ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2: ULi Dual x16 SLI
by Gary Key on March 2, 2006 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Firewire and USB Performance
After looking at many options for Firewire and USB testing, we finally determined that an external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 hard disk would be a sensible way to look at USB and Firewire throughput.
Our first efforts at testing with an IDE or SATA drive as the "server" yielded very inconsistent results, since Windows XP sets up cache schemes to improve performance. Finally, we decided to try a RAM disk as our "server", since memory removed almost all overhead from the serving end. We also managed to turn off disk caching on the USB and Firewire side by setting up the drives for "quick disconnect" and our results were then consistent over many test runs.
We used 1GB of fast 2-2-2-5 system memory set up as a 450MB RAM disk and 550MB of system memory. Our standard file is the SPECviewPerf install file, which measures 432,533,504 bytes (412.4961MB). After copying this file to our RAM disk, we measured the time for writing from the RAM disk to our external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, or Firewire 800 drive using our Windows bases timing program. The copy times in seconds were then converted into Megabits per second (Mb) to provide a convenient means of comparing throughput. Higher Rates therefore mean better performance in this particular test.
The ASRock board offers a TI based IEEE 1394 Firewire option with performance equal to that of other TI solutions. The USB 2.0 performance is consistent with other ULi based controllers and continues to lag behind the NVIDIA nForce4 chipset solutions in throughput.
After looking at many options for Firewire and USB testing, we finally determined that an external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 hard disk would be a sensible way to look at USB and Firewire throughput.
Our first efforts at testing with an IDE or SATA drive as the "server" yielded very inconsistent results, since Windows XP sets up cache schemes to improve performance. Finally, we decided to try a RAM disk as our "server", since memory removed almost all overhead from the serving end. We also managed to turn off disk caching on the USB and Firewire side by setting up the drives for "quick disconnect" and our results were then consistent over many test runs.
We used 1GB of fast 2-2-2-5 system memory set up as a 450MB RAM disk and 550MB of system memory. Our standard file is the SPECviewPerf install file, which measures 432,533,504 bytes (412.4961MB). After copying this file to our RAM disk, we measured the time for writing from the RAM disk to our external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, or Firewire 800 drive using our Windows bases timing program. The copy times in seconds were then converted into Megabits per second (Mb) to provide a convenient means of comparing throughput. Higher Rates therefore mean better performance in this particular test.
The ASRock board offers a TI based IEEE 1394 Firewire option with performance equal to that of other TI solutions. The USB 2.0 performance is consistent with other ULi based controllers and continues to lag behind the NVIDIA nForce4 chipset solutions in throughput.
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Zoomer - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
This board would cannabilize sales of the premium SLI32 and xfire board that Asus sells for $150 IF it included voltage settings up to 2v vCore, 3.2v vMem, etc.They would be stupid to do it. These people will pay the $150 anyway if they don't have an easy (cheap) alternative. For the rest of us, we can get busy with a 2B pencil, solders or conductive ink. ;) And forgo the warranty on it, so if it goes boom in a year's time, you're on your own.
Nice strategy. Would AT leak the beta bios for comparison's sake? (We'll smuggle it to xs or ocwb....:D)
poohbear - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
and for the record the dualsata2 is a very stable mobo @ stock settings, i have to give credit where it's due, but for overclocking this company's products shouldnt even be considered.sandorski - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
It kinda sucks Nvidia bought out ULI, they were very innovative and really filled niche markets very well. Then again, perhaps Nvidia will let them continue doing interesting things there?Cygni - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
Hard to argue with that... looks like ASRock/ULi has another mega seller on their hand with this baby. But I cant help but wish it had an AGP slot thrown in between the two PCI-Ex lanes, to allow an upgrade path. Thats probably the primary reason the ULi 1695 boards have been selling so well.The IDE and SATA performance numbers are really striking in contrast to Nvidia's. I hope we see the inclusion of ULi's storage controller in future Nvidia chipsets.
All for $85... awesome.
Furen - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
If it had an AGP slot then it would have to use ULi's AGP tunnel + the 1697 instead of the 1695 + 1697, which would mean that it'd only have 16 PCI-e lanes for graphics. I suppose most of us wouldn't mind going for two 8x slots while in SLI but then most of us wouldn't really want SLI to begin with.JackPack - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
Quality doesn't seem to be bad either. Panasonic and UCC caps in there.