ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2: Sneak Peek

File Compression Performance

In order to save space on our hard drives and ensure we have another CPU crunching utility, we will be reporting our file compression results with the latest version of WinRAR that fully supports multi-treaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our series of file compression tests utilizes WinRAR 3.62 to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR and our hard drive is defragmented before each test.


In this test that stresses overall memory latencies and CPU/Memory throughput we see the ASRock configurations finishing last. The nature of file compression is such that memory is accessed almost constantly in a very random fashion, so page misses requiring additional time as memory banks are swapped is common. As we have already seen in the memory benchmarks, our VIA PT880 chipset is at a disadvantage when it comes to memory throughput with the Core 2 Duo processors which perform extremely well with low latencies and high bandwidth. We tried several combinations of memory modules and timings in an attempt to improve performance, all to no avail. As the saying goes, "It is what it is", and in this case that means slow.

Quick Thoughts

ASRock is one of those companies that most people either love or hate. A lot of people wouldn't even consider purchasing a budget motherboard, choosing to live by the old adage "you get what you pay for". If the CPU is the brain of a computer, the motherboard is the central nervous system. Putting a high-performance processor into a budget motherboard just to save a few dollars really wouldn't make sense to most enthusiasts. However, the days of Core 2 Duo processors costing a couple hundred dollars or more are past, with CPUs like the E4300 starting at just over $100. If you're looking to upgrade to a Core 2 Duo platform without spending a lot of money, the ASRock 4CoreDual boards are some of the least expensive and best ways of accomplishing that task.

Then again, what's the point of upgrading to Core 2 Duo if you're going to run it in a motherboard that can impact performance by 10% or more? Considering that the ASRock motherboards aren't the greatest overclockers, you end up eliminating one of the major benefits of Intel's Core 2 Duo processors. If you're just looking for basic dual core performance without breaking the bank, AMD's socket AM2 platform is certainly worth consideration as well. Quite a few of the Athlon X2 processors can be had for under $100, so you might even want to put a bit more money into the motherboard to get some additional features and ASRock has solutions for this sector also. Certainly, if you're already going to purchase a new PCI Express graphics card and DDR2 memory, there are plenty of other options to consider when building a system.

What about users who already have the older ASRock motherboard, the 4CoreDual-VSTA? Performance wise, there's virtually no difference between that motherboard and the new 4CoreDual-SATA2. The only reason to consider upgrading to the newer board is if you are having compatibility issues with your SATA 3.0Gbps drives and the VSTA board. That's hardly surprising, considering that SATA is a point-to-point protocol and even the older, "slower" SATA 1.5Gbps (150MB/s) is still capable of transferring for more data per second than any modern hard drive can sustain. The newer standard really only improves burst transfer rates, and for typical usage scenarios it really doesn't matter. That's one of the reasons Western Digital's Raptor drives still manage to get by using 1.5Gbps connections. If it's good enough for what is arguably the fastest desktop hard drive, we're not going to lose any sleep over the matter.


None of this means that the ASRock boards are bad, however. The ability to run the latest quad core Intel processors on an inexpensive motherboard could certainly prove useful for applications that are primarily bottlenecked by the CPU. Core 2 Quad processors are probably too expensive for most people to consider using one in a $70 motherboard right now, but when the Q6600 drops to under $260 shortly it becomes a bit more feasible. Not everyone needs high-performance graphics, so the ability to use pretty much any graphics card made since Y2K means that's one less component to worry about purchasing. The question of memory is a bit less clear, as even with DDR2 the ASRock board already performs a little slower than most boards that only cost a little bit more, and using DDR memory reduces performance even further.

Still, if you're one of those users running something like an older Pentium 4 or Athlon XP DDR system and you've been wanting to upgrade to something faster on the cheap, $170 will get you a Core 2 Duo E4300 processor and an ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 motherboard. You might miss out on the overclocking potential of the CPU, even some base performance if you keep all of your other old parts, but in computationally intensive tasks even a "slow Core 2 Duo" could provide a serious performance boost.


Therefore, we award the AnandTech Bronze Award to the ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2. This particular ASRock motherboard is one of the best examples of an ultra-value Intel product that delivers what it promises; very solid performance and stability for a value inspired product. The main attraction of this motherboard is undoubtedly its price and feature set, and if that's your primary consideration it will not disappoint you.