Intel P965: Mid-Range Performance Sector Roundup

Firewire and USB Performance

After looking at many options for Firewire and USB testing, we finally determined that an external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 hard disk would be a sensible way to look at USB and Firewire throughput. We utilize a RAM disk as our "server", since memory removes almost all overhead from the serving end. We turn off disk caching on the USB and Firewire side by setting up the drives for "quick disconnect" so our results are consistent.

We use 2GB of system memory with timings of 3-3-3-9 and set our RAM disk to 450MB with system memory at 1550MB. Our standard file is the SPECviewPerf install file, which measures 432,533,504 bytes (412.4961MB). After copying this file to our RAM disk, we measured the time for writing from the RAM disk to our external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, or Firewire 800 drive utilizing our internal Windows based timing program. The copy times in seconds were then converted into Megabits per second (Mb) to provide a convenient means of comparing throughput. Higher Rates therefore mean better performance in this particular test.


Possibly the most interesting finding in our Firewire and USB throughput tests is the outstanding performance of an external hard drive connected to Firewire 800. Our benchmarks show Firewire 800 is up to 42% faster than a drive connected to the more common Firewire 400, and about 11% faster than the fastest USB 2.0 solution.

We see our Intel ICH8 chipset finally overtake perennial champion NVIDIA in USB 2.0 performance. We see the USB performance on the ATI SB600 still trailing the other solutions but it has vastly improved compared to the SB450. The Firewire soltuion from VIA is still slightly faster than the TI solutions normally used.

Ethernet Performance

The current motherboard test suite includes LAN performance measurements. All of these boards utilize PCI or PCI Express based controllers with the only difference being the supplier of the core logic.

The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the Intel motherboards.

We set up one machine as the server; in this test, an Intel system with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast throughput and is a logical choice for our Gigabit LAN server.

On the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:

Ntttcpr -m 4,0,‹server IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000

On the client side (the motherboard under test), we used the following Command Line:

Ntttcps -m 4,0,‹client IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000

At the conclusion of the test, we captured the throughput and CPU utilization figures from the client screen.



The CPU utilization performance favors the Marvell Gigabit controllers with the Realtek solutions having the highest utilization numbers. The throughput numbers also favor the Marvell Gigabit controllers with the Realtek options close behind. ASUS recently switched to the Attansic L1 PCI Express based controller chip with it posting decent results in each test. We do not understand ASUS's decision to utilize a PCI based Gigabit controller on the 570SLI when the NVIDIA chipset has native support for Gigabit operations. This decision results in the worse throughput and average CPU utilization numbers. However, even with throughput at 646Mb/s it still exceeds what most home networks are capable of and certainly any DSL or Cable based Internet connection.