Abit AA8XE Review - PAGE 6

SiSoft Sandra

As expected, the nForce 4 system takes the crown when it comes to memory bandwidth, though only by a margin of about 150 MB/s. Next in line we have our AA8XE, and close behind the Gigabyte 925X board. The Soltek 915G is behind with a bit of a larger margin, and the Kloss KL-I915A brings up the distant, distant rear. Obviously, the Kloss KL-I915A is not operating in dual-channel mode.

HDTach

HD Tach SATA performance is a pretty bland comparison. Virtually every motherboard scored identically in burst read, average read, and CPU utilization performance. Notable variations were the burst read performance of the Gigabyte 925X board, as well as the slightly higher CPU usage of the Kloss KL-I915A.

There are some greater, and hence more interesting, variations when it comes to IDE performance. Burst read shows a delta of 8.2 MB/s, with the Gigabyte 925X board taking the lead at 94.9, and the AA8XE bringing up the rear at 86.7 MB/s. Fortunately, average read performance of the AA8XE is on par with the nForce 4 and Kloss systems, though the Soltek 915G and Gigabyte 925X are head by ~8 MB/s. It's obvious that Gigabyte has done some tuning to their IDE and SATA subsystems, as the Gigabyte 925X board has consistently shown above-average performance. Unfortunately, the Abit AA8XE has shown slightly below-average performance in these departments.

The tables turn (at least half-way) for the AA8XE when it comes to USB 2.0 performance. All motherboards, with the exception of the Kloss KL-I915A system, score ~34.5 MB/s for average read, though the AA8XE manages to do it at the second-lowest CPU utilization level. The nForce 4 system takes the cake with its 1.0%, while the AA8XE is next at 7.0%.

NTTCP

Next up is NTTCP testing, which doesn't look too bright for the AA8XE either. While CPU utilization stays between 22% and 25% for every board but the Kloss KL-I915A, both the Soltek 915G and Abit AA8XE show below-average network throughput performance. While the nForce 4, Kloss KL-I915A, and Gigabyte 925X all push between ~928 and ~960 Mbits/s, the Soltek 915G and Abit AA8XE managed only ~700 Mbits/s. From what I understand, the Gigabit Ethernet implementation on the latter two boards is latched onto the PCI bus, as opposed to integrated directly into the chipset, hence explaining its poorer performance. I don't have an explanation for the Kloss's relatively poor CPU utilization scores.