MSI P6N SLI Platinum: NVIDIA's 650i Part Two
by Gary Key on March 13, 2007 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
CPU Multitasking Results
We devised a script that would compress our standard test folder consisting of 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data, convert a 137MB High Definition QuickTime movie clip to a 37MB MPEG-4 format, play back the first two chapters of Office Space with PowerDVD, and run our AVG anti-virus program in the background. We stop the script when the file compression and video conversion are complete. This is a very taxing script for the CPU, Memory, and Storage subsystems. We also found our overclocking testing to be a good indicator of system stability.
The performance difference basically mirrors our PCMark 2005 tests with the MSI boards finishing first due to great disk performance, though the Intel Chipsets consistently completed the QuickTime Conversion first - this is possibly due to the better memory bandwidth results Sandra showed. The DFI RD600 board scores last though it generated the best video playback results. We noticed it would stutter at times when converting the QuickTime file that led to its last place finish. The one surprise in this category is the ASUS P965 board as they generally do extremely well in multitasking scenarios under PCMark 2005. After reviewing the results we noticed the PowerDVD playback was not smooth and experienced several pauses. We are still looking into this and hopefully will have an answer soon.
Media Encoding Performance
Our first encoding test is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD Ripper to copy the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fire up Nero Recode 2, selected our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and perform a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We leave all options on their defaults except we check off the advanced analysis option. The scores reported include the full encoding process and are represented in minutes and seconds, with lower numbers indicating better performance.
We continue to see a strong performance from the MSI 650i in our application tests. In previous testing our ASUS 650i and 680i boards were almost two minutes slower in this test as we consistently found the performance of the 680i/650i to be lacking due to disk access issues. The conversion process would consistently slow down while the disk was being accessed. The quality of the video conversion was never affected but it appeared under heavy CPU usage that disk performance suffered. After the latest round of BIOS and driver updates these two boards now score close to the other chipsets, with the MSI board now leading the Intel chipsets.
Audio Encoding Performance
While the media encoding prowess of the Intel chipset boards were superb in our initial media encoding testing, we wanted to see how they faired on the audio side. Our audio test suite consists of Exact Audio Copy v095.b4 and LAME 3.98a3. We utilize the INXS Greatest Hits CD that contains 16 tracks totaling 606MB of one time '80s hits.
We set up EAC for variable bit rate encoding, burst mode for extraction, use external program for compression, and to start the external compressor upon extraction. (EAC will read the next track while LAME is working on the previous track, thus removing a potential bottleneck with the optical drive.) We also set the number of active threads to two to ensure both cores are active during testing. The results are presented in minutes/seconds for the encoding process, with lower numbers being better.
Our Plextor drive consistently took two minutes and nine seconds to read all sixteen tracks. This means our test systems are only utilizing one core during testing until the midway point of the extraction process where the drive speed exceeds the capability of the encoder and requires the use of a second thread.
As in the media encoding section, the more intensive CPU and storage system tests seem to favor the 975X over the P965/NV650i-680i/RD600 when running at the same memory timings. But once again the MSI P6N SLI Platinum board proves to be an exception to this rule at stock speeds. We ran the test several times and at one point the MSI board posted a 2 minute and 16 second result when we changed our command rate from 2T to 1T. We actually witnessed several test results where 1T performed exceptionally well but we could not get the board dual Prime95 stable with the 1.22 BIOS and 1T settings.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and ensure we had another CPU crunching utility, we will be reporting our file compression results with the latest version of WinRAR that fully supports multi-threaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our series of file compression tests utilizes WinRAR 3.62 to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR along with our hard drive being defragmented before each test.
In a complete reversal of the other application results we see our MSI 650i board finishing last. We see the Intel P965 and 975X chipsets leading once again as both seem to thrive in this CPU intensive task. The DFI RD600 board finishes in the middle of the pack. Historically, the NV Intel chipsets have not done well in this test although they have exceptional disk performance results in our other tests. Changing our memory timings did not really affect the results and we had to increase our FSB to 272 before the NV boards scored the same as the Intel chipsets. When it comes to pure CPU crunching power, the Intel chipsets win hands down.
We devised a script that would compress our standard test folder consisting of 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data, convert a 137MB High Definition QuickTime movie clip to a 37MB MPEG-4 format, play back the first two chapters of Office Space with PowerDVD, and run our AVG anti-virus program in the background. We stop the script when the file compression and video conversion are complete. This is a very taxing script for the CPU, Memory, and Storage subsystems. We also found our overclocking testing to be a good indicator of system stability.
The performance difference basically mirrors our PCMark 2005 tests with the MSI boards finishing first due to great disk performance, though the Intel Chipsets consistently completed the QuickTime Conversion first - this is possibly due to the better memory bandwidth results Sandra showed. The DFI RD600 board scores last though it generated the best video playback results. We noticed it would stutter at times when converting the QuickTime file that led to its last place finish. The one surprise in this category is the ASUS P965 board as they generally do extremely well in multitasking scenarios under PCMark 2005. After reviewing the results we noticed the PowerDVD playback was not smooth and experienced several pauses. We are still looking into this and hopefully will have an answer soon.
Media Encoding Performance
Our first encoding test is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD Ripper to copy the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fire up Nero Recode 2, selected our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and perform a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We leave all options on their defaults except we check off the advanced analysis option. The scores reported include the full encoding process and are represented in minutes and seconds, with lower numbers indicating better performance.
We continue to see a strong performance from the MSI 650i in our application tests. In previous testing our ASUS 650i and 680i boards were almost two minutes slower in this test as we consistently found the performance of the 680i/650i to be lacking due to disk access issues. The conversion process would consistently slow down while the disk was being accessed. The quality of the video conversion was never affected but it appeared under heavy CPU usage that disk performance suffered. After the latest round of BIOS and driver updates these two boards now score close to the other chipsets, with the MSI board now leading the Intel chipsets.
Audio Encoding Performance
While the media encoding prowess of the Intel chipset boards were superb in our initial media encoding testing, we wanted to see how they faired on the audio side. Our audio test suite consists of Exact Audio Copy v095.b4 and LAME 3.98a3. We utilize the INXS Greatest Hits CD that contains 16 tracks totaling 606MB of one time '80s hits.
We set up EAC for variable bit rate encoding, burst mode for extraction, use external program for compression, and to start the external compressor upon extraction. (EAC will read the next track while LAME is working on the previous track, thus removing a potential bottleneck with the optical drive.) We also set the number of active threads to two to ensure both cores are active during testing. The results are presented in minutes/seconds for the encoding process, with lower numbers being better.
Our Plextor drive consistently took two minutes and nine seconds to read all sixteen tracks. This means our test systems are only utilizing one core during testing until the midway point of the extraction process where the drive speed exceeds the capability of the encoder and requires the use of a second thread.
As in the media encoding section, the more intensive CPU and storage system tests seem to favor the 975X over the P965/NV650i-680i/RD600 when running at the same memory timings. But once again the MSI P6N SLI Platinum board proves to be an exception to this rule at stock speeds. We ran the test several times and at one point the MSI board posted a 2 minute and 16 second result when we changed our command rate from 2T to 1T. We actually witnessed several test results where 1T performed exceptionally well but we could not get the board dual Prime95 stable with the 1.22 BIOS and 1T settings.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and ensure we had another CPU crunching utility, we will be reporting our file compression results with the latest version of WinRAR that fully supports multi-threaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our series of file compression tests utilizes WinRAR 3.62 to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR along with our hard drive being defragmented before each test.
In a complete reversal of the other application results we see our MSI 650i board finishing last. We see the Intel P965 and 975X chipsets leading once again as both seem to thrive in this CPU intensive task. The DFI RD600 board finishes in the middle of the pack. Historically, the NV Intel chipsets have not done well in this test although they have exceptional disk performance results in our other tests. Changing our memory timings did not really affect the results and we had to increase our FSB to 272 before the NV boards scored the same as the Intel chipsets. When it comes to pure CPU crunching power, the Intel chipsets win hands down.
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nicolasb - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Maybe this was mentioned in part 1 and I missed it, but how does the 650i perform in terms of heat output? And how effective/noisy is the north bridge cooling on the MSI board? And how does the overall power consumption of the system compare to P965? The 680i certainly runs very hot indeed compared to its Intel rivals;I think need to know if the 650i does the same.Gary Key - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Power consumption numbers are on page 9. Thermals are a different story as they will vary widely depending upon the case design and internal cooling. The best I can do is to setup a 650i and a P965 on a test platform and take readings without any airflow across the boards. I will do that tonight but from the touch of your finger testing, I figure the 650i is about 15% warmer on average. The fan that MSI includes has a db rating of 34 and did not sound whiny in testing.nicolasb - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
I think we need to know, even.Geraldo8022 - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Yes, this is very important to me and I also would like the answers to these questions.phusg - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Guys I agree it's very important but please RTFA first ;-)From page 9 power consumption you can conclude that the 650i uses some 10-15 Watts less than the 690i.
phusg - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Additionally if idle is more important to you then the P965 seems to nose in front, if load is more important then the RD600 chipset seems to be king. Unfortunately only DFI has a board at the moment although I think ASUS is rumoured to be preparing one too.And as far as noise goes I think all these motherboards are passively cooled, so they should be pretty close to 0db.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
First, let me get this out of the way:Last page second to the last paragraph, I'm assuming you meant 'knock-out blow' ?
Now that, that is out of the way, is it just me, or does it seem that MSI is/has been encroaching on ABIT, and like companies as far as stability goes ? I personaly have not owned any MSI motherboards for quite some time, but everytime I read about their boards, it seems to be getting more, and more favorable for them.
Now a question concerning functionality. Will this SIL eSATA chip handle SATA Port multipliers well ? Would be a very good option if so. Also how many PCIE lanes do these boards actually use vs the i680 boards ? I remember seeing a spec sheet of the 590 vs the 570 (which if I recall correctly, was half the PCIE lanes, 590 vs 570 that is) but I do not recall seeing any data concerning the i680 vs its little breathren.
Gary Key - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Hi,It should have been knock-out blow and is corrected now. On the front page we linked to our 680i launch article that explained the technical differences between the chipsets - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">680i Launch - but to answer your question quickly the 680i has 46 PCI Express Lanes and nine links compared to 18 PCI Express Lanes and four links on the 650i SLI. The specs on the SIL3531 can be found here - http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?...">SiL3531. The chipset has support for Port Multipliers with FIS-based switching such as their own SiL3726 chipset.
MSI over the last couple of years had lost their focus to some degree in the motherboard market and it seemed as though they either wanted to product low cost boards to compete against ECS/Foxconn or high-end boards in their Diamond series. You never knew what to expect from them when a new chipset was released. They were also getting a bad rap for being late to market along with getting the board finally tuned correctly about the time production ended on it. I know from several discussions with them over the past couple of months that they are aware of past issues and are vigorously working to correct those issues now. Product quality has always been good overall but has certainly become better as of late while pricing is still aggressive based upon feature sets.
Thanks for the comments.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - link
Thanks for the reply Gary.Am I right in assuming that just because a given chipset has x mount of PCIE lanes/Links, that <insert OEM> motherboard manufactuer is not obligated in using all of these lanes /links ? IF this be the case, how would one go about finding this information out, without reverse engineering the motherboard ?
just4U - Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - link
Odd is it not? They used to be first to market in alot of boards and had to constantly fine tune after launch because they were riddled with issues. I've always liked MSI and usually purchase a few of their boards each year.