![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , March 06, 2006
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Shuttle SD31P SFF
Looking for a cost effective Intel based small form factor barebones computer? The SD31P is based on the i945G chipset sporting integrated Sound Blaster Live! technology.
Subsystem Testing
NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, Pentium LGA775 3.73GHz CPU (14x266MHz) with a 1066MHz FSB and 2 x 512MB Corsair 8000UL DDR2 memory modules running at 667MHz were used in 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 selected tracks from the Disturbed album Ten Thousand Fists.
Playback of the selected audio tracks was clear and distortion free, making for an enjoyable listening experience.
Audio – Microphone Port Testing
The MIC-IN input was tested using a Labtec Desk Mic 524. Spoken words were recorded and played back using Microsoft Sound Recorder, with the Microphone Boost option disabled and enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the Advanced menu under the Microphone section within the Volume Control menu.
While there was no detectable distortion during recorded audio playback, the actual pickup level of sound was excessively low even with the Microphone Boost option enabled.
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 deathmatching. 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 with this board was solid, with a 10% degradation seen with the OpenGL game and a < 5% degradation seen in the Direct3D title.
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 to the USB port. SATA and IDE drive tests were performed using Maxtor 40Gb ATA 133 model 6E040L0 hard drives on the IDE headers and Samsung 40GB SATA II hard drives on the SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in a RAID 0 16k block size configuration on Intel ICH7R RAID controller. Testing was also conducted using a stand alone SATA drive and an IDE drive connected in a primary slave configuration on the Intel ICH7R controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.
The drive results were within expectations, with the SATA II RAID 0 array being the best performing of all the configurations tested. The performance of the USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 devices were on par with one another, and fell well within expectations.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the Broadcom Gigabit NIC. DU meter was used to measure bandwidth, with Windows Task Manager 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/1000MT 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.
Broadcom GigE controller
The large file transfer results fell as expected, with the average download speed besting that of upload by almost 5MB/s. The CPU utilization while in use was a bit higher during the download operations, but didn’t break much over 20%.
The small file transfer results also fell within expectations, with the average upload speed besting that of download by over 10MB/s. The CPU utilization did not go much over 10% during either test.
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:
Naturally, our two legacy systems will not be kept up to date with the latest technology, but they both use DDR400, ATA133 IDE hard drives, and ATI 9800 XT video cards. The following table describes these legacy systems in detail:
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.
Comparing to our other DDR2-800 systems, you see that our Shuttle did very well in this synthetic comparison.