CSA worth it?

[KrAkPoT]

Hey..i am looking to buy a new mobo and i have been thinking but havnt had time with school and all so..
the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe and the Abit ic7 g both seem good and the ASUS beat out the ABIT in almost all tests from a lot of websties but it has no CSA bus i heard this can hinder its performences in gaming and such ect...what would be a good choice? i am a hardcore gamer and surfer..

thanks!

 

[Lord Evermore]

It won't hinder any performance, especially since you're probably going to use a 100Mbps Fast Ethernet connection for your PC, and probably going to a 1.5Mbps or less DSL or cable connection for Internet access.

CSA is useful if you do a lot of network file transfers and need the very best performance out of it. The direct connection to the northbridge allows higher throughput than if it had to pass over the PCI bus, and reduces the amount of traffic going over the bus between north and southbridge (CPU receives network traffic, sends what's needed to the hard drive, rather than the PCI bus receiving traffic, the southbridge sending it to the northbridge, which goes to the CPU, and then the CPU sending some of it back; plus none of the outbound traffic has to go to the southbridge).

For 99.99% of people, CSA is a neat technology, though a simple and obvious one, but it is entirely a marketing gimmick for any home user.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
For 99.99% of people, CSA is a neat technology, though a simple and obvious one, but it is entirely a marketing gimmick for any home user.

i don't know, i mean, most people probably won't notice a huge difference, but i think it's there. Especially for hardcore users with HQ sound and RAID setups all running off the PCI bus. Anything you can get off there means more room for disk data and other important stuff. I think it's a useful (somewhat) futureproofing technology.

 

[Spicedaddy]

It might be useful if you already have a gigabit network and often transfer GBs of data. Most people just have one computer connected to a DSL or cable modem, or if they have more than one computer, they're using a 10/100 router. In those cases, CSA is useless.

 

[SocrPlyr]

if you are running 100Mbit or less, don't even think about making sure you use CSA, however for gigabit it might be useful...
For instance at school we have gigabit to every machine... if i start copying a bunch of files it is significantly slower when i copy to my harddrive that is connected to an expansion card on the pci bus, but if i copy to my other harddrive that is connected to the southbridge my problem is fixed... basically for 98% of the users out there it is worthless, (even for me it would only cut seconds off transfer times)... basically don't worry about it...
(at school we run it over fiber so it really wouldn't do me any good anyways, unless i then bought a fiber to copper converter... DOH!)

Josh

 

[Lord Evermore]

Yeah, even at a peak of 100Mbps, that's only 12MBps, more likely 10MBps or less in most cases, easily handled by the PCI bus even with other devices. If you were running a RAID0 array with very fast hard drives that could sustain throughput over maybe 75 to 80MBps, then it might make a difference if you're constantly sustaining that much drive throughput as well as network throughput. Even if you did use Gigabit, unless you're actually doing that much data transfer to another Gigabit system, it won't be noticeable. Using a Gigabit switch to connect to a 100Mbps router going to a 1.5Mbps DSL is still only going to transfer at most 1.5Mbps.

If you want futureproofing, use fibre.

 

[drip]

i have joined the forums to specifically respond to this post. speaking from experience csa is very much worth it. this was actually why i decided to purchase the intel b875pbz for other motherboards did not utilize this feature. i know enough about core logic sets to know a good feature and knew this would be very beneficial in gaming and basic/advance usage.

in an example of use i have never seen a ping so stable even when using roger wilco while playing raven shield. i can do some major talking and not one single hit on my ping. i am comparing this to the nvidia and 3com on the nforce and also a basic 3com mac pci. csa and the 82547EI gigabit ethernet controller are an excellent combo.

 

[Lord Evermore]

One single game is not a performance metric. Install a regular network card in a PCI slot on the same motherboard and see how that does. It could be that your entire system is better, not that CSA is making so much of a difference. Comparing an Intel CSA chip to a 3Com and nvidia chip using entirely different architectures for the CPU and chipsets isn't a proper way to benchmark.

 

[gramboh]

There is no way online gaming and using roger wilco come close to saturating the bus. I have a stable DSL connection (same ping reply 15ms from gateway every time) and my ping never ever spikes in game when using voice comm and even downloading in the background (as long as download isn't saturating the connection). I have a P4P800 with the 3com gigabit (non-CSA). The situation is exactly the same on my older Athlon TBird with a 32bit Linksys PCI 10/100.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Its only going to come into effect for the most part if you meet the following requirements:

1: Have gigabit connections throughout the entire connections to and from the other computers.
2: Transfer large files
3: Monitor the tim ing and try to save a second or two

During normal usage, you won't notice a difference. If you get it just for benchmarks, there is a difference. If it really made that big of a difference, I'm sure we'd have seen somethingl ike this from other companies by now.

 

[EXman]

CSA = Marleting crap nothing more is what I heard Intel admit to.

 

[mac35]

Wow there sure is a lot of misinformation floating around.....CSA is not marketing crap, it provides absolutely better performance over 10/100, the only problem is hard drives these days can't keep up with the speed the gigabit ethernet can provide. Eventually, when hard drives can move more than 100mbps the gigabit lan will have a distinct advantage over 10/100.


I suggest everyone read this link, its from Anandtech.com's review of the 875p chipset.


Link

Mac

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: EXman
CSA = Marleting crap nothing more is what I heard Intel admit to.

Wrong. But thanks for trying

 

[jaeger66]

If you use Gigabit Ethernet then you definitely want CSA. Even if you don't, GigE switches are so cheap now that it might be nice to have for the future. If you don't now and never have any plans to use it in the future than 10/100 PCI Ethernet is fine.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: EXman
CSA = Marleting crap nothing more is what I heard Intel admit to.

Where did you hear Intel admit to that? Link, article, anything?

 

[FishTankX]

If you're on a gigabit ethernet and have fast harddrives, which is about every workstation using the CSA bus's, it's a great feature.

It can tremondously speed up transfers between machines with SCSI RAID.

If it's specific to the i875 like I think it is, then it's a feature meant for workstations, whichi t does beautifully in.

 

[FishTankX]

CSA will not affect performance if you're not opn a busy network. That being said, don't base your decision on it unless you use gigabit ethernet on on a daily basis.

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42


Where did you hear Intel admit to that? Link, article, anything?

He's thinking of PAT.

 

[KrAkPoT]

so for me a non-networked, harcroe pc gamer i really dont need CSa then correct?..i just want to know if it will speed up my pc in anyway..

 

[tyipengr]

Originally posted by: EXman
CSA = Marleting crap nothing more is what I heard Intel admit to.

Intel is not THAT bad. The name might be crap but the tech is really there. Everytime new tech comes out from any company the marketing team always gets a whack at it to fool the idiots. C'mon, everytime the stock FSB is increased some marketing guy out there adds a few busswords and it turns into the "Streaming Quasi-Bus Frag-Amalgamator w/MMX2-SSE3 Technology" or whatever.

How is a dedicated link from the North Bridge to the Gigabit Ethernet controller marketing crap? Might not be too useful now since a majority of the people still only need 10/100Mbps but once the gigabit bandwidth starts flooding everyones internal I/O and your sounds start to sound like they are being played in reverse people will be thankful for CSA. Another case of sooner better than later. Everyone should now go and hug their local Intel chipset architect.

 

[Lord Evermore]

krakpot: no you don't need CSA. Maybe if you were a hardcore gamer with a server connected to an OC3 hosting lots of games on one machine. But then you wouldn't be using an 875P since you'd want a lot more CPU power.

 

[EXman]

A week or two ago someone had a link, I think it was to "the register", that Intel admitted it overhyped the CSA and it was really nothing more than a normal progression of their fab process but maybe the whole artical was made up I read it seemed real enough at the time I cannot find the thread or article anywhere. I'll keep looking

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: EXman
A week or two ago someone had a link, I think it was to "the register", that Intel admitted it overhyped the CSA and it was really nothing more than a normal progression of their fab process but maybe the whole artical was made up I read it seemed real enough at the time I cannot find the thread or article anywhere. I'll keep looking

Read above, you're thinking of PAT.

EDIT:

Okay, everyone's got a point that if you're not using GigE you'll probably never notice a difference, but I think this is a key passage from Anands article linked above:

Even if you're not getting higher transfer rates, moving bandwidth-heavy traffic off of the PCI bus helps to ensure that other transactions occurring on the bus remain uninterrupted by bursts of network traffic. The end result is similar to what NVIDIA was able to achieve using isochronous Hyper Transport channels with nForce2, in that you get uninterrupted network data transfers and minimize the impact of sudden bursts of data on the rest of the system.

Considering I was going to pick up the IC7-G either way, it's nice to know that the PCI bus will never have to deal with any network traffic at all. If you can afford the extra 20 bucks I think it's a worthwhile technology to have in your box. Maybe that's just me though! hah.

 

[EXman]

oh PAT my bad...

<--- goober

 

[FishTankX]

Originally posted by: KrAkPoT
so for me a non-networked, harcroe pc gamer i really dont need CSa then correct?..i just want to know if it will speed up my pc in anyway..

nope, unnecescescary