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
The ASUS P8P67 Pro fits near the beginning of the line-up in the ASUS launch, which in terms of ATX sized boards include the P8P67, the P8P67 Pro, the P8P67 Evo, the P8P67 Deluxe, the Sabertooth P67, the P8P67 WS SuperComputer and the top end Maximus IV Extreme. Therefore, with that in mind, we would expect to be looking at something above the base – slightly more (or better) features than the cheap boards available, enough to warrant the price difference. An overview of the P8P67 series is below:
| P8P67 Series | ||||||
| P8P67 LE | P8P67 | P8P67 PRO | P8P67 EVO | P8P67 Deluxe | ||
| Price | $140 | $160 | $190 | $210 | $235 | |
|
SATA 6 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s eSATA |
3 4 1 |
4 4 1 (bracket) |
4 4 2 |
4 4 2 |
4 4 2 |
|
|
CrossFireX SLI |
Yes No |
Yes No |
Yes Yes |
Yes Yes |
Yes Yes |
|
|
USB 3.0 USB 2.0 |
2 14 |
4 (2 via header) 12 |
||||
| LAN | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |
| Bluetooth | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Visual Inspection
ASUS have gone with the blue/white/black livery for the Pro board, with a 12+2 digital VRM design covered by slanted blue heat sinks. The socket itself is relatively clear, easily allowing large 1155/1156 CPU coolers to be fitted (remember, 1155 mounting holes are the same as 1156). The CPU fan header is located at roughly one o’clock from the socket itself, with a chassis header to the right of the DIMM slots, presumably for HDD bay type fans.
Next to this header are the EPU switch and the MemOK buttons. The EPU switch enables Energy Processing Unit, which is geared towards saving energy – this encompasses power gating certain features that are never used/used rarely, and declocking when less compute is required. The MemOK button is a physical override for overclocked memory – by holding it down until the red light comes on, at next boot, the UEFI will override the memory settings to something more suitable.
The SATA connectors come in blue (SATA 3 Gb/s), white/grey (SATA 6 Gb/s provided by the chipset) and navy blue (SATA 6 Gb/s provided by a Marvell controller). There is a USB 3.0 header also here, near the DIMM slots. These are all next to the ASUS logo and chipset cooler, which underneath have another chassis header and a green power light. This board is lacking both a debug LED and power/reset buttons on the main board, much to our disappointment.
The PCI slots are well laid out, with a PCIe 1x at the top and enough space between the first two PCIe x16 for a PCI card, meaning that at least one is available if all three PCIe x16 are occupied with dual slot cards. The black PCIe x16 slot is wired up as an x4 slot (as it shares bandwidth with the x1 slots, two USB 3.0 ports and the eSATA ports), and with a dual slot card in there, will cover most of the board USB headers.
The TPU switch is underneath the PCI slots, and performs the same function as the TurboV EVO software in the OS to optimise the system for a decent and stable overclock.
The back panel is standard, with dual PS/2 connectors, SPDIF outputs, USB 2.0 slots, USB 3.0 slots, Firewire, eSATA, audio and Ethernet. The blue module three from the left is the ASUS Bluetooth module, designed to communicate with Bluetooth devices to enhance overclocking or utilise music management. The gigabit Ethernet is handily powered by an Intel chip.
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GeorgeH - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
On the temperature and power graphs, you might want to differentiate the colors a bit more. Right now it looks like OCCT/Idle are using the exact same shade of purple, and Metro/Video are using the exact same shade of red. Common sense tells me which is which, but it just looks bad.Overall it was a great review; the only thing I'd change would be to put Gigabyte's "BIOS Classic" implementation into the pros column, but I'm weird like that.
Peanutsrevenge - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
I have the HTC Hero aswell running Cyanogenmod ROM for 2.2 and the BT Turbo Remote software is showing in my market (version 1.0.9) if you wanna recheck it Ian and update the article.Interesting that you had such trouble with the Gigabyte board, I went off Asus a few years ago due to several glitches, bugs and DOAs and switched to speccing / recommending Gigabyte for friends and customers.
Hope this is a one off for them rather than the end of a faultless era!
sweetspot - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
Why do MOBO test sites all fail to add sound quality test to the benchmarks ?? Most folks spending over 150.00 for a mobo and playing games and entertainment, would like nice quality sound as well.Cant spend 190 bucks without asking the sound question, nobody would by a board without the over all picture, not just A wins B in a frames bench test.
Is sound onboard good or not ? do we lose xfire / SLI if we go with add on sound card option . Nobody would buy a mobo without asking that simple question as well, and why does every single review site 99% of the time skip a simple sound quality mention on boards they test ??
No mention of sound quality in a mobo review is just pitifull, cant be that hard to tell someone if it even works or not, alot of boards onboard sound is broken on release, all the review sites always fail to skip that test, so it never gets seen when they give nice review so people go out and buy busted parts.
A simple basic sound paragraph mention as to yes sound in games / videos / chatting were clean and x # of channels responded correctly. Or sound worked but the mic and mic boost options were broken, so dont buy if you online chat which alot of poeple do? How do you skip such a important detail ??
All this was, is a comparison of 190 bucks worth or silence!!
kepstin - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
If you really care about sound quality, you're probably going to end up using a digital audio output; either co-ax/optical on the motherboard, or via HDMI. At that point it doesn't matter which sound card you have, because you're not using the onboard DAC at all.Rick83 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
The quality of the clock generator still matters, though.sweetspot - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Not true as the question poised clearly states,Most would think a mobo review would include some sort of sound testing as well as just frames, But no sound quality test or mentions in review of 2 different boards comparison, So review of which is faster but no other quality reasons of the boards are compared aka sound ?? why ??
The cost of extra sound card makes huge difference in product purchases, and not reviewing the key pieces is not helpfull at all in my opinion.
Most readers rely on review sites as they have access to parts a normal user does not get alot of computer parts every day to test with.
This review is a A is faster then B review vs a review like A is better quality / price over all then B review which it seems was intended to be ??
strikeback03 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Both are using the Realtek ALC892, so theoretically should be very similar. I'd agree a "it works" should probably be mentioned, but other than that substantial sound quality testing can be extremely subjective.Hrel - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
Are there reviews of the new 15.6" notebooks based on Sandy Bridge with the GT540M and GTX460M coming? You know the ones, from Clevo and Compal with 1080p screens? I've seen them at a couple different places including a very good deal on the GTX460 Clevo from Cyberpower.com. Please please please at least let me know if these reviews are in the pipeline or not.Hrel - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
So why is it that as more and more of the load gets put on the CPU, the northbridge, memory controller, GPU, these motherboards are getting more expensive? Seriously? It doesn't make any sense.Is this why Intel is SOOO far behind supporting USB 3.0 and more than 2 measly SATA 6GBPS ports? LGA 775 I had no issue at all getting a very nice board that OC's well and is still running perfectly and while originally supported P4 was updated in the BIOS to support the latest quad core Penryn's on 45nm and it STILL runs like a dream. LGA 1156 I had to just up to the 100-130 range and depending on who I was building for would go up nearing 150.
But now simple things like SLI require a 200 dollar boards? I know that wasn't supported on the other old boards but it's called "progress" for a reason. I consider that a standard feature now not something reserved for rich people. It is unacceptable to pay more than 150 for a motherboard, even if you put bluetooth on it call it the "Royal Excaliber 12000" and have a prince sign it. Seriously, I didn't expect to see prices over 200 at all till X68 came out. WTF guys, WTF!
MeanBruce - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
Royal what? I used to have a patient named Royal Ruffles, his real name, so peculiar I thought, oh yeah back to mobos. So interesting some readers think it's stupid to spend $200 for a new mainboard while others have no problem dishing out $430 or $450. I mean we are enthusiasts right? It's tax deductible, so I am all for drooling over new Z-branded chipsets and LightPeak support and 16GB of quad memory and incorporated northbridge and overclocking it all with your iPhone. It's a hobby right? It's supposed to be a blast!