NVIDIA nForce4 SLI XE: Enthusiast Features on a Budget
by Gary Key on March 23, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
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. 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 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 five 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.
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. 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 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 five 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.
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blackmetalegg - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
"Unfortunately, we ran into an issue with this process as the clear CMOS process sometimes required the removal of the battery for the jumper process to work. This process is not acceptable, considering how well other BIOS recovery systems work."Sounds a lot like the reviewer is too lazy to use his finger to release the battery from its holder.
Gary Key - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
Certainly not lazy as I removed the battery at least a dozen times during testing. The fact remains that having to remove the battery is not an acceptable option when the clear CMOS jumper does not work over 60% of the time because the bios self recovery routine fails 85% of the time when the memory settings are extended past the board's ability to boot properly. This only occurred a couple of times when setting the FSB past the board's limit.
kmmatney - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
I hate removing the battery. I broke the flimsy battery clip off of one motherboard doing this, and had to solder new wires in place and dangle a new battery from it. Removing the battery for a BIOS clear is not good.cornfedone - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Obviously this mobo wasn't tested before release or it wouldn't have all the problems it has.phillock - Thursday, February 1, 2018 - link
Sounds a lot like the reviewer is too lazy to use his finger to release the battery from its holder.https://jumjex.bandcamp.com/releases
Puddleglum - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Not sure if it's worth fixing or not, but the Content Creation (Disk Controller Performance) chart shows the Biostar TForce4 in red, mistaken as the board being tested.smut - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Is this going to be an Intel only board?Gary Key - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Yes. The upcoming NVIDIA nForce 500 launch will address chipset updates to the AMD product family.
bldckstark - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
No, upon release the board will come with alternate CPU sockets included in the box. You got an AMD? Just pop out the Intel socket and plug in the AMD socket. Gat a VIA, Cyrix, or TI85 chip? Just break the chosen socket out of the plastic holders like a model car part.Oh, wait, I guess you want to know if ECS is going to make an AMD board. Duh.
Gary Key - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Our next article will have a high resolution picture of the capacitors and other items of importance in a pop-up window. I am sure the capacitors utilized on this board will be of interest to you. ;->