Performance Tests

nForce 790I SLI chipset is the first Nvidia chipset where they introduced a memory controller with DDR3 SDRAM support. Nvidia points out numerous performance improving technologies in their marketing materials. Among them are improved intellectual algorithms for preliminary sampling, dynamically adjustable data processing tract with lower latency and independent arbitrage of memory access operations.  That is why analysis of nForce 790i SLI based mainboards’ practical performance is of extreme interest to us.

Within this article we compared the performance of our ASUS Striker II NSE against that of their newest mainboard on Intel chipset – P5E3 Premium. As you remember, ASUS P5E3 Premium is based on Intel X48 Express, although it is not that important because all Intel chipsets starting from P35 Express use the same memory controller with minimal changes.

As a result, our testbeds were built with the following hardware components:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 ((LGA775, 3.16GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2, Wolfdale).
• Mainboards:
  • ASUS P5E3 Premium (LGA775, Intel X48, DDR3 SDRAM);
  • ASUS Striker II NSE (LGA775, nForce 790i SLI, DDR3 SDRAM).
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTS 512MB (PCI Express x16 2.0).
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (SATA150).
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x86 SP1

Performance in Nominal Mode

First series of tests was performed with the CPU running in its nominal mode at 3.16GHz frequency set as 9.5 x 333MHz. DDR3 SDRAM worked at 1333MHz with timings set manually to 6-6-6-18-1T. All other memory subsystem and chipset settings were left at Auto.

As usual, we first of all ran some synthetic benchmarks for the memory subsystem speed. This particular parameter is extremely important for mainboards for Intel platform. For our measurements we used Lavalys Everest 4.50:

According to all practical characteristics measured by Everest benchmark, nForce 790i SLI based mainboard is the winner here. However, do not get too excited just yet, as the results may be gravely affected by Nvidia’s preliminary sampling algorithms that can very well predict sequential reads and writes. In other words, do not be surprised if the results in real applications will be different.

As we have expected, in real applications and complex benchmarks the picture is completely different. The mainboard on Intel X48 Express outperforms ASUS Striker II NSE on Nvidia nForce 790i SLI in most tests. So, we can conclude that Nvidia didn’t in fact manage to design a DDR3 memory controller as efficient as the one used in Intel chipsets of the 3^rd and 4^th series. However, the performance difference we see here is not that dramatic – only 1-2%, which shouldn’t be critical for real systems.

However, it is still too early to draw any final conclusions. Let’s checked out our benchmarks results in overclocked mode.