HARDOCP - Subsystem Tests, Test Systems and Benchmarks

Date:: Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Author:: Morry Teitelman
Editor:: Kyle Bennett
Google +1

GIGABYTE X38-DQ6

Supporting the latest Intel X38 chipset and DDR2 memory, GIGABYTE’s latest addition to their DQ6 line of boards, the X38-DQ6, seems to hold a lot of promise.

continued...

Subsystem Testing

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel LGA 775 E6300 Core2 Duo CPU with a 1066MHz FSB and 2 x 1GB Corsair DDR2 XMS2-10000 memory modules running at 800MHz 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 the various audio tracks from McChris, most famous for the song Fett’s Vett.

The audio listening session was enjoyable, with no detectable distortion heard whatsoever.

Audio – Microphone Port Testing

The MIC-IN input was tested using both our standard Labtec Desk Mic 524 testing microphone. 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.

In both scenarios, no audio distortion was detected. However, overall audibility and audio pickup were much better with microphone boost enabled.

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 both ports. 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 and in standalone mode on both the Intel ICH9R and GIGABYTE controllers. Testing was also conducted using an IDE drive in a primary slave configuration with the GIGABYTE controller only. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program

With the exception of standalone SATA drive configuration, the 2 SATA RAID controllers were neck in neck performance wise, with neither RAID array coming out a clear winner. The external drive tests fell as expected, with the IEEE 1394 device showing a slight performance advantage over its USB 2.0 counterpart. CPU utilization did not stray much above 1% during any of the tests.

Network Utilization Tests

Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the Realtek GigE NICs. It was found in testing that both Realtek controllers performed similar to one another. 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 integrated 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.

Realtek GigE Controller

The large file transfer results were much better than anticipated, with the average download speed doubling that of upload at almost 43 MB/s. That performance did not seem to come at a hefty price either, with the CPU utilization sticking close to 20% during both tests.

While not as impressive as the large file transfer tests, the small file transfer tests fell as expected, with the upload speed besting that of download by approximately 6 MB/s. Here again, the CPU utilization stayed below 20%.

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: