WAN And WiFi Network Benchmarks

The Core 100HT-BD uses the Realtek RTL8111E chipset for gigabit Ethernet and the Atheros AR9287-BL1A card for wireless connectivity. The Core i3-530 system we put together uses the Realtek RTL8111D chipset for Gigabit Ethernet and a D-link WDA-2320 card for wireless networking. Let’s see how network bandwidth compares using SiSoft Sandra’s Network benchmarks:

The gigabit Ethernet results are tied at 13.8 MB/s, which makes sense because both motherboards use virtually identical Realtek chipsets (and are likely bottlenecked by their storage subsystems, as well).

However, the ASRock Core 100HT-BD shows strong wireless performance compared to the desktop D-link WDA-2320 card, which is somewhat surprising, since we are testing with a wireless router running the 802.11g standard. The Core 100HT-BD boasts excellent relative performance that is very noticeable during Internet use. This demonstrates how the ASRock system’s Atheros AR9287-BL1A wireless card/dual-antennae combo is a good mix.

The network latency is slightly better on the desktop system, but the Core 100HT-BD demonstrates much better wireless latency.