Motherboard peripheral performance
Core logic chipsets integrate a wealth of peripherals, but they don't handle everything. Firewire and audio are farmed out to auxiliary chips, for example. Intel chipsets also rely on third party silicon for networking, and many motherboards feature additional SATA controllers to complement south bridge Serial ATA offerings.

To provide a closer look at the peripheral performance you can expect from the motherboards we've tested today, we've complied Ethernet, USB, Firewire, Serial ATA, and Audio performance results below. You'll notice that there isn't much variance from one board to another, but there are a few things worth pointing out. Our X38-based motherboards are highlighted and in bold to make them easier to pick out from the crowd.

For the most part, Ethernet throughput is consistent from one board to the next. However, PCI-based GigE controllers offer substantially lower throughput than their PCIe-based counterparts. This sub-par throughput is a strike against the P5E3, whose secondary GigE chip rides the pokey PCI bus.

It's also interesting to note that the nForce 680i SLI's integrated networking capabilities consume more CPU resources than competing solutions from Marvell and Realtek. There was a time when Nvidia's hardware-accelerated GigE had a CPU utilization advantage, but that appears to no longer be the case.

USB performance results are pretty close. However, the X38 boards offer faster write speeds than those based on the P35. They all use the same ICH9R south bridge, but something about those X38 configs makes them a little faster.

Four of five boards offer identical Firewire performance, with only the nForce falling victim to a slow Firewire chip.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Among X38 boards, RightMark Audio Analyzer prefers the DQ6 over the P5E3. Both turn in lower scores than their competitors in the noise level and dynamic range tests.