System Specs & Subsystem Testing

Hardware
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66GHz)
- Intel Pentium D 950 (3.40GHz)

 

- 2GB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 (CAS4)

 

- ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (Intel 975X)
- Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 (Intel P965 Express)
- Gigabyte G1975X (Intel 975X)

 

- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)

 

- Seagate 250GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)

 

- Gigabyte Radeon X1900XTX (512MB)

 

Software
- Microsoft Windows XP Pro 32bit (SP2)
- ATI Catalyst (6.6)
- Intel System Drivers (7.2.2)

 

As you can see, the single Seagate SATAII drive is able to operate at full speed in each of the four different configurations. The same was found with the USB 2.0 hard drive performance.

Moving on to the 3Dmark2003 audio test, here we see the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe drop 21% frame rate performance with audio enabled. The Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 on the other hand saw just a 9% performance hit with audio enabled. The Gigabyte board used the Realtek ALC888DD chip where as ASUS went with the Realtek ALC882M chip.

While the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe was slightly slower with audio enabled, it appeared to be significantly faster with audio disabled.

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