SATA and eSATA Performance

Website: HD Tach 3.0

We tested the SATA and eSATA performance with an Intel X25-M SSD to maximise the use of the SATA connections and reveal any differences in performance.


SATA performance of the new NM10 Southbridge is somewhat lacking. The older ICH7 ported from full-fat motherboards has a more consistent throughput as it exceeds 210MB/sec on both original Atom boards. The more recent D410/D510 Jetway boards are both limited to 190MB/sec, while the extra JMicron chipset on the NC96 performs as expected at around 160MB/sec.

USB 2.0 Performance

Website: HD Tach 3.0

We tested the USB performance with an Intel X25-M SSD and a SATA to USB adapter to saturate the USB bus in order to look for any performance drops.


Strangely, both single-cored boards stretch out a 1MB/sec lead over their dual-cored brethren in the USB test. All are over 30MB/sec though, so performance is good.

Power Consumption

Note: Due to the way the NC96-D410-LF is designed, it's powered by a 65W power brick and uses a more efficient DC-DC conversion on the board itself. In the absence of a separate DC-DC board to use, we supplemented it for a 350W Be Quiet! SFX PSU instead.

The latest Atom D510/410 boards are clearly more power efficient however, with the dual-core D510 shaving a few Watts off the single-core D230 even at idle. Under load there's not much difference - clearly investing in a more appropriate power supply leads to the greatest benefits (~40 per cent range).