Welcome to Sandy Bridge, with the ASRock P67 Extreme4
by Ian Cutress on January 3, 2011 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
Dirt 2
Dirt 2 came to the PC in December 2009, developed by Codemasters with the EGO Engine. Resulting in favorable reviews, we use Dirt 2’s built-in benchmark under DirectX 11 to test the hardware. We test two different resolutions at two different quality settings, in single and dual GPU setups.
Metro 2033
Metro 2033 is the Crysis of the DirectX 11 world (at least until Crysis 2 is released), challenging every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the built-in DirectX 11 benchmark to test the hardware.
Overview
Across the range of 3D benchmarks, there's not much to separate all of the boards, and even the Core i7-920 results. With so much processing power at hand, not much is needed in DirectX games without PhysX, even at 1920x1080 resolutions at very high quality. However, in single GPU mode, the ASRock board does score the best or near the best in all the benchmarks.
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zipzoomflyhigh - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
1 yr warranty? REally?regginGUY - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
Please explain why this motherboard did so much worse than the others. Something doesn't add up.IanCutress - Saturday, January 8, 2011 - link
That board didn't fair as badly as you claim. In the system benchmarks, it performs very well, and in the 3D benchmarks it's slightly worse than the ASRock in single card (as does the Gigabyte) but performs very admirably in dual card.Don't forget, each benchmark has a statistical variation on it, so the results could easily be +/- a certain amount, depending on the consistency of the benchmark. You'll never get the same score on 100 consecutive runs unless the benchmark is written so that the cache management is pre-optimised before every run (which a few synthetics do).
The 3D benchmarks are representative a typical game. For example, a lap on Dirt2 with a lot of action will have a lower framerate than one where you spend all the time out in front. The benchmark in Dirt2 does a bit of both, by starting the car at the back of the grid, performs some overtakes, and sometimes gets easily overtaken, representing an average lap.
Ian
IanCutress - Monday, January 10, 2011 - link
I've actually come across the problem now through my own testing. It turns out that Dirt 2 has an issue on how you do single card mode. If there is two GPUs in the system and you disable one in Catalyst, you get an FPS drop compared to running the benchmark with just one GPU in the system. This issue doesn't affect Metro 2033 in our benchmark suite, thus I'd have to conclude it's an issue with the Dirt 2 engine with AMD Catalyst.The new FPS figures for the ASUS and Gigabyte boards will be updated shortly. Full reviews of these boards will hopefully go up in the next couple of weeks.
Ian
oxyurus - Saturday, January 8, 2011 - link
Should have mentioned the x8/x8 pci 2.0 mode, as most of the boards at this price range are 16x/x4.Mephi5to - Sunday, January 9, 2011 - link
Take a look at the picture of the mobo - bottom left corner. PATA connector =/= IDE?Mephi5to - Sunday, January 9, 2011 - link
Nevermind :) I was so confused that actually went to their site and DL'd manual. It's a floppy connector. Sorry peeps.Shube - Monday, January 24, 2011 - link
The specs for this board show 32Gb max memory space using unbuffered DDR3. With 4 slots that means 8Gb memory sticks. I can't find any available. Does anyone have any idea when they will be available? At what speed? Any details appreciated!marraco - Sunday, January 30, 2011 - link
What about UEFI supposedly enhanced boot times?katleo123 - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link
good informative post about sandy bridgefor more info visit http://www.techreign.com/2010/12/intels-sandy-brid...