MaximumOverclock.com

With the recent release of Firefox 3.5 and it’s claimed 2X increase in performance, maximumoverclock.com has decided to run a browser shootout.  We will test the five most popular web browsers: Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5, Opera 9.6, Chrome 2, and Safari 4.  Tests were run on Windows 7 RC 64bit on a system configured with an Intel i7 920 @ 4.0 and 6GB DDR3 1600.  Tests used are Futuremark’s Peacekeeper browser benchmark and the Sunspider Javascript Benchmark 0.9.  We will also test each browser with the acid3 browser standards compliance test.  Now for the results.

Peacekeeper Benchmark

 

Internet Explorer 8: 1442

 

 Firefox 3.5: 2834

Opera 9.6: 2035

Chrome 2: 5192

Safari 4: 5361

 

  Peacekeeper Comparison Chart 

 

 

 

Sunspider Javascript Benchmark 0.9

 Internet Explorer 8: 3244.8ms

 

 Firefox 3.5: 757.4ms

 

Opera 9.6: 2413.8ms

 

 

Chrome 2: 507.2ms

 

 

Safari 4:  493.2ms

 

 

Sunspider Comparison Chart

 

 

 

 

 

Acid 3 Test Results

Here is the intended result, for reference.

 

Internet Explorer 8: 20/100 linktest failed

 

 

 Firefox 3.5: 93/100

 

Opera 9.6: 85/100

 

Chrome 2: 100/100 linktest failed

 

Safari 4: 100/100

 

 

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, it appears that Safari 4 is the clear winner in this test, beating out all other browsers at both speed and standards compliance.  That being said, it does appear that the staff favorite, Firefox, has improved in speed over previous releases and now rounds out the middle of the pack in performance and compliance.  It’s hard to believe that we now have five web browsers worthy of consideration and that the newest additions, chrome and safari (on windows), perform so well.  Competition in the browser arena is definitely a good thing as it spurs the developers of each browser to increase the performance, compliance, and ease of use of each, and ultimately the user benefits from it.

 

MaximumOverclock.com recently acquired a shiny new toy to tinker with…the Aspire One netbook.  There are many Aspire One models available, but we have the cheapest model to hack on, the 8GB SSD/Linux model.  We used the linux distro a bit, but then decided to put the good stuff on, XP SP3.  The first thing we noticed about the SSD model was the speed, or lack thereof.  It performed acceptably in the linux distro, but was severely lacking to run XP even after applying speed optimizing tricks suggested for netbooks running XP.  This being our first experience with a netbook and the atom platform, we decided to test if the SSD truely was the speed problem or if the problem was just the atom platform in general.  First up, we benched the SSD in ATTO disk benchmark.  The read results look acceptable, but the writes…yikes.

We decided to open up the One to see what was inside.  Inside we found the intel 8GB flash SSD module connected with a ZIF cable to the motherboard.  While inside however, something interesting caught our eye, a header on the system board that looked suspiciously like SATA.  Sure enough it appears that the motherboard has the 7pin header for sata and the 15pin header for sata power, but with nothing soldered in place.  Our first thought was, “Do you think those pins are live?”  After looking around online at other mods, we found that some of the One’s do in fact have sata hard drives installed, so that gave us a little hope that the system could support sata.  Next we looked in the XP device manager to check if it listed a sata controller.  Sure enough, there was a SATA controller on the ICH7 listed.  By this point we could hardly wait to break out the soldering equipment and solder a sata cable to it to test, so that’s exactly what we did.

NOTE: Click Pictures for Full View

 NOTE: Click Pictures for Full View

Nothing like soldering with a magnifying glass. ;)  So we just couldn’t wait to try it, so we connected a Western Digital WD6400AAKS desktop 3.5″ SATA drive, crossed our fingers, and pressed the power button.  Success, well at least the board isn’t fried, was our first thought as we saw video appear on the screen.  Quickly pressing F2, we accessed the bios to check if the drive was listed.

NOTE: Click Pictures for Full View

Woot!  It’s there, awesome.  Let’s install XP and get the drive benched.  So, XP was installed and the drivers from Acer’s site were loaded.  Booting with a fresh XP install took about 19 seconds, nice!  Ok, time for our good friend ATTO disk benchmark.

Sweet!  The drive’s running fast.  It looks like the drive may be hitting the sata interface limit (assuming the One is SATA I) on files sizes above 128KB.  That is a nice result.  We tested using XP in general and found almost no hesitation in opening files and browsing the web like there was with the ssd and boot time was much improved.  It appears the atom platform was being held back by the low end SSD.  Here’s a quick chart comparing the read/write speeds between the two drives.  Looks like the SSD got owned.

 NOTE: Click Pictures for Full View

In conclusion, it seems that the SSD One is severely limited by the SSD installed inside.  However, this can be remedied by replacing it with a speedier drive.  We’ve also found that the SSD Aspire One still has sata, it just has no port soldered on.  Our test drive would obviously not be practical for everyday use, as it’s a desktop drive, but it may be possible to shoehorn in a 2.5″ sata hard drive or ssd with a little modding.

Maximumoverclock.com has embarked on an experiment to try to add an external discreet video card to a mac via the mini PCI express connector inside.  This connector is most commonly used for wireless LAN cards, and is a PCI express x1 link in a small form factor for laptops.  I will be testing out whether or not an external video card can in fact be added through an adapter on the mini PCI express bus or not.  The main thing I’d like to be able to do if I can get external video running is build the mythical “x-mac.”  The “x-mac” is the name many mac enthusiasts have given to the non-existant mid range mac tower (aka headless imac).  To do this, I would use a mac mini or macbook logic board, but add in a more powerful video card via a mini PCI express to PCI express x1 flex cable.

I have done some preliminary testing of my 7800gt on a pc system in a PCI express slot running at PCI express x2 mode, and to my surprise it wasn’t as much of a bottleneck as I thought it would be.  It lost ~13% performance in 3dmark06 in the slot at x2 vs. x16 slot.  So even if x1 would halve the overall performance at x2 (which I doubt it would), it would still be much better than the piss-poor integrated intel graphics.  Tomshardware.com has done several benchmarks of cards running at various PCI express slot speeds.  It’s an interesting read.

I also have tested my 7800gt in a mac pro system and it works in mac os x, even though it’s not officially supported, with a few quirks (since bios is not flashed, it requires the stock 7300gt to be installed as well).

Here’s a screenshot of the system profiler info on the 7800gt.  It’s a stock 256MB XFX 7800GT, it appears to be reference design.

 I was able to source the adapter I needed through adex electric (which were awesome to deal with).  I ordered the adapter a few days ago, and now have it in my hands and will be doing some testing.  Currently, the only mac I have is a macbook pro, but it should work fine for testing as it also has a mini PCI express slot for it’s airport extreme card.

Here’re some pictures of the adapter.  It’s a PEMINI2X1-F with a 5″ flex cable.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, almost all graphics cards are in the PCI express x16 format, which is physically too big for the tiny x1 connector.  My hot soldering iron and x-acto knife fixed that though.

 

 

 

Part 2.

 

The PEMINI2X1 was tested in the Macbook Pro.  Here’re some pictures of the action.

 

 

 

The results of the testing?  Unfortunately, it did not work.  The card powers up, and appears to run, but no image displays on either port.  As a second test, the 7800GT was then substituted with a 6200 card.  Unfortunately, the 6200 behaved in the exact same manner.  Testing was done in OS X tiger, leopard, and windows XP.  The card was not detected at all in any OS.  I expected the card to at least appear in XP, but alas, no dice.  My theory is that the mac EFI does not allow/recognize non internal video cards.  I also theroized that because boot camp is using an emulated bios, it thereby does not detect the card at boot, possibly because the EFI does not recognize it.  The next step would be to try another type of pci-e card, for example a pci-e firewire card or nic, to see if that works.