Abit AB9 Pro: A sneak peek at Intel's new P965 chipset
by Gary Key on July 3, 2006 3:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Audio Encoding Performance
Our last audio test utilizes Nero Digital Audio to extract all 16 tracks and convert them into an MP4 format. We changed the default quality settings to transcoder-ultra, variable bit rate, encoder quality to high, and the AAC profile to LC in order to properly stress our systems.
These results have left us impressed with the performance of the Abit AB9 Pro and the Intel P965 chipset considering our beta BIOS on this board. The Abit board is about 3% faster in this benchmark over the Asus board at the same memory settings and finishes first overall. It is obvious that the CPU/memory subsystem performance of the P965 is excellent considering the high memory latencies.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and ensure we had another CPU crunching utility, we will be reporting our file compression results with the latest beta version of WinRAR that fully supports multi-threaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our series of file compression tests utilizes WinRAR 3.60b5 to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR along with our hard drive being defragmented before each test.
The results speak for themselves with the Intel P965 based system outperforming our previous best scores with the NVIDIA chipset by 14% in the decompression tasks and by 51% over the i975X system at the same settings. We have contacted Asus about the results as we believe this to be a potential BIOS or timing issue and not a true reflection of the i975X chipset based on other results. However, we see the i975X system finishing in front in the grueling compression test (3% faster) over the NVIDIA board, and the Asus board barely trailed the Abit board at equalized memory settings. Once again, we ran the test several times with the same results. The decompression tests are generally more limited by storage system performance whereas the compression tests stress the memory subsystem more in our benchmarks. It will be interesting to see how the Abit AB9 Pro performs once we have a BIOS that allows changes to the memory settings.
Our last audio test utilizes Nero Digital Audio to extract all 16 tracks and convert them into an MP4 format. We changed the default quality settings to transcoder-ultra, variable bit rate, encoder quality to high, and the AAC profile to LC in order to properly stress our systems.
These results have left us impressed with the performance of the Abit AB9 Pro and the Intel P965 chipset considering our beta BIOS on this board. The Abit board is about 3% faster in this benchmark over the Asus board at the same memory settings and finishes first overall. It is obvious that the CPU/memory subsystem performance of the P965 is excellent considering the high memory latencies.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and ensure we had another CPU crunching utility, we will be reporting our file compression results with the latest beta version of WinRAR that fully supports multi-threaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our series of file compression tests utilizes WinRAR 3.60b5 to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR along with our hard drive being defragmented before each test.
The results speak for themselves with the Intel P965 based system outperforming our previous best scores with the NVIDIA chipset by 14% in the decompression tasks and by 51% over the i975X system at the same settings. We have contacted Asus about the results as we believe this to be a potential BIOS or timing issue and not a true reflection of the i975X chipset based on other results. However, we see the i975X system finishing in front in the grueling compression test (3% faster) over the NVIDIA board, and the Asus board barely trailed the Abit board at equalized memory settings. Once again, we ran the test several times with the same results. The decompression tests are generally more limited by storage system performance whereas the compression tests stress the memory subsystem more in our benchmarks. It will be interesting to see how the Abit AB9 Pro performs once we have a BIOS that allows changes to the memory settings.
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JarredWalton - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
Corrected - the retail HSF was used, but it doesn't really matter since we didn't perform thorough overclocking, noise, or temperature testing yet. As mentioned in the article, we're waiting for a new BIOS release with memory timing adjustments before we do that.Heidfirst - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
"This heatsink is part of the Abit Silent OTES technology that includes a heatpipe system and additional passive cooling for the VRM components. This system kept the MCH cool enough that additional chipset voltage was not a factor in our overclocking tests. Our only concern is the lifespan of the fanbut it is very quiet during operation"What fan?
JarredWalton - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
Sorry - that was a fragment from an earlier article that slipped in. No fans. :)ALCX - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
You didn't mention anything about how well this board overclocks! I would think with this 'stable' power and the D805 you would have an excellent opportunity. I'm also thinking getting a mboard like this with a $100 D805 and wait out Conroe supply issue/price until XMAS....ALCX
jones377 - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
Do you have any plans to investigate I/O performance on this chipset? Those Winrar benches suggests these were vastly improved somehow. Memory latency/bandwidth benchmarks would be nice too. All compared to 975x, nvidia and ATI chipsets (for the Intel platform).mine - Saturday, July 8, 2006 - link
yes rightthis is what I am exspecting from anand in near future
if you like the info a little bit earlier
over@ xs
Chadder007 - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
Im thinking about getting a motherboard like this and a Pentium D 805....and then waiting for the prices to go down and performance to go up for the Core 2's after maybe 1 year to upgrade.rqle - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
I prefer a next gen board without the floopy, am still waiting. Keep PATA, well, third party chipset now, but kill off the floopy.Calin - Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - link
I'm all for it too - as long as you can install Windows on any computer without needing a floppy disk driveMacGuffin - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
Or atleast X4 physical connectors, if X16 slots make things cramped for capacitors and other parts on the board. And what's up with this trend of 5/6 expansion slots on high-end motherboards? There was a time when most boards had 7 expansion slots. I guess the elaborate heatpipe mechanisms for 2-chip core logic interfere (eg. M2N-SLI vs. M2N32-SLI) with more expandability.
This is going to be a good year for technology!