crisply and clearly.
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. Note that the sound driver included with the board did not include a Microphone Boost option.
After the very good audio reproduction tests, the Microphone testing was a bit of a let down. When the sound did not come out distorted or with a crackling accompaniment, the playback audio volume was low. I’ve definitely encountered better quality audio input solutions.
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.
The in game audio performance was ok, but definitely not the best I’ve seen. However, there was a very significant performance difference between the OpenGL based Jedi Knight 2 and the Direct3D based Comanche 4. In Comanche 4, there was a 10% performance dip which is more than acceptable. However, in Jedi Knight 2, the performance degradation jumped to 20%. In either case, you won’t notice any great game lag as long as your in game FPS (frames per second) remains above the 40-60 FPS mark.
Drive Performance
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. SATA and IDE drive tests were performed using a Maxtor 40Gb ATA 133 model 6E040L0 hard drives on the IDE headers and Seagate 80 GB Barracuda SATA hard drives on the SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in RAID 0 configurations on the ICH6R RAID controller. IDE drives were used for RAID 0 configurations using the VIA RAID controller. Tests were done with two IDE drives on a single IDE port (labeled same) and with two drives on separate IDE ports (labeled diff). Testing was also conducted using stand alone SATA drives on the ICH6R controller, and IDE drives connected in a primary slave configuration and in standalone fashion on the VIA controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.
Overall, the SATA drives performed the best, with the SATA RAID 0 array taking top honors as expected. However, the IDE based RAID 0 array performed almost as well as the standalone SATA drive as long as the IDE array was set up with two drives each using a separate IDE port. The external USB device’s performance was surprising in that it managed to keep up with the performance of the IEEE 1394 . However, the USB 2.0 device’s performance came at the cost of a higher than expected CPU utilization while 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 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 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. Note that performance was tested to be similar using either on board NIC.
The small file transfer results seen using the Broadcom NIC were within expectations for a GigE controller. As expected, the download speeds were greater than the upload speeds, by a margin of 5 MB/s . However, the CPU utilization seen during download was almost 15-20% greater than that on upload. Quite a price to pay for not so great performance.
The large file results followed the same trends as those of the small file transfer, with the exception that the spread between download and upload speed was 10 MB/s. Not a bad networking solution, but definitely one that could use a bit of tweaking.
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 915P Neo2 Platinum (i915P) - Intel 3.6GHz (model # 560), 2.8GHz (model # 520), 1GB (2x512MB) Micron Engineering Sample DDR2-533 (4,4,4,12), NVIDIA NV45 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
ABIT AG8 (i915P) - Intel 3.6GHz (model # 560), 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMSDDR3200LLPro DDR400 (2,3,2,5), NVIDIA NV45 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
ABIT AA8 (i925X) - Intel 3.4GHz Extreme Edition, 1GB (2x512MB) Micron Engineering Sample DDR2-533 (4,4,4,12), NVIDIA NV45 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
Intel D875PBZ (i875P) - Intel 3.4GHz Prescott, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMSDDR3200LLPro DDR400 (2,3,2,5), NVIDIA NV40 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
Asus A8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800Pro) - AthlonFX-53, Athlon64 3800+, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMSDDR3200LLPro DDR400 (2,3,2,5), NVIDIA NV40 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
For Doom3 benchmarks, the following system configurations were used (in addition to the MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum system):
DFI 915P-T12 (i915P) - Intel 3.6GHz (model # 560), 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMSDDR3200LLPro DDR400 (2,3,2,5), NVIDIA NV45 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
DFI 925X-T2 (i925X) - Intel 3.6GHz (model # 560), 1GB (2x512MB) Micron Engineering Sample DDR2-533 (4,4,4,12), NVIDIA NV45 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
MSI K8T Neo2-FIR (VIA K8T800Pro) - Athlon64 3800+, Athlon64 3500+, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMSDDR3200LLPro DDR400 (2,3,2,5), NVIDIA NV40 (400/550) (v61.45 driver), 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptors RAID 0, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
Our two legacy systems will of course not be kept up to date with the latest technology, but they do both use DDR400 and ATA133 IDE hard drives and ATI 9800XT video cards.
ABIT NF7 (NVIDIA NF2) - AthlonXP 2400+ 133MHz System bus, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMSDDR400Pro DDR400 (2,3,2,5), ATI 9800XT (ATI Catalyst 3.8 drivers), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD, Windows XP w/SP1 and DX9B.
Intel D875PBZ (i875P) - Pentium 4 2.4C - Intel, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMSDDR400Pro DDR400 (2,3,2,5), 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 were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode.
No surprises here, the 915P Neo2 easily matches performance with the rest of the Intel crowd. We continue to see little to no performance benefit from the use of DDR2 modules as well. As expected, the AMD socket 939 boards remain untouchable.