SiSoft Sandra 2010a Results
The performance of motherboards in traditional CPU workloads rarely vary by a few percentage points, mainly due to the memory controller being integrated onto the CPU by both AMD and Intel. I used SiSoft to check for consistency here, as well as use the File System benchmark to get a good idea where we sit on SATA performance.
Just as expected, the CPU performs the same with the two boards. Memory bandwidth is a bit off on the 890GX, but this will likely be improved upon with further BIOS optimizations as the board matures. Now onto the interesting stuff.
This is grim. The SB750, while improved from the previous SB600, is still not a fire breather when it comes to I/O performance. The Intel and NVIDIA SATA controllers are often a lot faster, and this new SATA 6G cannot adequately compete with the older SATA 2 controller in the SB750. I do not know if this is a question of drivers. I switched over to the standard MS AHCI 1.0 driver, and performance actually decreased from what we saw with the AMD AHCI driver.
This is still a very new board, and performance may improve with later BIOS and driver revisions. Still, it is more than a bit disappointing to see such a decrease in overall performance from what is supposed to be the hot new SATA 6G controller. Also, as mentioned, I do not have a SATA 6G native storage device to test out at this time. Results could change dramatically, but it still is not a great development that SATA 2 performance is lower with the newer product.
