Belkin 5-Port Gigabit Switch F5D5141-5 - Performance

Test were performed on four machines:

1. ABIT IC7-MAX3, Intel Pentium IV 2.4GHz @ 3.3GHz, 1GB RAM, 10,000 RPM hard drive with 8MB cache.
   
   
2. ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe, AMD Athlon XP 1733MHz @ 2250MHz, 1GB RAM, 7200 RPM hard drive with 2MB cache.
   
   
3. ASUS P4R800-V Deluxe, Intel Pentium IV 3.0GHz @ 3.25GHz, 1GB RAM, 7200 RPM hard drive with 8MB cache.
   
   
4. ASUS L5GA, Intel Pentium IV 2.6GHz, 512MB RAM, 4200 RPM hard drive with 2MB cache.

All data transfers originated from machine #1 since it had the fastest network connection in preliminary tests. The machines were connected to the Belkin 5-Port Switch with Category 6 patch cables. The ASUS P4R800-V Deluxe is advertised as having Gigabit Ethernet capability, but it does not. As mentioned above, connecting the ASUS P4R800-V to a Gigabit connection would cause it to not boot. Interestingly enough, the ATI 9100 IGP natively does not have Gigabit Ethernet.  ASUS implemented a non-PCI based solution to attempt to give the machine Gigabit capability, and it did not work. Therefore the ASUS P4R800-V was only connected 100Mbps and used as the baseline system. 

SiSoft Sandra 2005

Sandra 2005 uses large packets to measure network performance. It does not disclose the total amount of data transferred, but it is assumed to be relatively small considering how fast the test concludes. The first thing that stands out is that 1000Mbps was not achieved on the systems advertising the ability. This is due to the underlying system's hardware architecture; no consumer level system can handle a gigabit of data pumped into the system. This becomes more evident on the large file transfer test. Also, as can be observed on the 100Mbps system, typical network transfer speeds are about 80 to 90 percent of the rated speed. 

Next: Large File Transfer >>
 

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