Asus P5WDG2-WS: Intel 975X goes to Work
by Gary Key on December 6, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Disk Controller Performance
With the variety of disk drive benchmarks available, we needed a means of comparing the true performance of the wide selection of controllers. The logical choice was Anand's storage benchmark first described in Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs. the World. The iPeak test was designed to measure "pure" hard disk performance, and in this case, we kept the hard drive as consistent as possible while varying the hard drive controller. The idea is to measure the performance of a hard drive controller with a consistent hard drive.
We played back Anand's raw files that recorded I/O operations when running a real world benchmark - the entire Winstone 2004 suite. Intel's iPEAK utility was then used to play back the trace file of all IO operations that took place during a single run of Business Winstone 2004 and MCC Winstone 2004. To try to isolate performance differences to the controllers that we were testing, we used the Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA drive in all tests . The drive was formatted before each test run and a composite average of 5 tests on each controller interface was tabulated in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark.
iPeak gives a mean service time in milliseconds; in other words, the average time that each drive took to fulfill each IO operation. In order to make the data more understandable, we report the scores as an average number of IO operations per second so that higher scores translate into better performance. This number is meaningless as far as hard disk performance is concerned as it is just the number of IO operations completed in a second. However, the scores are useful for comparing "pure" performance of the storage controllers in this case.
With the variety of disk drive benchmarks available, we needed a means of comparing the true performance of the wide selection of controllers. The logical choice was Anand's storage benchmark first described in Q2 2004 Desktop Hard Drive Comparison: WD Raptor vs. the World. The iPeak test was designed to measure "pure" hard disk performance, and in this case, we kept the hard drive as consistent as possible while varying the hard drive controller. The idea is to measure the performance of a hard drive controller with a consistent hard drive.
We played back Anand's raw files that recorded I/O operations when running a real world benchmark - the entire Winstone 2004 suite. Intel's iPEAK utility was then used to play back the trace file of all IO operations that took place during a single run of Business Winstone 2004 and MCC Winstone 2004. To try to isolate performance differences to the controllers that we were testing, we used the Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA drive in all tests . The drive was formatted before each test run and a composite average of 5 tests on each controller interface was tabulated in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark.
iPeak gives a mean service time in milliseconds; in other words, the average time that each drive took to fulfill each IO operation. In order to make the data more understandable, we report the scores as an average number of IO operations per second so that higher scores translate into better performance. This number is meaningless as far as hard disk performance is concerned as it is just the number of IO operations completed in a second. However, the scores are useful for comparing "pure" performance of the storage controllers in this case.
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Tujan - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Can you tell us what power supply was used on this Asus multi-layered board ? What kind of power muscle did get used. ? [ ]Thanks.Didn't see it right off in table of 'Setup.
Gary Key - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
We used the OCZ Power Stream 520. It is our standard power supply for testing. I have listed in the overclocking setup but not in the regular test setup. I will add that line in the next article.Thank you.
Kensei - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
Cool quote from the man often referred to as the first US psychologist. The psychology building at Harvard, where he was a professor, is also named after him. And I'm pretty sure he got that honor without giving them a ton of money.Kensei
Saist - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
just wondering how the board would compare using the Via Envy HT-S sound chip...Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
Would a Chaintech AV710 satisfy your question? ;->Hikari - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
I have some horrible 945G board (don't ask, I use a 7800GT lol), and I can't even run PC2-6400 over 667, nor will the computer not crash if I put the bus over 205. :(So when are the 975x boards supposed to come out? I see some of the Intel boxes listed now in froogle (not usually in stock though), but not from Gigabyte, Asus, or anyone else yet. :) I'd be happy if it is before the 21st (my birthday). This Asus board looks like it'll be exceedingly expensive, though.
rrcn - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
Boards featuring the 975X chipset should hit retail stores sometime this week. We'll see...Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
The 975x boards should be shipping in volume by the end of the year. We expect to see a small sampling of boards in the retail channel as early as next week but as always that could change.IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
Right... I am gonna overclock my workstation system by 30%...."I'll overclock my server by 20% when 4 million people depend on it NOT TO CRASH!!"
Gary Key - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
:->I know the overclock testing was a bit much for a "workstation" board but it does give an indication to the quality of the components used on the board.