ASUS P8P67 Review

Dirt 2

Dirt 2 came to the PC in December 2009, developed by Codemasters with the EGO Engine.  Resulting in favorable reviews, we use Dirt 2’s inbuilt benchmark under DirectX 11 to test the hardware.  We test two different resolutions at two different quality settings using a discrete GPU, and an appropriate integrated GPU setting.

At 1680x1050, the results are all fairly similar from what we have tested in the past. At 1920x1080, the results portray a different story. When you use a single GPU, the results are all fairly similar but when you use a dual GPU configuration, the x4 secondary PCIe lane becomes apparent. Whilst all of the other motherboards manage between 100 and 105 frames per second, the P8P67 only manages to get just under 76. Due to the testing methodology being exactly the same, the only explanation is that there is not enough bandwidth.

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is a challenging DX11 benchmark that challenges every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings.  Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware.

The single GPU results are remarkably similar to all of the other results which we have on record. There is one thing that did differ to the DiRT2 testing though - In Metro 2033, the dual GPU scaling is almost as good as with any other motherboard in 1920x1080. 

Conclusions

Overall, when you look at the results as a whole, they are neither good nor bad for a single GPU. However, with the second PCIe lane being limited to 4x, the results are quite a bit slower in some of our tests when compared to a board which utilizes x8/x8 rather than x16/x4. This may be enough to deter people away from this motherboard but in order to bring a board to the market with a budget price in mind; you have to cut down on a few features here and there.