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. To refresh your memory, 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 difference 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.

iPeak Business Winstone Hard Disk I/O

iPeak Multimedia Content Creation Hard Disk I/O

It is interesting that the performance patterns hold steady across both Multimedia Content IO and Business IO, with the on-board NVIDIA nForce4 SATA 2 still providing the fastest IO, followed closely by the Intel ICH7R and Silicon Image 3132 SATA 2 controllers.

SLI Gaming Performance & Overclocking Performance Firewire and USB Performance
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  • Wesley Fink - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link

    Those accustomed to looking at AMD Athlon64 Performance Scores are used to seeing numbers almost the same across motherboards because the memory controller is on the CPU. The Intel Memory Controller is in the chipset and performance varies much more depending on the chipset and the quality of the motherboard design.

    That is one reason we often test Latency in Intel MB tests. If you look at the Latency test results in this review you will see a fairly wide variation across the tested chipsets and motherboards for the Intel CPU. Athlon64 Latency tests would all be virtually the same with the memory controller a part of the processor.
  • toyota - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link

    how can motherboards make that much difference in gaming?? in the Doom3 benchmarks they range from 63 to 95 fps! i dont understand benchmarks like that and nobody else ever makes a comment. am i missing something?
  • Gary Key - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link

    Good Day.....

    I revised the article statement about the Doom3 scores. I left it out on the final copy by mistake. We are still investigating the differences as an upcoming article from Randi on another nF4 Intel SLI board has scores higher than the numbers I have reported by a fair margin again. In fact, I will be testing the Abit board once it arrives with an disk image from my previous tests.

    Due to the memory controller not being on the CPU (current Athlon64 family design) the Intel based motherboard design makes a great deal of difference not only from a chipset choice but also from how well a board manufacturer designs and implements the supporting components and bios.

    Thank you.
  • xsilver - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link

    the 63fps is on another chipset, the chipset affects memory, hdd performance directly and everything else indirectly..
    the 95fps actually looks like an anomaly -- and AT member will have to confirm that (SLI setup in the NI8?)

    so in fact the numbers are actually 75.3-79.4fps which is an acceptable range for the same chipset
    many people forget the mobo is the heart of the system, it pays to get a good one :)
  • TransientBen - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link

    Mixing philosophy, classical literature and computer hardware reviews? Gotta love it. Though it's difficult to not get caught up in the philosophy and then question, "Is it worth $200 for a motherboard or a plane ticket to a new place?"

    There is so little time, afterall.

    Always been a big Asus fan. Have one of the first (original slot a) Athlon boards still up and running after all these years - rock solid - and, more recently, a Z33A laptop that's blown me away with it's quality. I look forward to the inclusion of many of these features on future AMD boards.
  • noac - Saturday, November 12, 2005 - link

    Hi, Im reading my manual and it says:

    DIMM_A1 (yellow), DIMM_A2 (black), DIMM_B1 (yellow), DIMM_B2 (black).

    Channel A = DIMM_A1 and DIMM_A2
    Channel B = DIMM_B1 and DIMM_B2

    For dual-channel configuration, the total size of memory module(s) intalled per channel must be the same (DIMM_A1 + DIMM_A2, DIMM_B1 + DIMM_B2).

    Anandtech:
    Asus did an excellent job with the color coordination of the various peripheral slots and connectors. The DIMM module slots' color coordination is correct for dual channel setup.

    My question which way is it? Im I getting the manual wrong? How to I palce my two mems for dualchannel?
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    Email me if you have any issues or further questions please.
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    Sorry about the late reply...

    You place the memory in the two yellow DIMM slots for dual channel.
  • Gary Key - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link

    quote:

    Mixing philosophy, classical literature and computer hardware reviews? Gotta love it. Though it's difficult to not get caught up in the philosophy and then question, "Is it worth $200 for a motherboard or a plane ticket to a new place?"


    Depends on the time and place in my book. :-> However, considering where I could go for $200 at this point in time I will take the board. I also believe Dickens is queued up for the next article.

    I had been concerned about Asus the past couple of releases as I honestly thought Intel had passed them on the high end side (useable features, stability, throw in Abit for performance) with their 925x and 955x boards until this gem landed on my doorstep.

    I think the AMD version of this board should be equally adept and we should find out shortly. ;->
  • xsilver - Thursday, October 27, 2005 - link

    I can see asus and the other mobo companies making this refresh right after/before christmas and then obviously another refresh for M2 socket

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