NVIDIA nForce 500: Biostar and MSI Aim for the Gold
by Gary Key on June 8, 2006 4:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Disk Controller Performance
The AnandTech iPeak test is 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 our raw files that are 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 I/O 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 I/O operation. In order to make the data more understandable, we report the scores as an average number of I/O 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 I/O operations completed in a second. However, the scores are useful for comparing "pure" performance of the storage controllers in this case.
The performance patterns hold steady across both Multimedia Content I/O and Business I/O, with the ULi and ATI SB450 based SATA controllers providing the a 7% improvement in I/O operations over the NVIDIA SATA controllers. We do see upwards of a 3% performance improvement in the nForce 500 over the nForce4 in our tests. The ULi and ATI IDE controller logic generate particularly excellent results, scoring higher than the NVIDIA SATA controller in the Content Creation test. We did not include the SB600 results as a direct comparison is not available for these test results due to a hard drive change during testing.
The AnandTech iPeak test is 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 our raw files that are 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 I/O 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 I/O operation. In order to make the data more understandable, we report the scores as an average number of I/O 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 I/O operations completed in a second. However, the scores are useful for comparing "pure" performance of the storage controllers in this case.
The performance patterns hold steady across both Multimedia Content I/O and Business I/O, with the ULi and ATI SB450 based SATA controllers providing the a 7% improvement in I/O operations over the NVIDIA SATA controllers. We do see upwards of a 3% performance improvement in the nForce 500 over the nForce4 in our tests. The ULi and ATI IDE controller logic generate particularly excellent results, scoring higher than the NVIDIA SATA controller in the Content Creation test. We did not include the SB600 results as a direct comparison is not available for these test results due to a hard drive change during testing.
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dougcook - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
I bought one of the MSI 570 boards (after reading this review). Everything seemed ok (some things seemed a bit cheap, but nothing really unusual). I got it all installed and running...For one day.
While burning a few CDs, the Northbridge overheated and the machine turned itself off. This happened 2 more times, and then the machine failed to boot at all (even after giving it time to cool off). I wasn't overclocking, and the box had decent ventilation.
This may not happen for everybody, but looking on NewEgg, it seems that this has happened to many other people. The MSI northbridge does not have an adequate heatsink and is likely to burn up. Save the time and get something better. I got the equivalent ABit 570 motherboard, and I've been very happy so far. I hear good things about the ASUS 570 as well.
MacGuffin - Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - link
I don't mean to be a whiny biyatch but where's the follow-up article? Are you guys playing around with Conroe motherboards and ES chips again?;-)JakeBlade - Friday, June 9, 2006 - link
Northbridge fans blow. No pun intended.Visual - Friday, June 9, 2006 - link
in the comparison table on page 2, you have incorectly listed a firewire, 6 usb ports and 2 esata ports for the MSI. it doesn't have those, just 4 usbs. it does have a COM and LPT ports that you need to list though.Gary Key - Friday, June 9, 2006 - link
The right table was inserted this time, thanks!!!! :)A554SS1N - Friday, June 9, 2006 - link
I'm interested in the MSI K9N 550 chipset, but noticed this 570 SLi chipset has the same sized passive cooler; could you tell me what the temperatures for the chipet on load are? (Sometimes SpeedFan might be needed to detect them on some boards?).Gary Key - Friday, June 9, 2006 - link
I will see if we can get an accurate internal chipset temperature for you. The heatsink itself was at 56c under load when measured with a infrared device.A554SS1N - Thursday, June 15, 2006 - link
Thanks, I could get an idea that it may be upto 70C internal from that external heatsink reading.R3MF - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
sorry, not buying.give me the 8x/16x SLI split, as well as 8x slot, two 1x slots, and a couple of PCI slots that i can ignore.
then i'll buy.
segagenesis - Thursday, June 8, 2006 - link
... is its AMD. After reading about Conroe I would hope nVidia does this for the Intel camp now that I'd rather buy one of those than AM2.