NVIDIA nForce4 SLI XE: Enthusiast Features on a Budget

Ethernet Performance

The current motherboard test suite includes LAN performance measurements. All of these boards utilize PCI or PCI Express controllers with the only difference being the supplier of the core logic.

The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We use the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the motherboards.

We set up one machine as the server; in this test, an Intel system with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast and consistent throughput, so this seemed to be a reasonable choice to utilize for our testing.

At the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:

Ntttcpr -m 4 ,0,‹server IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000

On the client side (the motherboard under test), we used the following Command Line:

Ntttcps -m 4 ,0,‹client IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000

At the conclusion of the test, we capture the throughput and CPU utilization figures from the client screen.

The choice of the Marvell 88E1115 10/100/1000Mb/s Ethernet PHY is an excellent move by ECS in this market segment compared to our disappointment with Biostar's choice of a 10/100Mb/s Ethernet solution on a similarly-priced board. The throughput performance of the Marvell 88E1115 is competitive along with very good CPU utilization rates compared to the other solutions.

All standard Ethernet tests were performed with standard frames and the NVIDIA Active Armor suite disabled unless otherwise noted. Gigabit Ethernet supports Jumbo frames as well and provides a further reduction in CPU overhead. We included an additional test scenario in which ActiveArmor and Jumbo frames were enabled on the Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe board via the 6.85 WHQL platform driver set. This is shown for illustrative purposes and demonstrates the favorable impact of this technology.