HARDOCP - Subsystem Testing & Benchmarks

Date:: Tuesday , May 06, 2008
Author:: Morry Teitelman
Editor:: Kyle Bennett
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ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe

ASUS comes out swinging with their latest NVIDIA chipset based AMD offering, the M3N-HT Deluxe. Based on the AMD version of the NVIDIA nForce 780a chipset, the board packs a lot of promise.

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Subsystem Testing

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an AMD Phenom 9600 quad-core CPU with a 200MHz FSB and 2 x 1GB Corsair DDR2-10000 memory modules running at 1066MHz 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 to listen to the self-titled Fly Leaf album.

The audio playback was flawless, with no detectable distortion found at any time.

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.

The microphone tests were a bit of a mystery. Both with and without Microphone Boost enabled, there was slight distortion detected on playback of the recorded audio, with the distortion much worse with it enabled. The distortion heard was more like audio signal breakdown and corruption rather than background feedback. Unfortunately, audio audibility was difficult at best without Microphone Boost enabled, making the onboard microphone semi-usable in the best of circumstances.

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 the NVIDIA Southbridge controller. Testing was also conducted using an IDE drive in a primary slave configuration on the NVIDIA controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program

The SATA based RAID array performed best overall in the drive tests, with the SATA standalone drive trailing it closely. In the external drive tests, the IEEE 1394 beat out the performance of the USB 2.0 device. In all cases, the CPU utilization remained below 1%.

Network Utilization Tests

Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the NVIDIA GigE 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 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.

NVIDIA GigE controller

The large file transfer results came in about as expected, with the average download speed besting that of upload by almost 20 MB/s. Upload speeds averaged just under a mediocre 16 MB/s, while download speeds hovered at 34 MB/s. In both cases, measured CPU utilization remained at or below a manageable 10%.

The small file transfer results also came in as expected, with both download and upload speeds averaging over 15 MB/s. In both cases, CPU utilization again remained below 10%.

Test Systems

The following system configurations were used for the system benchmark graphs, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmarks sections: