PiFast
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Time in Seconds
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Albatron PX925X Pro
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52.61
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PiFast can hit the CPU and memory hard, so without a decent motherboard to back them, you won't get the best performance. The Albatron PX925X Pro provides a respectable time of 52 seconds.
CDeX 1.51
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Time in Minutes:Seconds
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Albatron PX925X Pro
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01:15
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Like PiFast, our CDeX test shows a good time.
TMPGEnc 2.521
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Time in Minutes:Seconds
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Albatron PX925X Pro
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06:19
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Video encoding really shows of the benefit of the extra instructions in the Prescott CPU's, and like the two previous tests you will want a good motherboard to make the most of it. Again the Albatron PX925X hasn't slowed our 3.2GHz CPU down.
Gaming Tests
Our gaming tests again give us results we expect with nothing to really write home about; the numbers are where they should be.
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
The impact as you can see is minimal which is as it should be. I'd of been worried at any huge differences but this is fine.
In terms of sound quality, the HD Audio is a lot better than previous incarnations of Realtek's onboard sound, and any other onboard sound found on previous generation Intel based boards. The lows and highs have a greater clarity and power to them and while overall the solution isn't up there with Soundstorm, the sound quality certainly is. One nice touch with the Realtek software supplied 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 and how you wish to use it, all displayed on an icon driven list. This functionality extends to the front panel audio too, allowing you to use 5.1 from the rear and instantly change to 2 speaker headphones from the front (assuming you can work out the pin layouts for the front audio panel).
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
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Min kps
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Avg kps
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Max kps
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SATA
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27056.1
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52354.7
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62984.9
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PATA
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25998.3
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50623.9
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60051.1
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Write Speeds
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Min kps
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Avg kps
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Max kps
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SATA
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17432.2
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27810.3
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62127.3
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PATA
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16987.9
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27054.8
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59354.8
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Both the ITE and the Onboard SATA controllers performed similarly although of course the SATA interface had the upper hand. CPU usage was about what we expected averaging around the 8% mark for the SATA and a slightly higher 9% for the ITE connection.
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
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Time to Copy
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Avg Transfer Mb/sec
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CPU %
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Upload
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1:17.1
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9.10
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18
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Download
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1:15.8
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9.30
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21
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CPU Usage was a little on the high side during the small files test although this is something we have seen before on other motherboards with VIA solutions. That said when you are running at 3.2GHz with Hyperthreading enabled, it's not something that will affect you overly much. Speeds were OK although we have seen better.
Large File Test - 760MB Total
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Time to Copy
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Avg Transfer Mb/sec
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CPU %
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Upload
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1:19.1
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9.22
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16
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Download
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1:18.3
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9.55
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19
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The large file test gives us better numbers, but transferring one file rather than multiple small ones inevitably has this effect anyway. One thing of interest is the fact that running the same tests on the Broadcom Gigabit NIC yields similar transfer times but a 10% drop in CPU usage.
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