Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard, Part 2
by Rajinder Gill on February 22, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Bed Setup
| Testbed Setup Overclocking / Benchmark Testbed |
|
| Processor | Intel Core i5 661 ES CPU 3.33GHz, 2 Cores, 4 Threads, 4MB Cache Intel Core i3 540 CPU 3.07GHz, 2 Cores, 4 Threads, 4MB Cache |
| CPU Voltage | Various |
| Cooling | Intel air cooler Heatkiller 3.0 Waterblock PA120.2 Radiator DDC Ultra pump (with Petra top) 1/2 ID tubing |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX950 |
| Memory | Corsair Dominator CMD8GX3M4A1600C8 1600MHz 8GB kit. Rev 3.1 Corsair Dominator CMD8GX3M4A1600C8 1600MHz 8GB kit. Rev 7.1 Corsair XMS3 CMX8GX3M4A1333C9 1333MHz CAS 9 8GB kit. Rev 2.3 G.Skill Perfect Storm 8-8-8-24 2200MHz 4GB kit Corsair Dominator GT 8-8-8-24 2200MHz 4GB kit (two for 8GB) Rev 2.1 |
| Memory Settings | Various |
| Video Cards | MSI 275 Lightning (stock clocks) |
| Video Drivers | nVidia 195.62 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 7200RPM 1TB SATA 3Gbps 32MB OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD |
| Optical Drives | Pioneer DVR-215DBK |
| Case | Dimastech Benching Station (open) Lian-Li V2110 (closed) |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| . | |
We utilized memory kits from Corsair and G.Skill to verify memory compatibility on our test boards. Our OS and primary applications are loaded on the OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD drive and our games operate off the WD Caviar Black 1TB drive. We did a clean install of the OS and applications for each motherboard. We used Intel's stock cooler for the stock comparison testing, while water-cooling via the superlative Heat Killer 3.0 water block was utilized for overclocking. For graphics duty, we used MSI's GTX 275 Lighting GPU to provide performance comparisons between boards during gaming benchmarks.
For our test results we set up each board as closely as possible in regards to memory timings. Otherwise all other settings are left on auto. The P55 utilized 8GB of DDR3 (apart from DFI's MI-T36 which is limited to 4GB), while the X58 platform contained 6GB. The P55 and X58 DDR3 timings were set to 7-7-7-20 1T at DDR3-1600 for the i7-920 and i7-870 processors at both stock and overclocked CPU settings.
We used DDR3-1333 6-6-6-18 1T timings for the i5-750 stock setup for all system benchmarks (non-gaming tests) as DDR3-1600 is not natively supported at a stock BCLK setting of 133. For our Clarkdale i5 661 CPU, we used 7-7-7-20 1N timings at DDR3-1333MHz with 8GB of memory. We would have preferred to use CAS 6 timings to match our Lynnfield setup, but it seems 8GB of memory at CAS 6 on Clarkdale is not possible right now. The 4GHz gaming results used 8GB of memory at DDR3-1280MHz with CAS 6-6-6-18 1N timings to allow a BCLK of 200MHz.
Power Consumption
Our power consumption testing utilizes the same batch of components under similar circumstances in a bid to monitor variances between idle and CPU load conditions using an AC wall meter for power consumption measurements. We install the vendor supplied power saving utilities on each board and enable power saving modes that don't involve any kind of underclocking or CPU core frequency modulation in order to run an apples to apples comparison. Assuming a maximum 150w load in the worst case scenario, actual motherboard power consumption is around 15%~20% lower than the shown figures if you factor out switching losses at the PSU.
Best overall power consumption figures belong to MSI, while boards laden with USB 3.0 features and SATA 6G trail in both idle and load situations.
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56 Comments
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jackylman - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
First, thank you for the detailed information on fan control. I've made a few comments about that in the past and it's nice to see that category now seems to be part of a standard Atech mobo review.I'm not in the market for a Clarkdale platform, but if I was, this article would be very useful.
Shadowmaster625 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
A lot of people are talking about new motherboards being released before they are ready. And for good reason. Why bother? Why not go and buy a well known and well established motherboard like the GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L for $45 and drop in a E5200 and a quiet GT 220 or 5450? Overclock it to a modest 3 GHz and it will surely smoke this H55/H57 garbage in all the gaming benchmarks, for a LOT cheaper.I do not understand the value in this entire product line. Why do you not compare these with the option I just mentioned? I dont care about how intel wastes their monopoly advantage. If hardware from a year ago is cheaper and better than this crap they are shoveling out now, then it is your responsibility to tell us that.
TrackSmart - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Point taken, but as readers, isn't it great that we don't have to buy all the newest, most expensive hardware to find out how it runs? And the problems with it? We can just read articles like this one.The Anandtech folks *do* write articles showing budget parts that offer exceptional value (via overclocking or unlocking cores). This just isn't one of those articles.
Rajinder Gill - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Hi,I think the E5300 was benchmarked against Clarkdale here in our chipset/CPU launch articles.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
regards
Raja
Taft12 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Interestingly, a tasty OC on an E5300 will push the benches up towards the E8600 in those charts, that is to say, faster than Clarkdale.OK, so an E5300 won't get quite THAT far, but it shows you that Clarkdale is marginally better than Wolfdale at best and not at all worth the price.
lukeevanssi - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
if anybody want to know more about it so plz visit this link:-http://www.healthproductreviewers.com/force-factor...
there is a lot off knowledge about this product
TrackSmart - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Thank you for pushing Gigabyte on the AHCI issue! Can you ask them about their 790-series boards, too? I'm frustrated with the lack of AHCI support on my new GA-790-XTA-UD4 motherboard. There's a 30-45 second delay in initializing SATA hard disks when returning from sleep mode. This causes Windows 7 to blue screen. The only fix is to revert to IDE mode for all drives. I wasted 2 days trouble-shooting this only to find out its an unaddressed problem with AHCI support on this motherboard (and many others).Lukas - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
This may not be the solution you're looking for, but it fixes the bluescreen at least:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178/#top">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178/#top
TrackSmart - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Thank you for the tip. I tried the hotfix.It's funny because the hotfix definitely prevents total operating system failure (i.e. BSOD). However, Windows takes up to a full minute to become responsive when resuming from sleep mode. Presumably the OS is waiting as long as it needs to for the SATA boot drive to become responsive again.
I will continue running in Native IDE mode for now, since losing 1% system performance is less irritating than waiting forever for my system to become responsive.
*** It would be nice if AMD or Gigabyte addressed the true problem, but I won't hold my breath. I still haven't heard back from their customer support about this problem and it's been a few days. Not even a "we'll get back to you soon" message. Nada.
Taft12 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Great article Raja, I also appreciate the detail of the good and bad!I have a question for you or anyone else who might know - you mentioned ASUS dropping the MSRP of their H55 board at the start of the article... Where can I look up what the different vendors MSRP's are? Intel and AMD have made it quite easy to find out the 1K unit price of their CPUs on their own sites, but I haven't seen anything similar for motherboard vendors. Is there an authoritative, frequently-updated source?