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
ASUS bring a lot of innovation to the UEFI table over what I have seen from other vendors. The implementation of EZ mode (‘easy’ mode, for us Brits that pronounce that letter ‘zed’) gives the screen below on first entering the UEFI. At a glance, it gives vital motherboard information – CPU, speed, memory, temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, and boot order. The boot order is a great addition, allowing the user to drag-click the order they want. Also available is the three performance options – low power, standard, and performance.
By clicking onto the advanced mode, we get a more BIOS-esque representation of all the motherboard features. The Ai tweaker provides all the overclocking tools we would expect, and more than you find in the Ai Suite in the OS. Features use either a text box for typing values, or a selection box for preset values. The user can utilise the mouse or the keyboard for either task.
Elements such as enhanced sleep states appear under the Advanced CPU Configuration menu, where cores and ratios can be determined. In the Onboard Devices section, if you are not using the Marvell SATA ports, it is advised that this be switched off, to increase boot time by 1-2 seconds.
Fan controls are found in the Monitor tab, where a low limit fan RPM can be given and fan control can be switched between standard/silent/turbo/manual. In manual mode, you can adjust the upper and lower temperature of the fan and at which percentage speed it should run at those temperatures.
Users can specify advanced mode to be shown as soon as the UEFI is selected, and ten UEFI profiles can be saved. The UEFI can also be updated through the Tools tab if the latest file is supplied on a USB drive and plugged in before the ‘update’ option is chosen.
Overclocking
Overclocking on the P8P67 Pro was easy. The UEFI EZ mode offers a performance mode option, which on selecting, enabled the XMP profile of the memory, applied a 103 BCLK, and set the turbo limit to 42x, giving a 4.33 GHz overclock.
As the Ai Suite offers the ‘Auto Tuning’ option, I selected this in the OS and let the program do its thing. After a couple of reboots, and a BSOD, the OS booted into a screen showing a 43x multiplier at 103.5 BCLK (4.45 GHz), and attempted a series of stability tests, slowing increasing the BCLK by 0.5 every 30 seconds. At 105.5 BCLK, a BSOD screen appeared and seemed to crash halfway through, requiring me to reset the system physically. On the next boot, it was stated that the 43x103.5 overclock was applied and now usable. This system is likeable as it promises to adjust depending on how overclockable the processor is.
The downside is that the Ai Suite is quite conservative. I kept with the 103.5 BCLK and went into the UEFI. In advanced mode, adjusting the turbo ratio by one each time and rebooting led to a 46x multiplier (4.76 GHz) successfully passing stability tests. For 47x multiplier (4.86 GHz), I increased the PLL to 1.9V, CPU VCore to 1.42 V, and adjusted the short/long power limits to 150 W/130 W to get a successful stability test pass. This automatically set the memory to a command rate of 3T, so was set back to 1T manually. The 48x multiplier did not boot at this level, and I was not prepared to up the VCore or power limits any more. A 4.86 GHz overclock is very respectable!
At 4.86 GHz (47% OC over 3.3 GHz/non turbo/multithreaded, 31% OC over 3.7 GHz/turbo/single-threaded), the 3D Movement benchmark was run. In single thread mode, a score of 148.92 was achieved, a 31% increase. In multi-threaded mode, a score of 477.60 was achieved, a 37% increase.
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IanCutress - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
Edited; simple copy/paste error. Glad you liked the review, we should have some H67 on the way next.Ian
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
May as well go down to detroit and buy a big fat rock. I would like to see you guys put together two $600 systems. One based on these outrageous $200 motherboards and a $200 cpu, and $200 for everything else. And put that up against a $70 motherboard and $200 cpu and put the extra $130 into a video card. Who in their right mind would choose this new crap? Dont even talk about encoding because encoding is something you start and then walk away. You dont need to be there to watch it encode so it dont matter how long it takes. (For 95% of users. Dont play these 5 percent mindgames.)vol7ron - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
I never walk away from my boxmarc1000 - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
this is off-topic, but i think you should walk away from your box a little more. =DHrel - Thursday, January 20, 2011 - link
I agree anything over 150 for a motherboard is stupid. But these new Sandy Bridge CPU's are great! It's called progress, and when you do a lot of encoding speed does matter even if you do walk away and/or use another computer in the mean time. Not to mention how intensive encoding full 1080p content is, what about 3D and in the future 4K HD and 8K HD. It's called progress and it's a good thing!Shadowmaster625 - Monday, January 24, 2011 - link
If you do a LOT of encoding, then you will have 2, 3, or 4 machines stacked up next to each other. And those machines would have Athlon X4's and cost $200 apiece to build. Only a fool spends $200, $300, or more, on a cpu just to encode something a little bit faster. You can get much better overall throughput using cheap AMD processors from the last generation. That fact holds true whether you encode one hour a week of video, or 1000. Intel is simply hoping that people are dumber than they may or may not really be.Fatchap - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
I used to type the command to load up a game or an application, press play on the tape player and walk away. I guess you still do the same as you would not want any of this new crap.Shadowmaster625 - Monday, January 24, 2011 - link
You are quite delusional and propagandized if you think comparing a 2600K to something like a Q6600 or X2-250 is like going from "tape players" whatever you might use now. If you want a proper comparison, try VHS vs SuperVHS. Remember that? Oh yes, you must go out and spend $300 on that shiny new super-vhs player. All your old tapes will still look the same. But that's ok because anything new you record will look pretty good. (Of course if you ever stopped and thought about it, back in the day things always looked pretty good when you first recorded them. It's not until you tried playing it back in a different vcr that it started looking bad.)When someone can build a $500 gaming system that runs faster than something with a previous generation cpu and motherboard for less money then I might begin to be interested. But when you have to go with half the stream processors just to pay for a bunch of new crap that doesnt even get you anything, it makes no sense. These chips are supposed to result in cheaper motherboards. More integration, lesss complexity, bla bla bla. Well I dont see it. I just see a money grab.
seamusmc - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Shadow, some of us are still a generation or two behind. We'll definitely see more then a 5 percent boost. Personally I've been waiting for this 'perfect storm' of price and performance for quite some time, though I may wait for the 22nm refresh.Sure if you have an X58 platform with a 950 it probably doesn't make sense to upgrade, certainly not for gaming. Though many of the folks that frequent this site are enthusiasts and just want to play with the new hardware regardless of cost.
seamusmc - Friday, January 21, 2011 - link
Shadow, just realized the 5 percent gain you were talking about may have been between a $70 P67 board and $200 P67 board.I'd agree on that front. Though the more expensive boards do come with more features, USB hubs, and some better quality components.