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
Final Words
Both the ASUS P8P67 Pro and Gigabyte P67A-UD4 motherboards offer a lot to consumers. For $190, we want a product that hits all the basic functionality of Sandy Bridge, and squeezes out as features and as much performance as possible at this price point.
For the ASUS board, we have a nice looking product with significant strengths in the implementation of their UEFI, and the auto overclockable functions available. The UEFI EZ mode/basic starting screen is something many manufacturers will copy over the upcoming months and UEFI visions. The auto-tuner section of Ai Suite will see use in all markets, aiding various retailers in offering ready-overclocked Sandy Bridge bundles with the P8P67 Pro. Intel gigabit Ethernet is nothing to be sniffed at, and the fan controls can only help improve the user experience. Also, bundle in that three-year warranty. On the downside, the BT GO! and Turbo Remote overclocking features via Bluetooth did not work for me.
The Gigabyte board performs on par with the ASUS board in terms of benchmarking – in most situations, there is almost nothing in it (except USB, where Gigabyte have the advantage there). The board is UEFI GUI absent (for now, supposedly), but thanks to BIOS updates, now supports 2.2TB+ hard drives. Overclocking via the BIOS is straightforward if you have ever overclocked before, and the myriad of software available in the OS will keep you hunting for options, trying to remember which setting is in which piece of software. The warranty, like the ASUS, is also three years. However, the BIOS updating issues I had are certainly worthy of note.
After playing with both boards, I can only come to one conclusion – if it were my money, I would take the ASUS P8P67 Pro over the Gigabyte P67A-UD4. With the ASUS board, you are getting a detailed UEFI, an awesome auto-overclocking tool, better energy saving features, a USB 3.0 bracket , more SATA 6 Gb/s ports, Intel gigabit Ethernet, and in my case, scope for a better overclock. The Gigabyte board is essentially expensive for what is on offer, in terms of usability, features, and extras.
However, the second question is: ‘what about the comparison to the ASRock P67 Extreme4’? The ASRock board has power/reset buttons on the board, a Debug LED, that USB 3.0 bracket which will hold an SSD (worth in my option about $15), and is almost $40 cheaper. The ASUS board is the slightly better performing, overclocking is easier on the ASUS, the ASUS has a longer warranty, the UEFI is slightly better on the ASUS, the ASUS uses Intel Ethernet rather than Realtek, but the ASRock will take socket 775 coolers. It is up to you to judge, but in my opinion, I would take the Extreme4, pocket the $40 difference, and invest it in something else for a PC build.
This then leads into the following question – ‘if I’d rather take a $150 board rather than a $190 board, why are there $300 boards available?’ That question is to be tackled over the coming months!
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erple2 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Technically, there has simultaneously always and never been a "perfect storm" of price and performance. Things always get faster at the same price point over time.As a commenter above pointed out, while these machines may be able to decode stuff quickly (and I'm guessing the 2600k will be faster), when their "system price" comes down to whatever sweet spot you are targeting, we'll have additional things we want to do with our computers (3D movies, 4K HD, 8K hD etc) that will tax these beyond what we consider "reasonable" today.
Ultimately, things ALWAYS get cheaper for the same level of performance and/or do more with the same cost. That's what progress "mandates". Unfortunately, we demand more things to be done, so the perceived amount of extra work you can do never really seems to go down. I used to be happy running a 386-DX40 in the DOS days. Things seemed fast and speedy then. I acknowledge that I do more today than I did back then, though I'm not sure if that's because the software does more, rather than I do more.
My advice - pick a budget and when you can no longer reasonably do what you now do, then buy with an eye to the future. I picked a fairly high budget, but I wanted to get a 'significant' upgrade that would still be usable 3 years in the future. My Core2Duo lasted from 2007 until the end of 2010, when I (foolishly) bought an i7-950.
marc1000 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
and in the 067 boards we can't use the encoding abilities from Sandy Bridge, because the on-chip GPU is turned-off in this chipset. so the only value in $150 boards is x8/x8 PCIe (cheaper boards cut this to x16/x4, a stupid thing but the only way to force us to spend more).medi01 - Saturday, January 22, 2011 - link
Which "encoding abilities" are we talking about, please? Shamelessly hyped increased speed, achieved at the cost of quality loss, eh?Beenthere - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
Asus has a long history of delivering half-baked goods - which this review confirms has happened once again. That and the fact that Asus provides zero customer support in my and many other customer's experience, means I'll vote with my wallet and get the Gigabyte mobo. I know the Asus fanbois will ignore the product defects and buy the Asus mobo anyway because of some review which shows it will OC by 2 Hz. more or something insignificant. This is how Asus dupes the naive kids.Rick83 - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
Well, I'm monitoring the Gigabyte boards, and there's the same image as you'd expect from the ASUS side. Plus with the weird BIOS-flash thing happening on all the boards, and the features that are missing on the Gigabyte boards, I think I'll take an ASUS this time around. (Though any board will be a step down from my brilliant IP35 Pro.... RIP ABIT)Digital Audio Inputs seem to have died out completely....
In the end, I think I'll go with the microATX ASUS in the new Fortress FT3 by Silverstone...
SmCaudata - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
I want to do the same build. I'm hoping for a new GENE or equivalent ASrock board. The FT3 looks like it can handle SLI well. Would be fun to build that powerful of a system in w small package and still have awesome thermals.Gothmoth - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
gigabyte boards make way more trouble then asus boards.don´t remind me on the samsung drives or hitachi drives that would not work for 8 month with gigabyte boards.
take a look at gigabytes support forum and you will see how "happy" the gigabyte users are. LOL.
milkyway4me - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
Asus does advance RMA, gigabyte doesn't. That and that alone, is why any reasonable person should choose Asus barring some massive issue that sticks out to them.Duwelon - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
And i've had the exact experience with Asus and Gigabyte. Last 3 computers I built all used Gigabyte board. 1 bad video card (fanless gigabyte 4550 and they replaced it with a geforce 9600gt with a fan... gee thanks for the downgrade in performance and features and upgrade in noise, thanks so very much). 1 Gigabyte board is acting up, the NIC keeps disappearing without a trace, had to install a PCI NIC to keep it on the network. I friggin hate Gigabyte's RMA process, but they're still better than some i've had to use. Asus, never had a problem with their RMA and they were a little faster than Gigabyte from what I remember. To each their own, sadly they both have flaws and neither are much better than the other. Overall though, given my recent screwing over by Gigabyte and recent issues, my pendulem is swinging towards Asus again.seamusmc - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
I've had boards from all major vendors, ASUS, Intel, Gigabyte, Abit, DFI, etc. They've all had duds and they've all had great boards. I currently have 4 ASUS x48 Rampage's, (Home Server, Work, Wife and Game), and it is one of my favorites among many favorites. ASUS CULV is another stand out in my memory.In my experience, ASUS hasn't delivered more half-baked goods then anyone else.
Right now, it seems to me all the boards are having issues and that's to be expected with a new chipset. This is why I decided last month, despite my unquenchable hunger to upgrade, to wait at least until Feb to upgrade. At this point I may wait until March.