PiFast
PiFast
is the kind of test does require a lot from the CPU and memory,
and if your motherboard can't back them up properly you will know
it. Our results with the Albatron PX925XE are respectable.
CDeX
1.51
Again,
both boards perform identically.
TMPGEnc
2.521
Like
the CDeX test, the TMPGEnc Video encoding test provides identical
numbers from both motherboards.
Gaming
Tests
I
hate just keep repeating myself but the results are pretty much
exactly the same. Again the Albatron PX925XE trails slightly behind
its older brother and again the results could easily be different
if we ran the tests for longer than a 3 time average. I'd be more
worried at a bigger gap but the results seen here are fine.
Subsystem
Testing – Audio
We
ran a few tests using Benchemall! and UT2K4 to see what impact
the onboard HD Audio had on system performance. The demo was run
3 times with sound on and sound off using a high quality 1024x768
configuration such as any end user would use, and the average
results recorded.
br-colossus
Performance
for gamin at least is not impacted in any significant way by using
the onboard sound, which isn't surprising in this day and age
of 2GHz+ CPU's.
In
terms of sound quality, the HD Audio is a lot better than previous
incarnations of Realtek's onboard sound, and currently the
best to be found on Intel boards. The lows and highs have a good
clarity to them and it is overall a great solution. One thing
I do like about the Realtek driver software is that the ports
are auto sensing of devices, so if you plug in a microphone on
the rear pink port, the software kicks in and asks you what has
been plugged in.
Hard
Drive Performance
We
used HD Tach to gauge read and write performance with a Maxtor
80GB SATA drive. As usual, the disk was freshly formatted, and
configured with only one partition. We also tested with an 80GB
Western Digital on the ITE RAID controller for PATA performance.
Read
Speeds
|
|
Min
kps
|
Max
kps
|
|
SATA
|
27098.9
|
62984.9
|
|
PATA
|
26090.4
|
60101.5
|
Write
Speeds
|
|
Min
kps
|
Max
kps
|
|
SATA
|
17524.2
|
62191.9
|
|
PATA
|
16999.5
|
59399.1
|
Network Performance
Unfortunately
I don't at this time possess any other gigabit network devices
so I was unable to test the Broadcom Gigabit NIC to its full potential.
However I did get numbers from DU Meter for the VIA Rhine III
NIC, along with Windows Task Manager for CPU usage. Our standard
testing method was used; the transfer of a group of small files
totaling 749 MB (varying from 200kb up to 108MB per file) as well
as one large file of 760MB (an ISO). Data was transferred to an
AN7, XP2500+ machine via a 3com 24 port Switch.
Small
Files Test - 749MB Total
|
|
Time
to Copy
|
Avg
Transfer Mb/sec
|
CPU
%
|
|
Upload
|
1:17.4
|
9.11
|
18
|
|
Download
|
1:15.1
|
9.29
|
20
|
CPU
Usage was a little on the high side during the small files test
but this seems to be a trend with VIA controllers. To be honest
I doubt anyone is going to be really all that bothered about
it since the minimum speed CPU you will be running is a 2.4
Celeron, so the impact won't be all that much.
Large
File Test - 760MB Total
|
|
Time
to Copy
|
Avg
Transfer Mb/sec
|
CPU
%
|
|
Upload
|
1:19.5
|
9.23
|
16
|
|
Download
|
1:17.9
|
9.57
|
18
|
We
get better numbers from the large file test but since this is
one singular file rather than many little ones, it is to be
expected. Repeating the above tests on the Broadcom NIC gave
us similar results all though the CPU usage jumped up another
5% across the board.
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