Gigabit Ethernet

Let’s see how fast the Gigabit network controllers from Marvell will work. We will compare their performance against the integrated network controller of the NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra chipset and against the PCI network controller – Marvell 88E8001 installed onto DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D. We will use the NTttcp utility from Microsoft Windows NT DDR as a measuring tool. NVIDIA Firewall 2.0 was disabled for this test.

The first surprise awaits us when we try to compare the performance of the Marvell 88E8001 PCI controller on both mainboards. Despite the use of the same microchip on both DFI mainboards, the results are much better on DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D. The only logical explanation of this phenomenon would be the slower PCI bus implemented in the ATI chipset. As a result, the bandwidth-hungry Gigabit Ethernet controller hits against the maximum data transfer rate of the PCI bus.

As far as the performance of the second Gigabit Ethernet controller (Marvell 88E8053) on DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR is concerned, its practical performance is very close to the theoretical one, because it works via the PCI Express x1 bus. Unfortunately, it loads the CPU more than the nForce4 controller, however, its performance looks very good even against the background of a powerful competitor like that.