Performance Testing (continued):
HD Tune 2.53:
HD Tune is a quick and easy set of tests designed to analyze the performance of a hard drive in terms of burst rate (MB/s), average transfer rate (MB/s), access time (ms), and CPU utilization (%). Higher is better for the burst rate and average transfer rate, while lower is better for access time and CPU utilization.
You can't do much different in terms of storage controllers, and here we see that the scores are all about the same. I was expecting something above 200MB/s since this is a SATA 3Gbps drive, but the consistency from board to board tells me that there weren't any problems. In addition to offering single drive support, the P5E64 WS offers two drive controllers, each of which is capable of a variety of configurations of RAID. The storage capabilities on this motherboard are very impressive, and should meet the needs of many users without the need for expansion cards.
FutureMark 3DMark06:
We started this section of the review with a FutureMark benchmark, and we're going to end it with one, too. 3DMark06 is a popular package that provides a quick overview of a system's 3D gaming potential, and in addition to the total score, the CPU score was recorded as well. Testing was conducted at a resolution of 1280x1024 (no anti-aliasing / optimal filtering), and higher values are better.
The same hardware gets a decent boost thanks to being installed on the P5E64 WS Evolution, equivalent to just over a 5% improvement over the next best board. 3DMark06 may no longer be the latest and greatest in the Futuremark series of 3D graphics tests, but in the EPU testing portion of the review we will take a closer look at the program that is, 3DMark Vantage.
