![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Monday , November 02, 2009
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO Motherboard Review
The ASUS’ latest offering for the AMD crowd does not have all the bells and whistles of the flagship offerings. The M4A785GTD-V EVO does however offer a mix of good performance and HTPC friendly integrated add-ons.
Subsystem Testing
NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an AMD Phenom II x4 965 CPU with the board FSB running at 200MHz and 2 x 2GB Corsair CM3x2G2000C8GT 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 Disturbed album Indestructible.
The audio subsystem performed flawlessly, with no discernable audio distortion detected at any time 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.
While the captured audio was distortion-free with and without Microphone Boost enabled, overall voice pickup and clarity was much better with the option 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 in a RAID 0 16k block size configuration and in standalone mode, as well as an IDE drive in standalone mode, were tested via the AMD SB710 controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program
The results fell as expected, with the SATA RAID 0 array ruling the performance roost, followed by the standalone SATA drive and the standalone IDE drive. The external drives performed on par with one another, with the USB 2.0 device appearing to have a slight advantage. During all tests, 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 Realtek 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.
Realtek GigE controller
The large file transfer tests came in with performance on par with expectations, with the download speed besting that of upload by over 10 MB/s at a cool 41 MB/s average speed. The CPU utilization remained at or below 15% during both tests.
The small file transfer results were on par with expectations as well, with both upload and download speeds matching at a speedy 27 MB/s clip. As witnessed with the large file transfer tests, the CPU utilization remained at or below 15%.
Synthetic Performance Testing
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 Type & Clock Speed - Memory Type
Sisoft Sandra 2009
Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode for all systems with the exception of the Intel X58 based board, which ran in Triple Channel mode.
The memory bandwidth results for the M4A785TD-V EVO clearly show the Achilles heel of the AMD AM3 based platform, with its performance lagging well behind even the Intel P55 based systems. Keep in mind that this is a synthetic benchmark, and results should be taken with a grain of salt.
Again, we see the M4A785TD-V EVO falling behind the Intel based boards.
Hiper Pi
Again, the M4A785TD-V EVO lags the Intel systems performance.
wPrime
Here we actually see the M4A785TD-V EVO starting to fight back against the Intel onslaught, managing respectable performance in this system intensive synthetic test.