HARDOCP - Subsystem Testing & Benchmarks

Date:: Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Author:: Morry Teitelman
Editor:: Kyle Bennett
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GIGABYTE X48T-DQ6

GIGABYTE’s latest release seems to sport a formidable mix of engineering prowess and raw power. With the Intel X48 chipset under the hood, this board looks to be a champion. While it is still brightly colored, don't think that this motherboard is a clown.

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Subsystem Testing

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel LGA 775 E6300 Core2 Duo CPU with a 1066MHz FSB and 2 x 1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2000 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 Flyleaf album.

Not surprisingly, the audio playback was flawless. I detected no distortion whatsoever while listening to the selected audio tracks.

Audio – Microphone Port Testing

The MIC-IN input was tested using 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.

Overall, the clarity and audibility of the voice recording was excellent with no distortion detected. This remained true with and without 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 header 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 Intel ICH9R Southbridge and GIGABYTE controllers. Testing was also conducted using an IDE drive in a primary slave configuration on the GIGABYTE controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program

The SATA2 RAID based arrays had the best overall performance, with neither coming up as a decisive winner which is most impressive by itself. The standalone SATA 2 drive performance was a bit different; with the device attached to the GIGABYTE controller have a slight speed advantage over that on the Intel ICH9R controller. The external devices performed on par with one another, bring in another tie between them. During all tests, the CPU utilization stayed well below the 1% mark.

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. Note that both Realtek based GigE NICs performed on par with 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

Both the large file download and upload speeds were impressive, with the download speed coming in at 14 MB/s faster than the upload speed at 43 MB/s. Though, a speed of 28 MB/s for upload remains mighty impressive. During both tests, the CPU utilization remained at or under 20%.

The small file test were as impressive as the large file transfer tests, with the average upload speed coming in at 28 MB/s, besting that of download by over 10 MB/s. The CPU utilization seen during this set of tests also remained under an impressive 20%.

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:

Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Clock - Memory Type

SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth Benchmark

Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode.

While the X48T-DQ6 does not manage to bust any speed records with its results for this memory benchmark, it does manage to stay close with the other Intel boards. It still appears that the 790i chipset remains the one to beat on the Intel side though in terms of synthetic benchmarks.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Operation Benchmark

The X48T-DQ6 manages a solid second place here, matching performance with its P45 based siblings. We are still unsure of the quirky score shown by our P5E3 as all of the newer boards seem to come in about the ~52800 mark. But again, this one synthetic benchmark seems to be the only odd man out in terms of CPU performance.