![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, November 05, 2008
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS P6T Deluxe
There’s a new kid on the block, and he’s out for blood. The ASUS P6T Deluxe comes out of the gate swinging, sporting the newly release Intel X58 chipset and setting new performance standards across the board.
Subsystem Testing
NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing below, an Intel LGA 1366 Core i7 CPU with a 133MHz FSB and 3.2GHz Clock Speed (Core i7 model 965EE) and 3 x 1GB Corsair XM3-1800 memory modules running at 1600MHz 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 Seether album Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces.
Playback of the audio tracks was flawless, with no detectable audio distortion encountered during the listening session.
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.
The microphone usage testing worked distortion free with and without the Microphone Boost option enabled. The overall pickup with the listening device was good enough that you should not need to even use the Microphone Boost option in conjunction with this audio subsystem.
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 on the Intel ICH10R Southbridge controller only. SATA based standalone mode testing was done on both the Intel ICH10R Southbridge and Marvell SAS controllers. Testing was also conducted using an IDE drive in a primary slave configuration on the Marvell controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program
While the overall performance crown went to the Intel based RAID array, neither SATA device in the standalone tests performed poorly with the Marvell controller having a slight performance advantage. The External devices performed on par with one another, with the IEEE 1394 device having only slightly better performance than the USB 2.0 device. In all cases, the CPU utilization remained well below 1% during all tests.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the Marvell Yukon GigE NICs. Note that both Marvell Yukon 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.
Marvell Yukon GigE controller
The large file transfer results were within expectations, with the download speed besting that of upload by almost 12 MB/s. The average download speed came in at over 38 MB/s. During both tests, the CPU utilization did not break an impressively low 10%.
The small file transfer results were also on par with expectations, with the average upload speed coming in at over 24 MB/s, a full 7 MB/s over that of download. We again saw the super low CPU utilization during both tests, remaining at under 10% for the duration.
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, with the exception of the Core i7 system, which ran in Triple Channel memory mode.
The P6T Deluxe impresses from the outset, with its memory bandwidth numbers almost tripling its nearest competitor’s numbers due to the Core i7’s integrated memory controller and “extra” channel of DDR3 memory. As expected, the memory bandwidth numbers scale with increased memory speed. Note that our 4GHz overclock actually has a lower DDR3 speed of 1339 compared to our 1600 we used at 3.2GHz stock CPU clock speed. It is worth noting here that the stock DDR3 speed of the Core i7 965EE is 1333MHz so we provided that configuration as well.
SiSoft Sandra CPU Operation Benchmark
Again we see the P6T Deluxe pulling ahead of the completion, more due to the Core i7 CPU enhancements than anything else. The Core i7 965EE is about 50% faster than our Core 2 Extreme QX9770, and that is a clock-for-clock comparison. The CPU MIPS numbers scale with processor speed as expected.
Super PI Mod v1.5 Benchmark
The P6T Deluxe continues to demolish the competition on a clock-per-clock basis and its 4GHz overclock is simply crushing AMD’s 9950BE Phenom.
wPrime
This CPU intensive benchmark finds the P6T Deluxe board again taking the top spot, with performance scaling with CPU speed as expected. Again the Core i7 flexes its muscle in this multithreaded benchmark.