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
In the world of motherboards and manufacturer competition, the idea is to beat your competitor. To develop the product, with more features, more fancy gadgets, and perform better than your competitor at every price point. Today, we pit arguably the two most popular motherboard vendors at a price point that will see a significant number of sales from consumers and enthusiasts alike – the ASUS P8P67 Pro and the Gigabyte P67A-UD4, which were both released during the Sandy Bridge week for $190. Forget all the marketing fluff; this is a showdown!
When a new platform is released, a myriad of motherboards hit the shelves at the same time. Each vendor will usually come out with a few products, targeting their prospective markets. Big motherboard players, like ASUS and Gigabyte, will release motherboards ranging from the cheap low end, to that high-end halo product. They will bombard you with data, ideas, concepts, and reasons why their high-end products are better than their low end – in terms of numbers, features, or what is in the box. Whether you can really trust what each manufacturer says on the box depends on the interpretations of the benchmarks and analyses by review sites like AnandTech.
At the time of writing, Newegg has 56 Sandy Bridge motherboards available – 22 for H67 and 34 for P67. Of those in the P67 range, you can pick up an Intel motherboard for as little as $115, or an ASUS as expensive as $320. So what makes that expensive motherboard worth almost three times as much as the low-end board? What makes a $200 board better than a $150 board? Features? Warranty? Overclockability? Price? All of these points, while valid, carry different weight with every different consumer.
I reviewed the ASRock P67 Extreme4 at the Sandy Bridge release, and they offered a great product that is available online for $153. Today, we have two boards released at $190 by two of the biggest motherboard manufacturers – the ASUS P8P67 Pro, and the Gigabyte P67A-UD4. Firstly, the question is: if you had $190, which one would you buy? Then secondly, we have to ask: are these boards worth the ~$40 difference to the P67 Extreme4? Luckily, at least in my opinion, after using all three of the boards, the answers to both of these questions were self-evident.
Firstly, let us tackle the ASUS P8P67 Pro.
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strikeback03 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
What board was that? As I have hardly seen any P965 boards which had BIOS updates to support Penryn, let alone older chipsets.I'd imagine the short answer is that it helps Intel's bottom line, and until AMD can produce stuff that competes in performance as well as price Intel will continue to gouge for the chipsets. Also Nvidia charges to SLI certify boards, which is probably why the board makers don't include it in cheaper boards.
Hrel - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Asus P5NE-SLI built on the Nvidia 650i SLI chipset.medi01 - Sunday, January 23, 2011 - link
Makes me wonder, how much do they pay for the chipset.I recall buying AMD motherboards supporting the latest CPUs for 50-70$.
Hrel - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
I agree with your conclusion whole heartedly. AsRock has really had their game together this past year or so and they don't seem to be slowing down at all. I used to be a strictly Asus guy but AsRock is looking like it'll be the heart to my next build.airgreek - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
you do know that Asrock is owned by Asus right? I have been in the PC game a LONG time back when Abit was the mobo to own. I only consider three brands for mobo's now (from experience) and those are MSI, Gigabyte, and EVGA. EVGA has INCREDIBLE customer service, while Gigabyte uses solid material to build their boards. MSI is not far behindPeanutsrevenge - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
I agree completely, I LOVE EVGA stuff, it's just not usually suitable for what my customers want, so I don't get to play with their stuff often :(lpjz290 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
even though ASrock is a ASUS subsidiary, they are now also considered a competitor ever since they were listed on the taiwan stock exchange. now that they have produced a board that can perform very close to ASUS P8P67 PRO at a considerably lower price, i'd say these two companies could very well be fighting against each other more often in future (which is gd for ASUS as a whole anyway).Hrel - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
they broke off from Asus, actually.Heloc - Sunday, January 23, 2011 - link
AS of June 2010 ASUS is no longer the majority owner of ASRock but they spun off by issuing shares to ASUS shareholders so both companies have the same board of directors.There is more separation than there was but still than separation than in a simple spin-off.
mckirkus - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
If you're doing any surround sound gaming you'll probably want the UD4. It enables Dolby Digital Live which means you can run one optical cable to a receiver and get real surround sound with games without having to resort to a bunch of analog cables. I was about to get a $100 sound card but the UD4 makes that unnecessary.