Our current motherboard test suite includes LAN performance measurements and we will utilize this same test today. All of the boards listed utilize PCI or PCI Express based controllers with the only difference being the supplier of the core logic.
The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the Intel motherboards.
We set up one machine as the server; in this test, an Intel system with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast throughput and is a logical choice for our Gigabit LAN server.
On the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:
Ntttcpr -m 4,0,‹server IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000
On the client side (the motherboard under test), we used the following Command Line:Ntttcps -m 4,0,‹client IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000
At the conclusion of the test, we captured the throughput and CPU utilization figures from the client screen.
No real surprises here as the Killer NIC has a Marvell PHY and utilizes the PCI interface for operation. The throughput rates and CPU utilization of the Killer NIC was very competitive with our other PCI based solutions. However, the NVIDIA nForce 590SLI had the best overall performance numbers in these tests. BigFoot Networks was adamant about the fact they concentrated on lower latency and not improving throughput on the card since most network connections while gaming will not saturate the PCI bus.
Ethernet Outbound Ping Performance
Our final benchmark takes a look at the ping performance of each of our products while playing F.E.A.R. and uploading a 400 MB file to a separate client on another network. Our D-Link DGL-4100 router and the NVIDIA nForce 590SLI include packet prioritization for outbound traffic while gaming. We decided to see how well these solutions stacked up with the Killer NIC that can also prioritize inbound traffic.
All three of our products that advertise packet prioritization are within 3% of each other in the numbers with our D-Link DGE-550T trailing by around 33%. Why a serious gamer would actually want to upload large files while playing online is beyond us but in case you want to then our three solutions provide the capability to do so without an issue. However, be aware that throughput suffered by an average of 44% for the upload file test with our three solutions when compared to the D-Link NIC during testing.
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