Welcome to Sandy Bridge, with the ASRock P67 Extreme4
by Ian Cutress on January 3, 2011 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
Final Words
The ASRock P67 Extreme4 shows a lot of potential. With this being our first Sandy Bridge motherboard review, there’s a very fine line of being wowed by Sandy Bridge, and deciding whether this motherboard is something people will want to buy. There will be a lot of choices on offer on release day, and ASRock is obviously competing to be the best board out there.
Our first look at the board is positive. The color scheme isn’t something to be disgusted by, the UEFI is easy to navigate and offers the options you would expect. The PCIe slots are ideally spaced, and the ability to use either 1155/1156 and 775 coolers is always a plus in my book. The 4.6GHz overclock straight from the UEFI option is also a bonus, as is the USB 3.0 bracket included in the box, which as I mentioned previously, I could easily see it on sale for $15. The USB speed, thanks to XFast, is better than other motherboards, and the 2D performance is quite good as well.
On the negative side, you could consider ASRock’s idea to put the default BCLK at 100.4MHz, as it means other vendors will do similar or push even higher. We'd like to see stock clocks be exactly that, and a 0.4% boost while small is sometimes enough to put your board slightly higher on benchmark charts. But on the plus side, if that works for the consumer, it results in a slightly faster system. Also a negative is the fan header location, the lack of dual gigabit Ethernet connectors, and that the Instant Boot software failed to work at the 4.6GHz overclock. The warranty for this board is one year in the US (two in Europe, three in China/Asia), with an option to extend to two for a fee. This is a little less than warranties by other manufacturers, such as ASUS which offers three on their main P67 lines.
If ASRock are really able to get this board out for $150, we have a really nice offering here. Compared to a couple of other boards I have tested this week, I'm liking this ASRock board more and more. It looks OK, it performs well, and the box contains that nice USB bracket. A lot of people would be quite happy with this motherboard if it performs as it did on our test bed. We're not ready to crown the champion P67 board just yet, but the ASRock P67 Extreme4 is definitely a contender.
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Wander7 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Still using "ATI" on the motherboard.. I guess they don't want to use "AMD" or didn't get the memo.anandskent - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Why are there no results for the overclocked system in the benchmarks for either the SNB CPU article or this mobo article?Also, isnt that a fan header by the 8pin cpu power? it would make the board have 6 total then
IanCutress - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
The 3D Movement multithreaded benchmark was tested at the 4.6 GHz overclock. This is mentioned in the text, and in the graph for that benchmark.And yes indeed, that is a 6th fan header. It has no fan control in the UEFI or OS.
Ian
justaviking - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
"the H series taking advantage of the graphics on the processor die"Sorry if I missed this, but I wanted to be sure on something obvious.
P-series = No onboard graphics, discrete only. That's clear.
H-series = Onboard graphics... but can it ALSO USE DISCRETE GRAPHICS???
Maybe it's so boneheaded it wasn't worth pointing out. Maybe I should have a second cup of coffee.
sviola - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
From what I understood, none have on-board graphics, and the H series is designed to use the on-chip (CPU) graphics, while the P series is designed for discrete graphics (altough you can use the on-chip graphics as well).justaviking - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Thanks. That is what I assumed, but I didn't see it explicitly spelled out.P.S.
Sorry about the sloppy terminology. I mean "on-chip" when I wrote "on-board". I understand the difference. Thanks being gentle with me.
evilspoons - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Not quite. If you Anand's article from today about Sandy Bridge, I got the opposite impression.P can not use the on-CPU graphics at all but supports full overclocking of CPU and memory. H can use on-CPU or discrete graphics (or both simultaneously, it would seem), but only supports memory overclocking. Z is meant to fix that by allowing full overclocking and including the "FDI" (flexible display interface) needed to access the on-CPU graphics processor.
bah12 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
What I'm confused about is this. The K series gives us the faster GPU, and the ability to fully overclock the cpu. However you cant use the GPU since the whole reason for getting the K sku is the overclock, thus the P series board and no GPU.Where does this leave QuickSync (arguably the top selling point)? From what I understand we cannot have a fully overclocked QuickSync CPU right?
ericore - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Overclock option is only for CPU + Discreet GPU (limitation of a current motherboards; a stupid one at that; cheap Intel bast****)QuickSync comes with i5 and greater regardless of the motherboard (it is an instruction set; all of which are built-in to CPU)
I want want AMD Bulldozer to kill your royal heighness, and bring hardware market back to democracy.
vol7ron - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
You forgot to mention that P allows for SLI/x-Fire, whereas H does not (since it only supports one discrete gpu).