The Battle of the P67 Boards - ASUS vs. Gigabyte at $190

Board Features

In the Box

• I/O shield
• SLI 3-slot bridge
• 4 x right-angled SATA connectors

Compared to the ASUS P8P67 Pro, both boxes do not come with much in the way of extra peripherals. Here we get an SLI 3-slot bridge (compared to the 2-slot on the ASUS) but lose the USB 3.0 rear bracket, meaning that one will have to be obtained in order to use the USB 3.0 header on the Gigabyte board.

Software

Smart 6

Smart 6 tries to encapsulate a good portion of the myriad of software available in easy-to-use quick buttons, and is essentially identical to the X58 and P55 iterations of the software. The QuickBoot portion attempts to speed up boot times by bypassing the lengthy BIOS post, assuming there has been no physical hardware change. QuickBoost is a single screen overclocking utility, similar to the EasyTune6 front page. Recovery2 helps roll back the system to a previous set of settings without predefinition of a backup time flag, and also the TimeLock, which is almost superfluous given Windows7 has Parental Controls.

The idea behind TimeLock is similar to that on the Xbox360 parental controls – specify a certain number of hours per day (in this case, two different values for weekdays and weekends) for which the computer can be in use.

@BIOS

@BIOS is the staple Gigabyte BIOS update utility, and has been for a few iterations now. Users should note that to flash the latest BIOS files, the version of @BIOS on the CD is insufficient, and @BIOS 2.1 is required. 2.1 can be downloaded from the Gigabyte website.

Dynamic Energy Saver 2

Another program that Gigabyte has been using on various chipsets is the Dynamic Energy Saver 2. As you can see from the picture, various power saving features can be enabled or disabled through user settings, or you can let the software determine the best course of action.

EasyTune6

The OS overclocking tools are predominantly housed in EasyTune6. The front screen has those easy to use OC buttons, but only having three up to 4 GHz is somewhat limiting on the Sandy Bridge platform, given that most processors will happily do 4.4 GHz plus. There is no system of auto-overclocking detection similar to the ASUS boards.

Despite the software having an option for ‘real time ratio change’, of which there is an option in the BIOS to enable/disable, I could not get this to work. Upon setting a new multiplier, I was asked to reboot to apply it.

As always with EasyTune6, going to advance mode allows voltage manipulation. While it is nice to have such a wide variety of options, given that for Sandy Bridge all you really need is CPU VCore, DRAM and CPU PLL, it would have been easy just to include those in the ‘easy’ mode.

Fan control is basic in EasyTune6. Even in advanced mode, as shown above, you can choose where to put the initial and final ramp positions in terms of temperature against max RPM, but there is no option to define further points on the curve, or no determination of separate fans, so all chassis fans will be controlled by this one profile.