Budget Micro-ATX P55 Faceoff: Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 and ASRock P55M Pro
by Gary Key on October 5, 2009 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Networking
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.
Our network throughput test indicates how well a particular controller design from Realtek, Marvell, or Intel performs instead of being indicative of true chipset performance. This also holds true for the CPU utilization results, though this test can also be influenced to certain degree by the BIOS code and chipset interconnect design.
The CPU utilization and throughput numbers favor the Realtek controller on the Gigabyte board, followed closely by the same Realtek chipset on the Foxconn and ASRock boards. In practice, few if any users will notice a difference, even if they have the requisite gigabit hub, as storage performance frequently bottlenecks the actual transfer rates.
For our second series of networking tests we utilize a Promise SmartStor NS4600 NAS unit equipped with two WD Caviar Black 640GB drives in RAID 1 operation. We are using two benchmarks from Intel’s popular NASPT 1.70 testing tool. The Promise NAS unit is connected to each test platform via a NetGear Gigabit Ethernet switch. We left all settings at their defaults on both the motherboard and Promise NAS unit. Our was to maximize the performance of the NAS unit to verify our network throughput capabilities on each motherboard.
Our three P55 test subjects perform almost identically in our actual usage tests.
USB / FireWire Performance
Our USB transfer speed tests are conducted with an USB 2.0/FireWire based Lacie external hard drive unit featuring a 1TB 7200rpm Samsung drive . In the SSD to External test, we transfer a 3.82GB folder containing 2735 files of various sizes from our Kingston 80GB SSD to the Lacie drive. In the next two file tests, we use the same 3.82GB folder to transfer from our WD VRaptor 300GB hard drive to the external Lacie drive utilizing the USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394a interface.
The ASRock board slightly outperforms the Gigabyte board in our USB transfer tests. The VIA Firewire controller on the ASRock board has a slightly higher write speed (+3Mb/s) under HDTach/HDTune and it shows up in our file transfer test.
Storage Performance
In our storage test, we utilize the same 3.82GB test folder and transfer it from our WD VRaptor drive to our Kingston 80GB SSD.
Once again, our P55 motherboards perform almost identically. The P55 chipset on the Gigabyte board has a 3% advantage over the JMicron controller on the same board. However, any measurable differences were not recognized in actual usage.
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Sunburn74 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Thanks.Which board? I searched the thoughts section and don't see any mention of sleep :(
I just know its a huge problem with gigabyte boards, pretty much every p45- and a good number of the x58 boards mysteriosly can't s3 sleep with significant overclocks in place and its something I'm seriously going to explore before my next mobo purchase.
Ryun - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
I purchased and Asrock 760g, which is a great little motherboard, yet it does not support S3 state (standby mode). I have an email from Asrock's (surprisingly quick-response) tech support saying that none of their boards officially support S3 state and to use their Instant Boot technology instead.Did the Asrock motherboard you tested allow you to go into S3 state/standby mode? I really like Asrock's boards but the lack of standby is a deal breaker for me.
Gary Key - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
S3 is fully supported on the ASRock board. In the power consumption section I did note what needed to be enabled for it work. Also, this was probably in the wrong spot, but in the OC section I briefly mentioned that the board had no problems resuming from S3 with the Bclk set to 215. I can understand why ASRock wants you to use Instant Boot, but S3 operation is just fine, even when overclocked.Ryun - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Ah, looks like I missed that part. Many thanks for pointing that out. Sadly though, I don't have those BIOS options on the 760g board I have but perhaps I can tinker a bit more.n7 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Just wanted to say a massively huge thank you for testing with 8 GB!It's extremely encouraging to see, as the large majority of reviewers do not bother testing with all slots populated.
Thanx again.
vlado08 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Which board has the quickest Power On Self Test?With fast CPU's and SSD I expect fast booting!
Now I have a Gigabyte board (P965 DS4) and when the Sata is in AHCI mode POST is quite long.
I hope that in future articles you will include this information.
MadMan007 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
S3 is your friend. Really, who boots their computer every time any more?strikeback03 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
I usually do, since I dual boot and won't necessarily know which OS I need the day before.Gary Key - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Cold Boot - Quick Boot turned off in BIOS - AHCI enabled, External Hard Drive attached via IEEE 1394a, LAN attached to our Promise NAS via a Gigabit Switch.Time reported is from the time we turn on the board until Win7 has correctly installed the network stack. So this is the full POST and OS is usable process that is being timed.
ASRock - 44.7 seconds
Gigabyte - 53.2 seconds
I have the information since we run this for every board, just did not know if anyone would care to see it. ;)
vlado08 - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link
Thanks GaryBut I was interested in time from pushing the power on switch until the begining of the OS loading. I think that there might be difference between boards depending on their BIOS.
Time from begining of the OS loading until fully functional OS depends on the computing power ot the CPU and the speed of the HDD (SSD) and not on the design of the board.
And because you (we) want to distinguish between the boards I thought that this might be one of the criterion.