Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6: An early look at X38
by Gary Key on September 4, 2007 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Media Encoding Performance
We are utilizing Nero Recode 2 and Sony Vegas 7.0e for our video encoding tests. The scores reported include the full encoding process and are represented in seconds, with lower numbers indicating better performance.
Our first series of tests is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD to rip the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fire up Nero Recode 2, select our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and perform a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We leave all options on their defaults except we uncheck the advanced analysis option.
We find in this CPU and disk intensive test that both boards score equally, which is not surprising since both boards utilize the same ICH9R Southbridge and considering the early nature of Gigabyte board.
Our Sony Vegas 7.0e test converts several of our summer vacation files into one plasma screen pleasing 1080/24P format with a 5.1 audio stream. We ensure our quality settings are set to their highest levels and then let the horses loose.
In a test that really stresses the CPU and memory subsystem, we see the Gigabyte board is about 3% faster at stock and overclocked speeds than the abit board.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and provide another CPU crunching utility, we utilize WinRAR 3.70 to perform some compression tests. WinRAR now fully supports multithreaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our test folder contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR and our hard drive is defragmented before each test.
Once again we see the early X38 engineering sample from Gigabyte performing well in a test that stresses overall memory latencies and CPU/Memory throughput. However, this is one of our application benchmarks where we thought the X38 would perform measurably better against the P35. The nature of file compression is such that memory is accessed almost constantly in a very random fashion, so page misses requiring additional time as memory banks are swapped is common. The Gigabyte board is 2% quicker at stock and about 1% faster when overclocked than the abit board. This indicates slightly better memory/CPU throughput capabilities, but it's not at the level we expected - at least not yet.
Rendering Performance
We are using the Cinebench 10 benchmark as it tends to heavily stress the CPU subsystem while performing graphics modeling and rendering. Cinebench 10 features two different benchmarks with one test utilizing a single core and the second test showcasing the power of multiple cores in rendering the benchmark image. We utilize the standard multi-core benchmark and default settings.
Once again we see the X38 equipped board finishing ahead of the P35 board, although the differences are less than a percent.
We are utilizing Nero Recode 2 and Sony Vegas 7.0e for our video encoding tests. The scores reported include the full encoding process and are represented in seconds, with lower numbers indicating better performance.
Our first series of tests is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD to rip the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fire up Nero Recode 2, select our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and perform a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We leave all options on their defaults except we uncheck the advanced analysis option.
We find in this CPU and disk intensive test that both boards score equally, which is not surprising since both boards utilize the same ICH9R Southbridge and considering the early nature of Gigabyte board.
Our Sony Vegas 7.0e test converts several of our summer vacation files into one plasma screen pleasing 1080/24P format with a 5.1 audio stream. We ensure our quality settings are set to their highest levels and then let the horses loose.
In a test that really stresses the CPU and memory subsystem, we see the Gigabyte board is about 3% faster at stock and overclocked speeds than the abit board.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and provide another CPU crunching utility, we utilize WinRAR 3.70 to perform some compression tests. WinRAR now fully supports multithreaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our test folder contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR and our hard drive is defragmented before each test.
Once again we see the early X38 engineering sample from Gigabyte performing well in a test that stresses overall memory latencies and CPU/Memory throughput. However, this is one of our application benchmarks where we thought the X38 would perform measurably better against the P35. The nature of file compression is such that memory is accessed almost constantly in a very random fashion, so page misses requiring additional time as memory banks are swapped is common. The Gigabyte board is 2% quicker at stock and about 1% faster when overclocked than the abit board. This indicates slightly better memory/CPU throughput capabilities, but it's not at the level we expected - at least not yet.
Rendering Performance
We are using the Cinebench 10 benchmark as it tends to heavily stress the CPU subsystem while performing graphics modeling and rendering. Cinebench 10 features two different benchmarks with one test utilizing a single core and the second test showcasing the power of multiple cores in rendering the benchmark image. We utilize the standard multi-core benchmark and default settings.
Once again we see the X38 equipped board finishing ahead of the P35 board, although the differences are less than a percent.
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RamarC - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
THG is crap now. I'm surprised they haven't started 'reviewing' calculators (TI-35X, worth the extra $5?) or some other nonsense.Gamewise, I hope AT replaces HL2 with Bioshock to keep up-to-date. (Practically every video card can break 100fps on HL2.)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Working on Bioshock, although I don't know that I'll drop HL2. Completely different engines, people, even if they're both playable via Steam. Bioshock is Unreal Engine 3, remember, and I think we'll keep using Lost Coast until Episode 2 comes out. Bioshock unfortunately requires the use of FRAPS - or fortunately depending on your perspective? Anyway, it runs surprisingly well at max details and high resolutions... it's not a game that needs 100+ FPS by any stretch. I've played through some of it on an X1900 XT at 2560x1600 and found it to be acceptable, for example.I will be using Bioshock in future laptop articles for sure, as well as any system reviews. I would assume Gary and others will use it as well.
Dismalis - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
I just REALLY hope that Gigabyte will release an X38 combo model with support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory... Just like GA-P35C-DS3R.Do you think that's going to happen?
mostlyprudent - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Gary,When you said "we found the stability, performance, and compatibility of this early engineering sample to be better than several retails boards we are currently testing" were you refering to other X38 boards, or P35 boards, or what?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Retail non-X38 boards. Probably some of the uATX stuff he's testing, as well as P35, judging by what else he's working on.Vidmar - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
From the pictures we saw from Computex this board had an eSata connector on the back, but now I don't see one. Instead it looks like two firefire ports are there.I do love that they have six USB connectors on the back. It's the one feature that I appreciate on my LanParty nF4 Ultra-D.
I would also love to see a direct comparison between the DDR2 and the DDR3 (GA-X38T-DQ6) version of this board. I wonder if the x38 would make a difference in that area.
Thanks for the preview.
Jodiuh - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Actually, I think there's 8 USB ports! It's good to see my recent purchase of Abit IP35 Pro will serve my needs well into 2008 too. :D How much longer will we wait for the P35 roundup?strikeback03 - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Looks to me like there are 4 USB, 4 eSata, 2 RJ-45 and 2 Firewire.Vidmar - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Hmmm could be now that you mention it. I'm not sure that I could ever find a need for 4 eSata connections.Here is what the board looked like back at Computex:
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...">http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...
Quite a few changes it seems. Gary/Jarred care to enlighten us as to which layout we can expect to see in retail?
Missing Ghost - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
I think you're right.