Welcome to Sandy Bridge, with the ASRock P67 Extreme4
by Ian Cutress on January 3, 2011 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
Final Words
The ASRock P67 Extreme4 shows a lot of potential. With this being our first Sandy Bridge motherboard review, there’s a very fine line of being wowed by Sandy Bridge, and deciding whether this motherboard is something people will want to buy. There will be a lot of choices on offer on release day, and ASRock is obviously competing to be the best board out there.
Our first look at the board is positive. The color scheme isn’t something to be disgusted by, the UEFI is easy to navigate and offers the options you would expect. The PCIe slots are ideally spaced, and the ability to use either 1155/1156 and 775 coolers is always a plus in my book. The 4.6GHz overclock straight from the UEFI option is also a bonus, as is the USB 3.0 bracket included in the box, which as I mentioned previously, I could easily see it on sale for $15. The USB speed, thanks to XFast, is better than other motherboards, and the 2D performance is quite good as well.
On the negative side, you could consider ASRock’s idea to put the default BCLK at 100.4MHz, as it means other vendors will do similar or push even higher. We'd like to see stock clocks be exactly that, and a 0.4% boost while small is sometimes enough to put your board slightly higher on benchmark charts. But on the plus side, if that works for the consumer, it results in a slightly faster system. Also a negative is the fan header location, the lack of dual gigabit Ethernet connectors, and that the Instant Boot software failed to work at the 4.6GHz overclock. The warranty for this board is one year in the US (two in Europe, three in China/Asia), with an option to extend to two for a fee. This is a little less than warranties by other manufacturers, such as ASUS which offers three on their main P67 lines.
If ASRock are really able to get this board out for $150, we have a really nice offering here. Compared to a couple of other boards I have tested this week, I'm liking this ASRock board more and more. It looks OK, it performs well, and the box contains that nice USB bracket. A lot of people would be quite happy with this motherboard if it performs as it did on our test bed. We're not ready to crown the champion P67 board just yet, but the ASRock P67 Extreme4 is definitely a contender.
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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...