The Battle of the P67 Boards - ASUS vs. Gigabyte at $190
by Ian Cutress on January 20, 2011 4:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Asus
- P67
Gigabyte has five P67 motherboards up for the US Sandy Bridge release – the P67A-UD3, the P67A-UD3P, the P67A-UD4, the P67A-UD5 and the P67A-UD7. At least the naming scheme is as easy to follow as previous generations – the higher the last number, the more expensive the board and the more features on offer:
| P67A Series | |||||
| P67A-UD3 | P67A-UD3P | P67A-UD4 | P67A-UD5 | P67A-UD7 | |
| Price | $130 | $160 | $190 | $260 | $320 |
|
SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s eSATA |
2 4 0 |
2 4 0 |
2 4 2 |
2 4 2 |
4 4 2 |
|
CrossFireX SLI |
Yes No |
Yes No |
Yes Yes |
Yes Yes |
Yes Yes |
|
USB 3.0 USB 2.0 |
2 12 |
4 14 |
4 14 |
8 10 |
10 8 |
| LAN | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| PCIe |
2 x16 (1 x16, 1 x4) |
2 x16 (1 x16, 1 x4) |
2 x16 (2 x8) |
3 x16 (2 x8, 1 x4) |
4 x16 (2 x16 or 4 x8) |
Visual Inspection
One of the first things I noticed about the P67A-UD4 was that it was not blue and white, like the majority of the Gigabyte motherboards have been recently that I have worked with. Predominantly featuring a black PCB, black PCIe connectors, black DIMM slots, black SATA 3Gb/s ports, a splash of white for SATA 6GB/s, silver chipset/FET coolers and a hint of old Gigabyte blue on those coolers is what we get this iteration. Not the whole range is like this – I have a H67 Gigabyte board on my desk here and that retains the blue and white credentials, as does the P67A-UD3.
The PCIe layout is slightly different to other P67 boards I have reviewed – with only two PCIe x16 slots (going to x8/x8 in dual GPU mode), there is an extra PCIe x1 slot on the board. In a dual GPU setup, this leaves two PCIe x1 and a PCI slot still free on the board, as well as a gap between dual slot GPUs to aid in cooling.
Fan headers on the board are located near the 8-pin power connector, one above the socket, one above the 24-pin power connector, and one below the PCIe slots, which would only be covered if you have a dual slot PCI card.
Gigabyte’s dual BIOS system is on this board. Yes, that is right – BIOS. No UEFI here. Well, that's not strictly true, as one of the latest BIOS updates at the time of writing (F6) implements an EFI into the BIOS, reportedly allowing bootable access to hard drives over 2.2TB. This is due to, as Gigabyte explained, that their board is actually UEFI, but without a proper GUI interface like other boards. They've used the old BIOS-style interface for now, as after years of plugging away they believe it's quick, stable and recognisable for consumers to understand. So underneath, it's truly 64-bit, meaning 2.2TB+ partition support is possible, and could also suggest that a new GUI is coming in the future. I asked about time-scale for this, but Gigabyte were undoubtedly tight-lipped about dates and implementations.
Visually, in terms of the board, there is not much else to say – the space between the socket and the PCI slots is virtually clear. There are no power, reset or clear CMOS buttons on board, neither is there a debug LED, and which is a real shame given that ASRock can do it on a $150 motherboard. Compared to the ASUS board, all the energy saving and turbo performance options are all software based – no easy flick of switches here.
Like the other P67 boards, the back panel is regular as well. Only a single PS/2 connector, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 2 eSATA ports, S/PDIF Out connectors, a single gigabit Ethernet, and audio I/O.
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James5mith - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
One big giant reason to use the Asus board? Intel® 82579 Gigabit EthernetAn Intel PHYS on an Intel board means one less PCIe lane taken up by the NIC. Not to mention, it's Intel not Realtek.
Mumrik - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
‘if I’d rather take a $150 board rather than a $190 board, why are there $300 boards available?’No, the question is why you don't focus more on reviewing the lower end boards. Motherboards have become too expensive, especially when you consider how much is being moved onto the CPU. These were Asus' and Gigabyte's midrange boards. I'd love to hear more about the two below them in the two companies' lineups. Let's hear if there's a reason not to pick the 130-150 options.
erple2 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
I think the question is still extremely valid - if the 150 dollar board gives you all of the performance of the 190 dollar boards, where does that leave the 300 dollar boards?You also bring up another good question - what can the 150 dollar board buy you that the 100 board doesn't have?
My assumption is that there are various features that simply don't exist on the sub-100 dollar boards.
BTW, I'm not sure that motherboards are really all that expensive. At least, not beyond "standard inflation". The same level of features (of the day) cost about the same amount as they do today, I think.
7Enigma - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - link
If this is standard inflation we are in for a world of hurt....sweetspot - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Just me but id prefer 70fps in my games if sound quality was excellent vs 75-80 FPS and unusable sound mobo parts. And or have to pay additional for add on pci sound card cash which defeats the savings shown using the asrock 150 mobo yet sounds bad so pay 50-70 more for add on card, vs the 2 190 boards sounds are good, So the value set he describes in this review of the 40 dollar cheaper board is totaly stupid since he failed to show the boards major components correctly ( Yes sound on a mobo is consider a major component piece of the many).Sure reader can go elsewhere to get the info but the point of the review sites is to cover basic parts so people dont have to web hop all day for those details.
faxon - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
I wanna see a review of these vs the P67-GD65 from MSI. its the cheapest 8 SATA port board on the market and other sites have been saying it looks pretty good, wondering what you guys think before i buy it thoughHauntFox - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
I just built a new system with this Asus board, it is quite nice, except I do not like the sata ports that point to the front. I barely have enough room to plug a sata cable into them with my case because the drive cage is in the way.RussianSensation - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Legit Reviews did a comparison, which can be found here: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1500/1/1) Realtek vs. Intel - Besides a 3% lower CPU performance, the throughput is hardly any better wtih Intel. Also, unless you are networking multiple computers, we aren't going to be hitting 900+MB/sec in Internet speed.
2) 16x/4x vs. 8x/8x in CrossFire - Since P67 chipset runs PCIe 2.0 at full speed unlike P55 chipset, the PCIe 4x slot off the P67 chipset actually has 2x the PCIe bandwidth compared to P55 16x/4x boards. Overall, when testing with HD6950s in CF, the performance difference is almost nonexistent.
So overall, the stock P8P67 board looks like the one to get for those running single-GPUs.
Exodite - Monday, January 24, 2011 - link
I'd get the ASUS just for the Intel LAN solution TBH.I can't say whether it's hard- or software, or a combination of the two, but Realtek ended up as a real step down from the Marvell solution in my previous motherboard and I'd avoid it in the future if I can.
Most notably I went from a 30-40ms latency in WoW to 100-120ms with the Realtek. This was only recently rectified, well mostly rectified, with a driver update.
So for me personally i'd definitely be worth it. It's nice to see a review that tests the LAN solutions but frankly just testing throughput and CPU usage is rather disingenuous as latency and jitter probably play a larger role in most network-related usage.
fixxxer0 - Saturday, January 22, 2011 - link
how come there are no tests showing the SATA 6.0 speed comparisons?