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Page 1 of 1 pages for this article Shuttle SB81P XPC Review – SFF Evolves! by Article Admin
Published: 07/05/2004
In concert with Intel?s recent launch of their Grantsdale 915G chipset, Shuttle has announced their latest XPC, the SB81P. Representing Shuttle?s 5th generation XPC case design, the SB81P is the culmination of all that Shuttle has learned over the past several years since their first SFF system debuted in 2001.
Featuring a radically different approach to thermal cooling, along with a completely re-designed case, you?ll soon see that the P-style XPC chassis gives any desktop tower system a run for its money in terms of both expandability and thermodynamics. The SB81P sports Intel?s brand new Grantsdale 915G chipset, featuring support for the LGA775 form factor Pentium 4, PCI Express expandability, Intel?s Media Graphics Accelerator integrated video solution, and 8 channel audio courtesy the ICH6-R Southbridge. Couple this with a brand new 350 Watt SilentX power supply, triple 3.5" drive bays, an integrated media card reader, stealthed front panel, and screwless drive installation, and you?ve got a system packed to the rim with new features. But wait, there?s more. Dual channel DDR400, support for up to four Serial-ATA devices as well as RAID 0/1/0+1, a re-designed ICE Cooling System, and Gigabit Ethernet just to name a few? As you?re beginning to see, the SB81P is a complete re-design, from the inside out, and is a hint of what?s to come from Shuttle and other SFF manufacturers over the next year. It?s hard to decide where to even begin the review, as so much is new with the SB81P. Questions abound from case design, to chipset, to processor, to integrated video and audio, etc? Let?s take it slow and begin with the overall system specifications.
You?ll notice a few new items have shown up in the SB81P?s accessory kit, shown below.
Notice the plethora of mounting brackets in the image above. These are part of the "screwless drive installation" system which allows you to actually install up to three internal hard-drives, an optical drive, and an optional floppy drive without the use of any screws, screwdrivers, or really any tools for that matter. We?ll take a closer look at this later on. In addition to the mounting brackets, you?ll find a single Serial-ATA cable (don?t worry, the others are pre-installed), a floppy cable, floppy power converter, power cable, case feet, and the typical array of Shuttle manuals and driver disks. Fortunately, the SB81P is the first XPC to ship with a RAID manual, in this case, the ICH6-R RAID manual courtesy Intel and Shuttle. It provides detailed instructions on how to install Windows XP on a RAID system, convert from standalone to RAID configurations, and an overview of the RAID subsystem in general. With so much to see, let?s begin by taking a closer look at the SB81P?s external case design?
Benchmark ComparisonsBenchmark Comparisons First up, PC Mark 2002 CPU testing comparing the SB81P outfitted with the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4 GHz processor to the SB75G2 with both Prescott and Northwood cores, as well as the Shuttle SN85G4V2 with the Athlon64 3200+.
Clearly the SB81P powered by the EE 3.4 dominates in this test. There?s no surprise that it beats out the Northwood 2.4 GHz CPU overclocked to 3.06 GHz, but what is a surprise is how aggressively it outperforms the Prescott processor overclocked to 3.36 GHz. Comparing the Prescott at 3.36 to the EE at 3.4, you?ll find the EE outperforms the Prescott by over 15%. In fact, even the Northwood 2.4 GHz CPU overclocked to 3.06 GHz defeats the Prescott at 3.36. Clearly the Prescott processor is going to be a hard sell for Intel. Moving on to memory benchmarking, here?s the PC Mark 2002 Memory comparison results for the same system configurations.
Notice how the SB81P powered by the Grantsdale Northbridge dominates in memory testing. When comparing Pentium 4 solutions, this is certainly the result of the superior 915G chipset rather than the processors themselves. On the other hand, the Athlon 64 includes its own memory controller, which clearly performs slower than the competition with this benchmark. Moving on, we decided to compare hard-drive performance with the SB81P?s RAID subsystem compared to non-RAID configurations in other SFF systems. As is obvious, you?d expect the RAID 0 configuration in our SB81P testbench system to outperform a single drive non-RAID setup.
While the fact that the SB81P in RAID 0 mode provides for faster data access isn?t a surprise, what is interesting is the magnitude of the performance difference. Over a 50% boost in PC Mark?s HDD benchmark proves that making use of RAID striping can certainly pay off. Of course, you?ll want to consider the increased data integrity risk with a striped RAID configuration versus the performance benefit it provides. Moving on, we also wanted to pit Intel?s new Graphics Media Accelerator against other video solutions to get some idea of exactly what type of video performance you could expect from the Grantsdale chipset.
The Intel GMA900 impressively outperforms ATI?s latest integrated video solution, the 9100IGP by over 50%. This bumps ATI from its position as the market leader in integrated video performance. However, despite the GMA900?s triumphant defeat over ATI?s 9100IGP, no integrated video solution to date can stand up to the performance metrics set by leading video cards such as the Radeon 9800 Pro. It clearly dominates in this test. Finally, in perhaps the best display of the SB81P?s new case design, we have the environmental test results. First up, let?s look at CPU temperature across a variety of SFF systems.
In a very impressive feat of thermodynamics, the SB81P manages to run its P4 EE 3.4 GHz processor under heavy load at only 62 degrees. While for good reason hotter than the average P4 Northwood at 2.4 GHz, the SB81P managed to keep our 3.4 GHz processor running considerably cooler than the SB75G2 with a slower Prescott, and only slightly hotter than comparable systems with the Athlon 64 3200+. Now keep in mind folks that we also had dual 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptors in this box, whereas the rest of these systems were benchmarked with a single drive configuration. This further underscores the SB81P?s impressive thermal cooling capabilities. In fact, under heavy load, the SB81P performed at nearly the same temperature as our full sized Grantsdale motherboard testbench setup here at Sudhian / SFFTech. Moving on to noise, there?s certainly some reason for concern when a system has five internal fans. Let?s see how the SB81P measures up.
Once again, a very impressive score. Factor in dual hard-drives into this measurement, coupled with the cooling requirements of a 3.4 GHz CPU, and you?ve got a really amazing noise output of only 52 dbA. This puts the fully outfitted SB81P with a 3.4 GHz processor on par with the SN85G4V2 and the Soltek EQ3801, both running 2 GHz processors! Keep in mind, however, that both of those systems also had the contribution of the Radeon 9800Pro cooling system; however, they also had a single hard-drive versus the SB81P?s dual drive configuration. The bottom line is that the SB81P performed relatively cool and quiet with our testbench setup. Shuttle?s redesigned cooling system has certainly paid off. So now, after all that, what?s the bottom line conclusion? < previous - (10 of 11) - next >
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