SouthBridge Battle - P55, SB750, SB850, NFORCE

Hello. I'd written a review on SB performance for a couple of platforms.
Empirical group is as followings:
1. INTEL P55 PCH
2. AMD SB750
3. AMD SB850
4. NVIDIA NFORCE 750a MCP

Note that for controlling experiments, the ideal is to control "all variables" other than empirical variables; but it's impossible since INTEL and AMD platform are essentially different at their CPU. So variable control of this review is not perfect. Please excuse of that.


Test system 1: INTEL P55 PCH
- INTEL Core i5 750
- EVGA P55 FTW
- GeIL EVO ONE PC3-12800 CL7 2GB x 2
- INTEL X25-M G2 80GB SSD

Test system 2: AMD SB750 / AMD SB850 / NVIDIA NFORCE
- AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
- MSI 790FX-GD70 / ASUS CROSSHAIR IV FORMULA / ASUS M4N75TD
- G.SKILL RIP JAWS RH PC3-16000 CL9 2GB x 2
- INTEL X25-M G2 80GB SSD

All power-saving technologies are disabled.
(C-STATE & C1E are known for that they generally harm Lynnfield platform's SB performance)


Crystal Disk Mark test

Raw data for INTEL P55 PCH
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...5959d5e27d.jpg

Raw data for AMD SB750
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...fa092fcd43.jpg

Raw data for AMD SB850
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...291be6721e.jpg

Raw data for NVIDIA NFORCE 750 MCP
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...cbfa76a960.jpg

Overall Analysis: Read
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...b6887e8867.jpg

Except for 4K Que-Depth 32, results among SBs are nearly flatted. For 4K-QD32, NFORCE leads others and P55-SB850 follow in order.

Overall Analysis: Write
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...c9ad15ecb8.jpg

Though sequential and 512K performance are nearly flatted, 4K performance shows some difference among SBs - Again, NFORCE is the best and P55 & SB850 shows nearly identical performance. SB750 is the worst but difference with NFORCE is less then 20%.

Then, let's move on HD Tune Benchmark.


HD Tune test

Raw data for INTEL P55 PCH
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...b1d1ae7c2e.jpg

Raw data for AMD SB750
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...101a12562b.jpg

Raw data for AMD SB850
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...4eb1687e6b.jpg

Raw data for NVIDIA NFORCE 750 MCP
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...2fc1448035.jpg

Overall Analysis
http://image.playwares.com/bbs/data/...3b87aaa206.jpg

In case of HD Tune, P55 leads but difference with 2nd runner is ignorable. In grand view, P55-SB850-NFORCE are nearly identical at HD Tune performance. Only SB750 is left behind those three. But again, relative difference is less than 10% - Hardly realizable.


So my conclusion is: today's SBs are nearly similar at their single SSD performance (it may differ at SSD Raid). If you're worrying about buying some contemporary platform that seems to lag your SSD's performance, stop worrying. Just buy it.

Thanks for reading (especially for reading my poor English).

(Original version of this review is: http://udteam.tistory.com/207
But i'm sure that you cannot understand since it was written in Korean :D)

Thanks alot for the work - probably something most people would take for granted or not even consider when making a purchase but its good to have some solid data!

thx! all looks the same to me though :D
if i could choose id take the cheaper one lol :D

Can someone explain why on all chipsets the <10G area appears herky jerky? After all these are SSDs. Is this an SSD controller issue OR expected behavior?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by saaya

thx! all looks the same to me though :D
if i could choose id take the cheaper one lol :D

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Hey, your sig is impressive :D

RacingTurtle, seeya, chawks2 - thanks for reading :)

Many thanks for your work. Great insight in this article.