ASUS P5NSLI: Core 2 Duo and SLI on a Budget
by Gary Key on August 22, 2006 5:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Application Performance
We decided to test a few real world applications that typically stress the CPU, memory, and storage systems to see if the results from our synthetic memory tests carry over to the desktop. Our tasks include three activities that are common on the desktop. Our first test was to measure the time it takes to shrink the entire Office Space DVD that was extracted with AnyDVD into a single 4.5GB DVD image utilizing Nero Recode 2. Our second test utilizes WinRAR 3.6 and measures the time it takes to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, 10 folders, and has 602MB of data.
Our third test consists of utilizing Exact Audio Copy as the front end for our version 3.98a3 of LAME. We setup EAC for variable bit rate encoding, burst mode for extraction, use external program for compression, and to start the external compressor upon extraction (EAC will read the next track while LAME is working on the previous track, thus removing a potential bottleneck with the optical drive). Our test CD is INXS Greatest Hits, a one time '80s glory masterpiece containing 16 tracks totaling 606MB of songs. The results of our tests are presented in minutes/seconds with lower numbers being better.
Unlike the synthetic results where the NVIDIA 570SLI scored well in the Buffered Sandra benchmarks, SuperPI 2M, and Latency tests this chipset scored at the bottom in the DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 tests. However, the board made an amazing comeback at DDR2-800. The other chipsets performance scaled very little from DDR2-533 to DDR2-800 but the NF570SLI scores improved up to 10% in the same range. It is obvious you will want to run this board at DDR2-800 and therein is the critical issue with this board. The memory voltage limits you to 2.1V which will severely hamper your ability to increase the memory clocks on this chipset. This is a chipset that thrives on high memory bandwidth and scales very well up to its limits, but it will be held back due to the memory voltage options as most memory that runs at DDR2-1000 will need 2.2V minimum with 2.3V being the average.
We decided to test a few real world applications that typically stress the CPU, memory, and storage systems to see if the results from our synthetic memory tests carry over to the desktop. Our tasks include three activities that are common on the desktop. Our first test was to measure the time it takes to shrink the entire Office Space DVD that was extracted with AnyDVD into a single 4.5GB DVD image utilizing Nero Recode 2. Our second test utilizes WinRAR 3.6 and measures the time it takes to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, 10 folders, and has 602MB of data.
Our third test consists of utilizing Exact Audio Copy as the front end for our version 3.98a3 of LAME. We setup EAC for variable bit rate encoding, burst mode for extraction, use external program for compression, and to start the external compressor upon extraction (EAC will read the next track while LAME is working on the previous track, thus removing a potential bottleneck with the optical drive). Our test CD is INXS Greatest Hits, a one time '80s glory masterpiece containing 16 tracks totaling 606MB of songs. The results of our tests are presented in minutes/seconds with lower numbers being better.
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| Click to enlarge |
Unlike the synthetic results where the NVIDIA 570SLI scored well in the Buffered Sandra benchmarks, SuperPI 2M, and Latency tests this chipset scored at the bottom in the DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 tests. However, the board made an amazing comeback at DDR2-800. The other chipsets performance scaled very little from DDR2-533 to DDR2-800 but the NF570SLI scores improved up to 10% in the same range. It is obvious you will want to run this board at DDR2-800 and therein is the critical issue with this board. The memory voltage limits you to 2.1V which will severely hamper your ability to increase the memory clocks on this chipset. This is a chipset that thrives on high memory bandwidth and scales very well up to its limits, but it will be held back due to the memory voltage options as most memory that runs at DDR2-1000 will need 2.2V minimum with 2.3V being the average.
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techkn0w - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
I just got back my mobo from Asus RMA (I sent it in due to memory errors) and it's still giving memory errors. This just sucks and I read some websites that many users are getting errors too. Just thought I should put it out here so you guys know. Ok, back to checking the Asus forums.redpriest_ - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
You mention the 590 SLI chipset, can we get a comparison versus that too?Gary Key - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
The 590SLI Intel is under NDA currently. The 590SLI production boards will be different than the reference board we previewed earlier.
Napyan - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
Sorry, kind of an idiot question but I've read the article 3 times now trying to figure it out. If the board doesn't support DDR2-800 how was it tested on it? Overclocking?Gary Key - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
The chipset officially supports DDR2-533/667 although it will "unofficially" support DDR2-800 if bios support is provided by the supplier. Anything about DDR2-800 is overclocking and to a certain extent so is DDR2-800 although it is a very gray area. I apologize as this statement was in my original text and I removed it during the edit process. I will update the article.
Gary Key - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
Where is the edit button? Anything above DDR2-800......Napyan - Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - link
Thank you for clearing that up for me.JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
It does support DDR2-800. The problem is that it becomes wonderfully unstable if you push things too hard, i.e. 3-3-3 timings.JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
Soon - as soon as we get it.yacoub - Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - link
Funny how your original look at NForce5 (as linked on page 2 of this article) showed 570 was supposed to also include DualNet, yet this board does not. :[