Intel P55 Launch Activities - We want your opinion!
by Gary Key on August 25, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
If it has not been obvious based on the number of P55 pictorial previews here and at other sites, Intel and the motherboard suppliers are conducting a full court public relations press for your attention and hopefully dollars in a couple of weeks. Of course we are still under NDA in regards to actual performance results even though the new i5/i7 processors and P55 motherboards have been on sale at various locations throughout the world for the past couple of weeks. However, we are finally entering the home stretch for this product launch. As such, there are a few questions we would like your opinion on before we complete our benchmark testing.
We would greatly appreciate a response to our three poll sections today. Our first section simply asks if you are planning on upgrading to the P55 platform or not. The second section covers component decisions. We want to know if purchasing a P55 platform will drive you to spend additional funds on other components like DDR3 memory, video cards, and power supplies. Also, we would like to know your primary driving factor for choosing a particular motherboard.
The third section is my personal favorite. We
would like to know what information you are expecting in the P55
motherboard roundup on launch day. We have a new and exhaustive
benchmark suite to roll out for this article along with a double digit
count of motherboards for review. We have locked down the motherboard
suppliers regarding BIOS or driver changes and testing has "officially"
started. Besides motherboards, we have several new P55 specific memory
and cooling kits to provide analysis on at the same time. Our platters
are obviously full but we want to tailor this roundup as much as possible to what you find
important when reading through a large roundup.
That said, we look forward to your answers and any comments you might have on these subjects.
Editor's note - We had technical difficulties with the answer all command when this article first appeared yesterday. Unfortunately, we have not solved the problem yet. We have separated the problem questions into individual polls and dropped a few questions based on user feedback. We apologize for any inconveniences.
Are you even interested in the P55?
{poll 156:250}
If you answered Yes in the first poll, please complete this poll.
{poll 144:400}
If you answered No in the first poll, please complete this poll.
{poll 152:400}
If you answered Undecided in the first poll, please complete this poll.
{poll 153:350}
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anandreader - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
I know I'm a broken record on this issue but I'd like to hear how the Bios is protected against rootkit attacks.The ideal protection is one that requires a switch that you have to flip before the Bios can be flashed.
jay401 - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
Some of the questions are still kind of annoying... like which RAM and which CPU you should test with.Clearly you should be testing this new chipset with both 1333 and 1600 and with the i5 and i7 CPUs. Else, we won't know how the chipset scales from top to bottom.
Gary Key - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
Actually, in internal testing we use everything from 1066 to 2200 on the DDR3 side along with the i5-750/i7-870 cpus. I am trying to gauge public opinion on which numbers to show in the benchmark results. We will have commentary on each board in regards to their top OC with both CPUs and top memory speeds.However, I have to say as easy as it is reach DDR3-2500 on a few of these boards, running at 1333/C5 or 1600/C6 is just as fast in everything but SuperPI if you have the right memory. ;)
StrayGator - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
didn't happen to see ddr3-1333-cl5 sets yet. what kinda "stock" specs shall i use to achieve timings like these? can every cl6 set be thightened to cl5?if you'll write a dual-channel ddr3 roundup article (which is probably only a matter of time), you can perhaps try to OC/loosen and UC/tighten each set and check the real world performance.
in light of the hitherto modest impact of mem clk observed on core ix systems, such tests may flatten the performance/price charts (or raise the price/performance curve. or am i looking at it the wrong way?)
jay401 - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
ah ok cooljay401 - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
To clarify: The best chipset review will be one that shows how much difference in real world performance variation is actually present from the lowest to the highest CPU and lowest to highest RAM options available. This allows the reader to make a more informed decision as to whether or not it's truly worthwhile to spend the extra $$$ for the faster CPU/RAM.Mr Alpha - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
I'd like to know how the onboard storage controllers handle a bunch of SSDs in RAID. Questions like: Is it stable? What is the throughput limit? How many SSDs does that limit me to? What kind of heat does this produce? And how does that affect overclocking?Gary Key - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
I am testing RAID with the VRaptors. I am trying to get a couple of additional SSDs to test the RAID capabilities also. At this point, there is not any real difference between the P55 and ICH10R in regards to performance.yacoub - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
It's good that we can vote in all four of the polls on the 3rd page, because even though I might find Functionality to be the most important of the choices on the poll item on page 1, I also still have an opinion on which selection is best for a General Performance review, Support/Warranty, and the other area.yacoub - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - link
What would be really helpful for any reviews of uATX boards would be to place them in a SFF enclosure and measure temps (nbridge, cpu, gpu, etc) at idle and load, and noise levels as well.Temps and noise are important factors regardless, but particularly when moving to a uATX system.