HARDOCP - Subsystem Testing - GIGABYTE P55-UD6 Motherboard Review

Date:: Thursday , September 17, 2009
Author:: Daniel Dobrowolski
Editor:: Kyle Bennett
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GIGABYTE P55-UD6 Motherboard Review

The P55-UD6 is easily one of the most feature rich boards motherboards on the market today. Added to its recipe for success is the first 24-phase power implementation we've ever seen combined with a robust, but un-daunting BIOS to propel the GA-P55-UD6 and the LGA1156 processor of your choice to new heights.

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Subsystem Testing

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel Core i5 750 (2.66GHz) and 2 x 2048MB Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D ver 2.1 DDR3 1600MHz (8,8,8,24,1T @ 1.65v) memory modules running at DDR3 1333MHz were used. The CPU was cooled with a home brew water cooling setup consisting of a Swiftech MCR320 triple radiator, 3x120mm fans, Swiftech MCP655-B pump, and a Swiftech Apogee GTZ water block which was modified to work with socket LGA1156 motherboards and processors.

Sound Hardware

The GA-P55-UD6 uses the Realtek ALC889A codec for its audio solution. This implementation supports up to 7.1 channels and claims DolbyR Home Theater certification. In any event this isn't my favorite audio implementation but it does work well and I have rarely ever seen driver issues or other

problems with these or other similar Realtek audio solutions.

Audio - Subjective Listening

For subjective listening you want to listen to something that covers a range of sound types. For this portion of the review I went with Disturbed, Indestructible.

As expected, the CD audio playback was perfect.

Audio - Microphone Port Testing

The onboard audio MIC-IN port was tested using a Logitech Internet Chat Headset. Spoken words were recorded from the Windows Sound Recorder found under the Accessories\Entertainment folder in the start menu within Windows XP. The recording was made with the Microphone Boost option disabled, then enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the advanced menu under the microphone section with in the Volume Control Menu.

The recording sample was pretty much more of the same. It is precisely what I am used to seeing from onboard audio. The recording sample was virtually inaudible with the microphone boost option disabled and when it was enabled, there was a ton of distortion present.

Drive Performance

To test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 connections, we used an ACOMDATAHD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected first to the USB port. SATA and IDE drive tests were performed using Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD hard drives on the primary SATA header and Samsung 40 GB SATA 3G with NCQ hard drives on additional SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in RAID 0 16k block size configurations on all applicable controllers. Testing was also conducted using a stand alone SATA drive on all applicable controllers, and an EIDE drives connected in a primary slave configuration on the appropriate controller All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.

The GA-P55-UD6 has four drive controllers. The one built into the P55 Express chipset along with three JMicron controllers. The ever popular JMB363 and two JMB362 controllers. One handles two internal SATA ports while the other supports the eSATA ports on the I/O panel. The Intel P55 Express chipset supports Intel's Matrix RAID technology and therefore supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and JBOD. The JMB363 is a combination SATA and EIDE controller. It supports RAID 0, 1, and JBOD. The JMicron 362 controllers both support RAID 0, 1, and JBOD as well. The performance between these controllers was all virtually identical. Normally the Intel controller is noticeably better than the other integrated controllers but the reverse seems true here if only by a small margin.

I only ran into one problem while testing these and that's in regard to BIOS settings. The BIOS has an option to set ports 0-3 in native mode (AHCI) or Legacy (EIDE) mode and still run the other SATA ports native to the P55 chipset in AHCI or RAID mode. When set to legacy IDE mode the system wouldn't boot with drives actually connected to the motherboard. After figuring out what the problem was it was a simple fix but this sort of thing should really be looked into. Though it could simply be specific to the combination of hardware I was using so your mileage as always will vary.

Network Utilization Tests

Hagel Technologies' DU Meter software was used with Windows Task Manager to determine the performance levels of the onboard network interface. DU Meter was used to measure bandwidth and transfer speeds, while Windows Task Manager monitored CPU utilization on the test system. For the testing, a 750MB Archive file consisting of several compressed WMA/MP3 files was used for the large file transfer, and 750MB

worth of MP3/WMA files were used ranging in sizes from 3 to 30MB was used for the small files transfer test. The test was performed using a plenum

rated category 5e crossover cable to bypass any traffic, routing or other transfer issues and possible packet loss or corruption that can be caused by a router/switch or hub. The cables were connected between two test machines, one using the onboard NIC(s) of the board being reviewed and the other is

an Intel EXPI9400PT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet adapter installed into a test machine using an Intel DX48BT2 motherboard.

Integrated into the GA-P55-UD6 are two LAN adapters. Both of which are based on the Realtek 8110D Gigabit Ethernet chips. They are capable of 10/100/1000 Mbit speeds as well as adapter teaming and fault tolerance. The Realtek 8110D is relatively new. Or at least I've only seen it in motherboard

integration within the last few months. Previous to that the Realtek solution of choice was the 8110C. The two perform quite differently. The 8110D is much improved in my experience.

LAN1

In the small files download test we saw excellent results right off the bat. The maximum transfer rate was 74.46MB a second with an average of 50.28MB a second. The CPU usage was only 4%. The small files upload test showed a maximum transfer speed of only 42.01MB a second while averaging 27.95MB a

second. CPU usage again was a mere 4%.

The large files download test showed slightly less performance than we saw with the small files test. The maximum transfer speed was 65.75MB a second with an average of 40.83MB a second. CPU usage came in a little higher at 5%. The large files upload test showed a similar trend of performance established by the small files upload test. The large files upload test peaked at 29.58MB a second and averaged 21.98MB a second. CPU usage was again only 4%.

LAN2

Again we saw a trend of very similar results with the second LAN adapter. The small files download test maxed out at 66.80MB a second and averaged 58.18MB a second. CPU usage was slightly higher hitting 6%. The small files upload test a speed of 46.59MB a second with an average of 27.94MB a second. CPU usage again hit 5%.

The large files download was a little worse than I expected. It peaked at 48.04MB a second and averaged 39.23MB a second. The CPU usage in this test was a fairly consistent 5%. The large files upload test was almost bordering on awful. I ran the test 3 times and got similar results each time. The large files download test hit a whopping 23.31MB a second and averaged only slightly more pitiful speeds of 21.31MB a second. CPU usage was a mere 4% in this test as well.

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 Benchmarks sections: