Memory performance

Thanks to the Athlon 64's integrated memory controller, the KV8 Pro's available memory bandwidth is comparable other Athlon 64 boards. The KV8 Pro manages to work its way to the head of the class in Cachemem's memory latency test, but only by a fraction of a nanosecond.

Disk controller performance
Our disk controller performance tests use a Maxtor 740X-6L 7,200RPM hard drive for "parallel" ATA (PATA) and a Western Digital Raptor WD360GD 10,000RPM hard drive for Serial ATA (SATA). Because we use different drives for PATA and SATA, scores aren't comparable between the two. PATA scores should only be compared with each other. The same goes for SATA scores.

For kicks, I've tested the KV8 Pro with VIA's IDE Filter driver, which comes standard with the Hyperion 4n1 4.51 drivers, and also with VIA's IDE Miniport driver.

The default IDE Filter driver offers better "parallel" ATA performance than the Miniport driver, at least in Windows XP. As far as Serial ATA performance goes, the KV8 Pro lags the competition slightly. However, performance is comparable to the KV8-MAX3, which also uses VIA's VT8237 south bridge.

There's not much variation in disk access times between the KV8 Pro and other Athlon 64 boards, but CPU utilization is another story. The KV8 Pro's Serial ATA CPU utilization is higher than its nForce3- and K8T800-based competition, and "parallel" ATA performance isn't much different. But does this higher CPU utilization impact the KV8 Pro's performance in real world applications?