Intel Core Duo: AOpen i975Xa-YDG to the Rescue
by Gary Key on May 4, 2006 8:00 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 based SATA controller providing the a 12% improvement in I/O operations over the Intel and JMicron SATA controllers. The ULi IDE controller logic continues to be one of the best IDE solutions, posting scores that are higher than the Intel SATA controller and over 13% better than the Intel and ITE IDE controller.
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Myrandex - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Believe it or not, people can run 64bit apps for other reaons from 4GB memory...such as increased performance? I knwo not many apps right now show increased perofrmance with 64bit mode, but some do and I believe this will go up when more developers start programing for it with more intensity and all that.Jason
peternelson - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
For me this is the showstopper, and the reason I much prefer Turion at present.Core Solo/ Core Duo are 32 bit only. That makes them quite rarely disadvantaged - even the new Celerons can do 64 bit EM64T.
This board would be of much more interest if the review said "THIS BOARD IS MEROM-READY". As it doesn't, I assume it isn't. The review here might have highlighted this important issue which will be crucial deciding factor for some potential purchasers, especially considering the price.
I see Conroe and Merom systems quickly filling the market need this board is targetted at.
Gary Key - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
Only disadvantaged for those utilizing 64-bit applications and operation systems, but for 95% of the marketplace they are fine. Not that I do not think it is an issue, but one that is way overblown in today's marketplace.
Probably in a couple of years it will be completely different but for now, 32-bit applications are still king of the hill (market share wise). This upsets me as I have to believe the entire migration path should have been completed by next year but the foot dragging between Microsoft and Intel negated AMD's advantage in this area for far too long. With that said, Merom takes care of the Yonah 64-bit issue in the mobile sector for Intel in a couple of months. It will be very interesting to see how it compares to Turion 64 X2, it will be good for all of us to have choices in the mobile sector.
We cannot quote on whether this board is Merom approved or not until qualification testing is complete. Will a Merom T7400 work in this board with the bios 1.3b, yes it will, and the initial results show a great deal of improvement over Yonah in certain benchmarks. Will Merom be fully supported by Intel and AOpen on this board, we do not know yet. AOpen is waiting a production spin of Merom before trying to the qualify it on this board and even then Intel might force everyone to Crestline for official support. We are still trying to figure out if Merom is going to work with 945GM as stated a couple of months ago. The entire situation is so up in the air right now that any statement has the potential to be wrong so being quiet is the best possible option. :)
johnsonx - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
from the spring idf article on AT:Now that may not be a 100% promise, but until Merom is actually released, there's no way to be 100% certain any given board will work with it.
Viditor - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
You mean 4GB or greater...at 4GB, a 32bit processor will be using PAE already.
And yes, I find that 4GB is a great help on a number of my apps...
Questar - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Mobile/SFF apps?Name them.
Viditor - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Photoshop CS2, Premiere Pro, and Mental Ray...
Questar - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
I'm a heavy Premiere user, and I can tell you it's a 32 bit app.Chadder007 - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
You can still run it under a 64 bit OS and have access to the 4gb or greater amount of ram.defter - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
No you can't. If you have an 32bit software then it can only address 4GB of memory.