| ASUS P7P55D-E Pro Motherboard |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Bruce Normann | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 24 June 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro Motherboard ReviewThe Intel P55 platform has been with us for a good while now, and it is a real sleeper, having the memory controller integrated with the CPU gives it a nice performance advantage over competing products, even higher priced ones. If it has any serious shortcomings, it's the number of PCI-e lanes that it supports. With a maximum of 16 lanes of PCI-e 2.0 available for graphics cards, there is no room for expansion, if additional devices require PCI-e 2.0 connectivity. Guess what the most common support chips for SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 require? You got it, PCI-e 2.0. ASUS works their way out of this problem on the P7P55D-E Pro Motherboard with a PCI Bridge from PLX Technology that takes some spare PCI Express 1.1 lanes, converts them into the required PCI-e 2.0 version, and serves them up to the latest NEC and Marvell controllers. Benchmark Reviews was intrigued by this latest combination and we're pleased to present a review.
ASUS has almost a dozen motherboards in the P7P55 series, plus some specialty off-shoots, like the Sabretooth board. As they gain features, they increase in price, but all share some common traits. The P55 was initially considered a Mainstream product, but the H55 products may have taken over that role. Integrated graphics covers a lot of ground, especially when you consider that two thirds of all discrete graphics cards sold are priced below $100. Still, if you want discrete graphics, the P55 is a better choice of platforms and there is a wide selection of boards for every price point. Speaking of price point, this is the lowest priced P55 board that supports USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s with the correct PCI-e 2.0 connectivity, and doesn't sacrifice graphics performance to do it. Plus, you also have the option of CrossFireX or SLI for your multi-GPU needs. Not every P55-based motherboard supports that functionality. Let's dig a little deeper into all the things that the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard offers, and then we'll see how it performs in our challenging test suite. About ASUSTeK Computer Inc.ASUS, a technology-oriented company with a global staff of more than ten thousand and blessed with one of the world's top R&D teams, is renowned for high-quality products and cutting-edge innovation. As a leading company in the new digital era, ASUS offers a complete product portfolio to compete in the new millennium.
ASUS has an unyielding commitment to innovation and quality, a fact borne out by its corporate slogan-"Inspiring Innovation - Persistent Perfection"-and the numerous media, industry and governmental accolades it receives every year. In 2008, ASUS won 3,056 awards-receiving over 8 awards on average every day. The company's revenue for the same year was 8.1 billion U.S. dollars, and it topped the IT Hardware Category of the annual league table of Taiwan's Top 10 Global Brands with a brand value of 1.324 billion U.S. dollars. ASUS also ranks among the top 10 IT companies in Business Week's "InfoTech 100", and has been on the listing for 11 consecutive years. Inspired by the diverse needs of consumers in all areas and phases of life, ASUS' foremost mission is to deliver truly innovative solutions that in turn inspire consumers to reach for greater heights of productivity and fun. By leveraging its intimate understanding of the requirements of today's digital home, digital office and digital person, ASUS has the honor of claiming many world's firsts-such as the introduction of the groundbreaking Eee PCTM, the ingenious use of renewable materials like leather and bamboo in notebooks and the incorporation of its proprietary power-saving Super Hybrid Engine technology into its notebooks and motherboards. By pioneering many new innovations, trends and technologies that have had a genuine impact on its customers' lives and the Earth at large, ASUS hopes to garner mindshare as well as market share. To succeed in the ultra-competitive IT industry, ASUS focuses on speed-to-market, cost and service. That is why every ASUS employee strives to master the "ASUS Way of Total Quality Management" in order to fulfill the "Persistent Perfection" promise of the brand. Guided by these precepts, ASUS has developed a strong advantage in product design, technology, quality and value/cost. These advantages in turn constitute ASUS' formula for success-allowing marketing to communicate these strengths to win our consumers' hearts. Intel Lynnfield LGA1156 CPUCore is Intel's latest generation of dynamically scalable microarchitectures. The Intel Core i5 processor is based on the same energy-efficient processor core as the Intel Core i7 processor, but is designed for mainstream computing.
Formerly codenamed "Lynnfield," the new Intel Core i5 chips are based on Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture and are designed for mainstream consumers. All LGA1156-socket processors are lead-and-halogen-free and feature Intel's exclusive Turbo Boost Technology. Intel Core i7 processors also support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, which duplicates cores and thereby turns a four-core processor into a virtual eight-core unit. The new Core i7 and i5 processors are the first Intel processors to integrate both a 16-lane PCI Express 2.0 graphics port and two-channel memory controller, enabling all input/output and manageability functions to be handled by the single-chip Intel P55 Express Chipset. A new Direct Media Interface (DMI) connects between the processor and chipset. For more information on Intel's new LGA1156 Core i5 and i7 series, please visit our Featured Reviews: Processors section which includes comprehensive articles on the Intel Core i5-750 Processor BX80605I5750 and Intel Core i7-870 Processor BX80605I7870. Intel Core i5 Features
Quad-Core Processing
Intel Turbo Boost Technology
8 MB Intel Smart Cache
Integrated Memory Controller
Intel HD Boost Intel P55 Express ChipsetThe ASUS P7P55 series motherboard platform is designed for the Intel Core i5/i7 LGA1156 'Lynnfield' processor (CPU) and Intel P55 Express Chipset (IOH). New to the P55 platform is a Direct Media Interface (DMI) that connects between the processor and chipset. The chipset supports 8 PCI Express 1.1 x1 Ports (2.5GT/s) for flexible device support. Dual graphics cards are supported by the CPU directly, in a "2x8" configuration. The chipset also supports six SATA 3Gb/s Ports with Intel Matrix Storage Technology providing RAID levels 0/1/5/10. Up to 14 USB 2.0 Ports can be supported with the chipset's integrated USB 2.0 Rate Matching Hub, along with Intel High Definition Audio for premium digital sound. The Lynnfield CPU incorporates the system memory controller (as it did beginning with Nehalem) and accesses DDR3 memory through two independent, direct memory channels. The CPU also provides support for the two PCIe graphics slots via the Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) bus, and is limited to 16 lanes. The DMI connection between the Intel P55 Express chipset (IOH) and Lynnfield CPU is based on a PCI-e x4 connection and allows for only 2 GB/s of bandwidth. This limited bandwidth is not an issue, since the P55 only provides support for the legacy SATA, USB and other system interfaces, all low-speed functions that used to be performed by the Southbridge (ICH).
All motherboard busses and components are driven from a single base clock with a standard clock speed of 133.33 MHz; this is known as the B-Clock or BCLK. The individual component speed values are generated by applying a multiplier value to this base clock. There are four multipliers on the motherboard which are used to set the clock rates for: 1. CPU Speed: When multiplied by the system base clock speed (default 133.33 MHz), gives the CPU frequency. Four multipliers are used to define different speeds based on the number of active CPU cores. 2. Memory Speed: When multiplied by the system base clock speed, gives the memory frequency. For example a memory multiplier of 10 times the base clock of 133.33 MHz results in a memory frequency of 1333 MHz. 3. Direct Media Interface (DMI) Speed: Selectable transfer rate of data transferred between the CPU and the IOH. (Note: Many BIOS programs and monitoring utilities (CPU-z, etc.) will report this as QPI. This is the interface used between the LGA1366 CPUs and the X58 Chipset.) 4. Uncore Speed: This multiplier applies to the non-CPU related items in the processor. The limit on this multiplier is set by the memory multiplier. Intel P55 Express Chipset Features
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CPU |
Intel Socket 1156 CoreTM i7 Processor/CoreTM i5 Processor/CoreTM i3 Processor |
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Chipset |
Intel P55 Express Chipset |
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Memory |
4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR3 2200(O.C.)*/1600/1333/1066 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory |
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Expansion Slots |
2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (single at x16 or dual at x8 / x8 mode) |
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Multi-GPU Support |
Supports NVIDIA Quad-GPU SLITM Technology |
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Storage |
Intel P55 Express Chipset built-in |
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LAN |
Realtek 8112L Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2 |
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Audio |
VIA VT1828S 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC |
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IEEE 1394 |
VIA 6308P controller supports 2 x 1394a port(s) (one at mid-board; one at back panel) |
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USB |
NEC USB 3.0 controller |
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ASUS Unique Features |
Unique PCIe X4 Chip for Ultra Performance |
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Overclocking Features |
Precision Tweaker2 |
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Back Panel I/O Ports |
1 x PS/2 Keyboard (Purple) |
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Internal I/O Connectors |
3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports |
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BIOS |
16 Mb Flash ROM , AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.5, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 |
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Manageability |
WfM 2.0,DMI 2.0,WOL by PME,WOR by PME,PXE |
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Accessories |
User's manual |
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Support Disc |
Drivers |
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Form Factor |
ATX Form Factor |
Closer Look: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro
The P7P55D-E PRO motherboard doesn't break any current ASUS design traditions. On the surface, it looks like several other P55 and H55 boards in their product catalog. ASUS sell 37 different LGA 1156 style motherboards on Newegg, and 28 of them are equipped with the Intel P55 Express Chipset. They range in price from $108 to $350, and the variety of features is what largely determines the pricing. In this section and the next, we'll show you the features that are most important to determining where this motherboard fits in the product line. We'll try to answer the question, "Why should I buy THIS one?"
Perhaps the most significant feature of the P7P55D-E PRO is the PCI Bridge chip from PLX Technology, which allows this board to support SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 with full PCI-e 2.0 connectivity, without horning in on the limited number of PCI-e 2.0 lanes supported by the Lynnfield CPU. The P55 Express Chipset doesn't have any PCI-e 2.0 interfaces to offer, it's limited to PCI-e 1.1 connections only. The problem of peripherals grabbing some of the PCI-e bandwidth has always been an issue with the LGA 1156 / P55 architecture, but it was not experienced by most users. With the introduction of two brand new high-speed interfaces to the world this year, all of a sudden there is a real possibility that in certain circumstances, one of the subsystems is going to be throttled by a lack of bandwidth.
Asus takes this issue seriously, and they have used a similar design in their Model U3S6 USB 3.0 & SATA 6Gb/s Add-on card, which they are currently offering as a free bundle with many of their mid-range motherboard offerings. With the P7P55D-E Pro it's built in, so no worries. This is not the first motherboard ASUS has released with this technology, but it is currently the lowest priced P55 motherboard that can support SLI and CrossFireX with dual 8x connections AND the latest SATA and USB interfaces at the same time.
ASUS uses T.Probe Technology for Active Cooling to detect and balance power phase loads and temperatures in real-time. With optimal power phase functions, components run cooler and live longer. In the past, the multiple PWM phases were strictly controlled by the downstream load. The more transistors that were switching on and off, the higher the current draw was, and the PWM controller responded by expanding the width of the DC pulses and in some cases, increasing the number of phases providing those pulses. There was always some sort of algorithm in play, but for the first time the firmware is both measuring component temperature and providing a diet of pulse width and phases that is optimized for keeping the CPU temperatures as low as possible.
ASUS sticks with the 12+2 PWM design that is featured on most of the boards in this P7P55 series, but the addition of the T.Probe changes the arithmetic somehow to make it a 16 Hybrid Phase Power Design power supply (* 16 Hybrid Phase = 12+2 Phase x T.Probe). I think the LGA 1156 product marketing team became jealous of the 16+2 designs available on some ASUS motherboards, and they started experimenting with alternative base number systems...because in base 10, 12+2=14.
Memory configuration is Dual-Channel, with support for up to 16 GB of DDR3 2200 in overclocking modes. For my testing, I used DDR3 1600 DIMMS with the Intel XMP profile embedded in the SPD tables. You have to specifically choose the XMP mode in the BIOS, otherwise the board boots up with the standard SPD values. Although I was hoping it would just detect it and go for the XMP settings automatically, I guess it's safer for the default BIOS settings to stick with the standard SPD values. The DIMM slots are the latest single-latch units that ASUS has adopted. For most people, who will probably go for a 2 x 2GB stick solution, you have to use the blue slots. If you accidentally put one or two sticks of memory only in the black slots, the board will not boot up.
The rear I/O panel has 8 USB ports (the two blue ports are USB 3.0), PS/2 connectors for Mouse and Keyboard, optical and coaxial S/PDIF ports, an IEEE 1394 Firewire port, an E-SATA port, a gigabit Ethernet port, and the regular 8-channel audio ports. Nothing out of the ordinary here, except the USB 3.0 ports.
At the rear edge of the board, most of the SATA connectors face out, not up. This makes for fewer clearance problems with cable routing. The light blue colored ones are connected to the P55 Platform Controller Hub (PCH), and the white ones connect to the Marvell SE9123 SATA 6Gb/s controller. There are two blue ones that face up, but they are not in the path of any expansion card slots, so they won't cause a problem. There is also one lone SATA 2 connector down along the bottom edge, which is controlled by the JMicron JMB363 controller chip, and it also controls the E-SATA port on the I/O panel and the PATA connection. ASUS recommends using this port for the Optical Disk Drive, but the location is hardly convenient for that, as most PC cases have the 5.25" bays towards the top of the case.
The card slot layout is ideal for SLI or CrossFireX, in that there are still one regular PCI slot and two PCI-E x1 slots available after stuffing two double-width video cards in the 16x slots. I must complain though, about the fact that only the upper PCI-E x16 slot is wired for all 16 lanes, the lower one is only wired for 8 lanes. This limits your choice of where to install a single video card, if you want the benefits of the full PCI-e bandwidth between the CPU and GPU(s). The one PCI-e x1 connector you are most likely to lose (the beige one) is a 2.5GT/s connection. The two blue ones that are not obstructed by the video cards handle 5 GT/s (gigatransfers per second).
Let's take an even closer look at some of the unique features on this motherboard...
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro Detailed Features
A common feature of ASUS' many P55-based boards is this multi-color "snowflake" of a heatsink mounted on the P55 Express Chipset. It's solid aluminum and the intricate pattern actually does serve to increase the surface area for improved cooling. It looks like it takes up valuable real estate, but it sits high enough that there are all sorts of SMD components resting in its shadow.
The basic functions of the motherboard are taken care of by these five support chips. The ICS 9LPRS140CKLF is the clock generator for most of the auxiliary clocks on the board. The VIA Vinyl VT1828S is a 10-channel audio codec, compatible with Intel High Definition Audio specification. Plus it supports stereo 24-bit resolution and up to 192 kHz sample rate for both the DAC and ADC sections; the SNR is 110 dB for the DAC and 100dB for the ADC. The Realtek RTL8112L onboard NIC supports 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet and AI NET for enhanced functionality.
The VIA VT6308 provides IEEE 1394 Firewire capability, and the Winbond chip provides for the basic I/O functions like Keyboard, Mouse, and front panel controls.
The three ICs below are responsible for all the fancy footwork associated with energy management and overclocking. The TurboV chip handles all the high-level application programs like Auto Tuning, TurboV , CPU Level UP and Turbo Key. Any performance improvements that are not done manually in BIOS are handled by this IC. The EPU-2 IC (PEM ASP0800) handles the high level energy management tasks, like the ASUS 16 Hybrid Phase, T.Probe Technology for Active Cooling, and Fan Xpert. The control outputs from the EPU-2 direct the PEM ASP0801 to perform the low-level PWM control of the power MOSFETS and their driver ICs. Between the two devices, they have the ability to control 16 phase of PWM voltage regulation.
These next three ICs work together to provide the USB 3.0 connections as well as the SATA 6Gb/s ports on the motherboard. The PLX Technology chip on the left (PEX8608) takes the PCI-e 1.1 lanes that the P55 dishes out and converts them to PCI-e 2.0 lanes. That's what the two chips from NEC and Marvell are designed to interface with, and they need the extra capacity of the PCI-e 2.0 connection to provide the specified data rates. Even with this higher-bandwidth interface to the P55, the SATA connection is still limited to 5Gb/s because that's all the PCI-E 2.0 spec is good for. This is a very common situation right now, and we'll have to wait for the next generation (6 Series) hub controller from Intel to get native SATA 6Gb/s support on an Intel platform. AMD recently released their SB850 Southbridge with native support for six full-speed SATA 6Gb/s ports, so they're a bit ahead of the game. In case you missed it elsewhere in the article, the NEC chip provides two ports of USB connectivity, and the Marvell SE9123 provides two ports of SATA 6Gb/s.
One of the useful touches that ASUS has introduced lately is the MemOK! button. Every now and then, as you are fine tuning the base clock, the memory clock will get a little overboard. BAM, now you have to recover from a failed overclock. By pressing this button, you can be assured that the memory modules will pass POST, and there's a good chance all your other settings will be saved. The same thing goes for when you're trying to find a reasonable voltage for your RAM. You HAVE to get down to the point of instability in order to find the lowest possible voltage that works, and is stable. The only way to find that point is to go past it and then double back. Once again, this little button will allow you to get through POST on your first restart. It doesn't make the board perform any better, per se, but it sure helps to accelerate the process of tuning for maximum performance.
Speaking of the trials and tribulations of overclocking, let's look at that next.
ASUS BIOS and Overclocking
It seems like Intel, AMD and NVIDIA can't help themselves. Every new product line they introduce seems to have a built-in capacity for higher clock rates. In this very aggressive semiconductor marketplace, it seems there is a soft spot for conservative speed ratings. It's not like this is a big secret anymore; ever since enthusiasts started getting 100% overclocks on the Intel Core2 Duo chips with decent air cooling, it seems the whole world is in on it.
ASUS makes it easier and easier to achieve those overclocks with each new major release of their BIOS. For several years now, the core functions required to maximize the performance of your PC have been contained on the "Ai Tweaker" tab of the custom AMI BIOS. There are several ways of tweaking the performance. CPU Level Up is the simplest; it just bumps up your BIOS settings to the next higher level processer specs. If there isn't one, you can jump up to the next tier; got an i5, want an i7? Just do it, as they say. The OC tuner takes a more deliberate approach, and goes through a sequence of repeatedly raising clocks and then testing for stability. It's a well established process that most people would do themselves, manually. With OC Tuner, it's automated. Lastly, there is support for utility programs that run in Windows and can speed up the process by eliminating the repetitive rebooting process.
I'm a manual overclocker at heart; it's how I learned it the first time I did it, and I'm most comfortable when I have full control. Yes, it's just an illusion, but humor me..... I also get annoyed with machines that don't think the way I do. For example, if I'm running benchmarks, I can't have the Intel SpeedStep controller slowing the CPU down at the exact moment I press the button to start a test. The lag isn't that much, but it's never consistent. The same goes for Intel TurboMode; it cranks up one of the cores to Eleven at the first sign of a major CPU task. Nice! Great! Love it! But once again it doesn't do it exactly the same each and every time. I tried running some benchmarks with it turned on and they were all over the map; it's most intrusive with short tests like the memory assessments in Everest. I could never get two sets of results that matched with either of these features turned on.
In order to reach the full potential of your system, it is usually necessary to adjust some system voltages. Once again, everything is accessible in BIOS, with either the automated processes I discussed above, or with fully manual adjustments. All the basics are here, and I especially like how the current voltage is displayed; it gives you an idea of the default voltage without having to go look it up on some obscure website, if you can find it at all.
Ultimately, I decided to perform the testing for this article with two different overclocks. One was achieved with the default voltage for everything. All I did was set the memory to the correct speed and timings, using the XMP profile embedded in the DIMMs, and adjust the base clock and multiplier for the CPU. With these few, simple changes I got a stable overclock of 3.6 GHz on the CPU, with TurboMode turned off for testing purposes.
After I completed testing with that configuration, I turned the CPU voltage up slightly to 1.30 volts, and then bumped the CPU up to 4.0 GHz. I left it there for a couple reasons. One, a 1.33 GHz increase is pretty significant upgrade; it's 50% higher than the factory clock. Two, 4.0 GHz is a nice round number, a milestone, if you will. Three, the 200 MHz base clock kept the memory speeds right at their rated specs. I could have pushed them higher, but for the sake of comparison, it's helpful yo keep as many things constant as possible. Four, core temps on the CPU were creeping up and I didn't want to risk instability. It's a real pain to get to the last test of the day and find out that it's the only one that crashes your system with its new settings....
The P55 platform, and ASUS' P7P55D-E Pro, may look like a mainstream product, and it may be priced in the same range as a mainstream product, but it sure behaves like an enthusiast product. Couple that with the fact that it supports SLI and CrossFireX with the full, unaltered 16 lanes of PCI-e 2.0 connections direct to the CPU and you have a product that is eminently suited for gaming usage.
Please stick around for the next section, as we proceed with testing.
Motherboard Testing Methodology
I've done much of my benchmarking recently with an AMD platform. The ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard features the AMD 790FX Northbridge and offers 42 available PCI-e lanes. Obviously, CrossFireX configurations are easily supported with this many lanes of interconnect. The Phenom II architecture also features an integrated memory controller, which has consistently benefitted the AMD platform in the last several years. So, it might seem like an odd choice for comparison, but it's a well established baseline for me and allows me to spot performance differences easily, and with precision.
Test Systems
Intel LGA 1156 System
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Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro (1002 BIOS)
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System Memory: 2x 2GB GSKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz (7-8-7-24)
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Processor: Intel Core i5-750
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CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems (Delta AFB1212SHE)
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Video: ASUS EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 5870 (ATI Catalyst Driver 10.5)
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Drive 1: OCZ Vertex SSD, 32GB
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Drive 2: Western Digital VelociRaptor, 150GB
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Optical Drive: Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7190A-OB 20X IDE DVD Burner
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Enclosure: CM STORM Sniper Gaming Case
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PSU: Corsair CMPSU-750TX ATX12V V2.2 750Watt
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Monitor: SOYO 24"; Widescreen LCD Monitor (DYLM24E6) 1920X1200
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Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate Version 6.1 (Build 7600)
AMD AM3 System
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Motherboard: ASUS M4A79T Deluxe (2205 BIOS)
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System Memory: 2x 2GB OCZ Reaper HPC DDR3 1600MHz (7-7-7-24)
- Processor: AMD Phenom II 720 Black Edition (Overclock to 3.8 GHz)
- CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper Z600
- Video: ASUS EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 5870 (ATI Catalyst Driver 10.5)
- Drive 1: GSKILL Titan SSD, 128GB
- Optical Drive: Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7190A-OB 20X IDE DVD Burner
- Enclosure: Lian Li PC- P50R Gaming Case
- PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer ATX12V V2.2 750Watt
- Monitor: SOYO 24"; Widescreen LCD Monitor (DYLM24E6) 1920X1200
- Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate Version 6.1 (Build 7600)
Benchmark Applications
- Lavalys EVEREST Ultimate Edition v5.50
- Futuremark PCMark Vantage 1.0.2.0 64-Bit
- Maxon CINEBENCH 11.5 64-Bit
- Passmark Performance Test v7.0 (1011) 64 Bit
- Crysis v1.21 Benchmark v1.03 (Very High Settings, 0x and 4x Anti-Aliasing)
- Aliens vs. Predator (Texture Q-Very High, Shadow Q-High, HW Tessellation & Advanced Shadow Sampling-ON, MSAA-0 & 4x, AF-16x, SSAO-ON)
I took the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard to two different levels of stable overclock for these tests. The first, at 3.6 GHz (200 MHz BCLK x 18) I got easily without raising the CPU voltage from the default value. I then raised the voltage just a bit to 1.30 VDC, and changed the CPU multiplier to 20 for a 4.0GHz overclock. The memory speeds available depended on the base clock speed, and with a 200 MHz BCLK, I was able to keep the memory precisely at its rated 1600MHz speed. Memory timings were kept at their default XMP settings of 7-8-7-24 for all tests. Don't be fooled by the reference to QPI in the CPU-Z display, it's actually the DMI interface that's being reported.
EVEREST Benchmark Results
EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology by Lavalys. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC. All of the benchmarks used in our test bed: Queen, Photoworxx, and AES, rely on basic x86 instructions, and consume very low system memory while also being aware of Hyper Threading, multi-processors, and multi-core processors.
CPU Benchmarks
The last time I tested the AMD AM3 platform with Everest Ultimate Edition and the triple-core 720 Black Edition Processor, it kicked the Intel E7300 Core2 Duo to the curb on this test suite. This time, it's Intel who gets to do the kicking, with its i5-750 doing the honors.
The EVEREST Queen benchmark shows some nice scaling with the i5 overclock, just like a good synthetic benchmark should. The i5 with 4 cores and standard clocks beats the triple-core 720BE by about 30%, which makes sense. The Queen benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and misprediction penalties of the CPU. It does this by finding possible solutions to the classic queen problem on a chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores.
The Photoworxx benchmark tests for penalties against pipeline architecture. This synthetic benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than two processing threads are used. The EVEREST Photoworxx benchmark performs the following tasks on a very large RGB image:
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Fill
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Flip
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Rotate90R (rotate 90 degrees CW)
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Rotate90L (rotate 90 degrees CCW)
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Random (fill the image with random colored pixels)
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RGB2BW (color to black & white conversion)
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Difference
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Crop
The Everest documentation hints that this benchmark is highly dependent on memory write speed, and we've see ample evidence of that in prior tests. Here we see a huge gain by the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard, in part due to the strength of the integrated memory controller on the Lynnfield CPU. The Phenom II X3 with its integrated memory controller blew the Intel Core2 Duo systems out of the water with a 74% gain in previous tests, so think of this test as more of a memory + CPU benchmark. The results also scaled nicely with the overclocks on the i5 CPU, even though the memory speed remained constant at 1600 MHz.
The AES integer benchmark measures CPU performance using AES data encryption. It utilizes Vincent Rijmen, Antoon Bosselaers and Paulo Barreto's public domain C code in ECB mode and consumes only 48 MB of memory. The AES test produced a close call between the ASUS P7P55 board with a stock i5-750, and the ASUS M4A79T with its overclocked Phenom II X3 CPU. Once the i5 gets its own overclock, it pulls ahead but not to the same degree that it does in the other tests in this suite. Clearly, Intel had a good reason for upgrading the AES algorithms in its latest processors.
The Zip Library provides another opportunity for the AMD platform to shine. In the end, it's still no match for the i5 platform and its new memory controller. Once again, the ease at which this motherboard and processor combination overclocked means that higher levels of performance are just a few well-placed keystrokes away.
So far, memory performance seems to have had an impact on some of the synthetic benchmarks in Everest, so it's a good idea to look at the pure memory benchmarks that are available in the test suite. EVEREST Ultimate Edition offers three simple memory bandwidth tests that focus on the basics; Read, Write, and Copy. In order to avoid concurrent threads competing over system memory bandwidth, the Memory benchmarks utilize only one processor core and one thread. This will also aid in equalizing the comparison here between Quad and Tri-Core processors.
Once again, we see that Intel has a winner with their new Core microarchitecture, and particularly the i5, with its integrated memory controller. There's no contest here, and it's also good to see that upping the Base clock and the CPU clock extract even more performance from the system.
Now, let's look at some additional benchmarks with PCMark Vantage.
PCMark Vantage Test Results
PCMark Vantage is an objective hardware performance benchmark tool for PCs running 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7. PCMark Vantage is well suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista/7 PC: from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops, to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Benchmark Reviews has decided to use a few select tests from the suite to demonstrate simulate real-world processor usage in this article. Our tests were conducted on 64-bit Windows 7, with results displayed in the chart below.
TV and Movies Suite
- TV and Movies 1 (CPU=50%, RAM=2%, GPU=45%, SSD=3%)
- Two simultaneous threads
- Video transcoding: HD DVD to media server archive
- Video playback: HD DVD w/ additional lower bitrate HD content from HDD, as downloaded from net
- TV and Movies 2 (CPU=50%, RAM=2%, GPU=45%, SSD=3%)
- Two simultaneous threads
- Video transcoding: HD DVD to media server archive
- Video playback, HD MPEG-2: 19.39 Mbps terrestrial HDTV playback
- TV and Movies 3 (SSD=100%)
- HDD Media Center
- TV and Movies 4 (CPU=50%, RAM=2%, GPU=45%, SSD=3%)
- Video transcoding: media server archive to portable device
- Video playback, HD MPEG-2: 48 Mbps Blu-ray playback
Gaming Suite*
- Gaming 1 (CPU=30%, GPU=70%)
- GPU game test
- Gaming 2 (SSD=100%)
- HDD: game HDD
- Gaming 3 (CPU=75%, RAM=5%, SSD=20%)
- Two simultaneous threads
- CPU game test
- Data decompression: level loading
- Gaming 4 (CPU=42%, RAM=1%, GPU=24%, SSD=33%)
- Three simultaneous threads
- GPU game test
- CPU game test
- HDD: game HDD
Music Suite
- Music 1 (CPU=50%, RAM=3%, GPU=13%, SSD=34%)
- Three simultaneous threads
- Web page rendering - w/ music shop content
- Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless
- HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player
- Music 2 (CPU=100%)
- Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless
- Music 3 (CPU=100%)
- Audio transcoding: MP3 -> WMA
- Music 4 (CPU=50%, SSD=50%)
- Two simultaneous threads
- Audio transcoding: WMA -> WMA
- HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player
* EDITOR'S NOTE: Hopefully our readers will carefully consider how relevant PCMark Vantage is as a "real-world" benchmark, since many of the tests rely on unrelated hardware components. For example, per the FutureMark PCMark Vantage White Paper document, Gaming test #2 weighs the storage device for 100% of the test score. In fact, according to PCMark Vantage the video card only impacts 23% of the total gaming score, but the CPU represents 37% of the final score. As our tests in this article (and many others) has already proven, gaming performance has a lot more to do with the GPU than the CPU, and especially more than the hard drive or SSD (which is worth 38% of the final gaming performance score).
These results show an increasing level of disparity between the two platforms as you go from left to right. The TV and Movies set show a significant win for the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro platform and the i5-750. The gaming benchmark shows a 92% improvement in gaming performance between the best and worst performers. We'll be validating this later on, but I'll give you a hint: it isn't true.... On the Music benchmark, the P7P55 combination wipes the floor with the AMD Phenom II platform, offering 4x the performance.
It seems like TV &Movies and Music are the most realistic tests in this sett, and it's interesting that one shows the least difference between the platforms, while the other shows remarkably better performance; the P7P55D-E Pro is in a different league altogether for audio encoding.
CINEBENCH 11.5 Benchmark
Maxon CINEBENCH is a real-world test suite that assesses the computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on Maxon's award-winning animation software, Cinema 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. Maxon software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH Release 11.5 includes the ability to more accurately test the industry's latest hardware, including systems with up to 64 processor threads, and the testing environment better reflects the expectations of today's production demands. A more streamlined interface makes testing systems and reading results incredibly straightforward.
The CINEBENCH R11.5 test scenario uses all of a system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene, "No Keyframes" the viral animation by AixSponza. This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The OpenGL graphics card testing procedure uses a complex 3D scene depicting a car chase with which the performance of your graphics card in OpenGL mode is measured. Since this one test is dominated by the performance of the video card, I'm not showing it here.
The most interesting part of this benchmark for me is always the single-core test. I understand that the multi-core test is better at showing the real world performance, but I'm always curious how the systems perform on a one-for-one basis. Here, the i5 and P55 pairing have a much smaller advantage. If you compare similar overclocks, the i5 has a 13% lead over the AMD Phenom II and 790FX platform. That's relatively minor, compared to some of the previous synthetic tests. If you pro-rate the results in the multi-core scores for the number of cores in action, the differences are similar.
The results so far should convince you that there are no perfect benchmarks, only a large number of imperfect ones that must be considered collectively. So, let's take one more look at a synthetic test suite before we look at some hard core gaming benchmarks.
Passmark Performance Test Benchmark
PassMark PerformanceTest is a PC hardware benchmark utility that allows a user to quickly assess the performance of their computer and compare it to a number of standard 'baseline' computer systems.
The Passmark Performance Memory Test looks at a variety of memory functions:
- Allocate Small Block
- Read Cached Memory
- Read Un-Cached Memory
- Write Memory
- Large RAM
It then calculates an overall performance number for Memory Marks. Unlike the Everest memory benchmarks, this test uses all available CPU cores. At similar clock speeds the Intel i5 beats the AMD 720BE by more than 35%. Even at it's base speed of 2.66 GHz, it has a 19% edge.
The CPU tests benchmark all the mathematical operations, compression, encryption, SSE, and 3DNow! instructions of modern processors. There are several areas of concentration for each benchmark, which are then combined into one compound score. This score is referred to as the CPU Mark, and is a composite of the following tests:
-
Integer Math
-
Floating Point Math
-
Find Prime Numbers
-
SSE/3DNow!
-
Compression
-
Encryption
-
Image Rotation
-
String Sorting
The CPU test shows a 62% performance gain for the P7P55D-E Pro at similar CPU clock speeds, but that gets narrowed down to a little over 20% if you factor out the difference in the number of cores. There's little doubt about the power of this platform, especially in CPU-bound applications or where memory performance has an impact. In a number of cases it surpasses the top-level X58 platform, except in the important area of PCI-e connectivity.
Let's take a look at two gaming benchmarks to see how well this CPU performance translated in the graphical world.
Crysis Test Results
Crysis uses a new graphics engine: the CryENGINE2, which is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX10) framework of Windows Vista, but can also run using DirectX9, both on Vista and Windows XP.
Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been re-written to support multi-threading.
Crysis offers an in-game benchmark tool, and this short test does place some high amounts of stress on a graphics card, since there are so many landscape features rendered. For benchmarking purposes, Crysis can mean trouble as it places a high demand on both GPU and CPU resources. Benchmark Reviews uses the Crysis Benchmark Tool by Mad Boris to test frame rates in batches, which allows the results of many tests to be averaged.
Low-resolution testing allows the graphics processor to plateau at its maximum output performance, which shifts demand onto the other system components. At the lower resolutions Crysis will reflect the GPU's top-end speed in the composite score, indicating full-throttle performance with little load. This makes for a less GPU-dependant test environment, and is helpful in creating a baseline for measuring maximum system performance. At the lowest 800x600 resolution available, frame rate performance often becomes entirely CPU dependant.
Crysis is well known for putting a substantial load on the CPU as well as the GPU, so it's a good test when you want a more balanced performance measurement. With no Multi-Sample-Anti-Aliasing enabled, the best P7P55D-E Pro performance is 9% better than the best AMD 720BE score. What is interesting is seeing the i5/P55 performance scale up with the higher BCLK settings. That change made more difference than adding a fourth CPU core to the task. Once some MSAA was turned on and turned up to 4x, the test becomes more GPU dependant and there is only a 4% difference between the most powerful motherboard/CPU combination and the lowest. At higher resolutions, the differences were negligible.
Aliens vs. Predator Results
Rebellion, SEGA and Twentieth Century FOX have released the Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 Benchmark to the public. As with many of the already released DirectX 11 benchmarks, the Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 benchmark leverages your DirectX 11 hardware to provide an immersive game play experience through the use of DirectX 11 Tessellation and DirectX 11 Advanced Shadow features.
In Aliens vs. Predator, DirectX 11 Geometry Tessellation is applied in an effective manner to enhance and more accurately depict HR Giger's famous Alien design. Through the use of a variety of adaptive schemes, applying tessellation when and where it is necessary, the perfect blend of performance and visual fidelity is achieved with at most a 4% change in performance.
DirectX 11 hardware also allows for higher quality, smoother and more natural looking shadows as well. DirectX 11 Advanced Shadows allow for the rendering of high-quality shadows, with smoother, artifact-free penumbra regions, which otherwise could not be realized, again providing for a higher quality, more immersive gaming experience.
Whenever possible we configure benchmark software to its maximum settings for our tests, but there are special cases when it's instructive to back off on some settings in order to put less load on the GPU and more load on the CPU. In the case of Aliens vs. Predator, we tested with the following settings: Texture Quality-Very High, Shadow Quality-High, HW Tessellation & Advanced Shadow Sampling-ON, Anisotropic Filtering-16x, and Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)-ON. Multi Sample Anti-Aliasing was turned off for our low resolution testing at 1280 x 1024, and set to the maximum level of 4x for the high resolution test. At the highest resolution of 1920 x 1200, this is a challenging benchmark, as an ATI HD5870 card just barely achieves an average frame rate of 30FPS.
These test results are also very interesting. We generally see very minor differences, if any in typical gaming benchmarks while testing motherboards and CPUs. At best, Crysis will stress the CPU enough to show some variation, as we just saw above, but most of the other benchmarks are all GPU bound. Aliens vs. Predator is brand new, and it looks like we finally have another gaming benchmark that uses the CPU for more than just housekeeping tasks. What's really interesting is that the AMD system takes top marks in both low resolution and high resolution tests. Once again, increasing the base clock had a significant effect; it looks like the default 133 MHz BCLK held the P7P55D-E Pro system back a bit.
Well, it's a nice switch to finally see some CPU influence in our gaming benchmarks, even if there was no clear winner. Let's finish up with some final thoughts and conclusions.
Final Thoughts
What's the last big lump of work you threw at your CPU? Financial calculations? Nah, too easy; unless you are a PHD mathematician working on Wall Street. MP3 encoding? Yeah, that's my offense. MKV video might be yours. Either one will chew up some clock cycles like crazy. But after you've ripped all your CDs to your home media server and done the same for all your DVDs, what's next? More, new content? Who thinks their CPU can't keep up with a broadband connection, fiber even? Is there anything worthy of the extreme amount of processing power we all covet, in a never ending upgrade cycle?
I have a dream, and it goes like this. Just about all day, every day, I have one of life's little question, like "How much did gasoline really cost when I was a teenager, adjusted for inflation?" I flip open my phone, the smallest, sleekest, and handiest device for personal carry, and in a quiet, dulcet tone, ask my burning question of the moment in plain English. The response is a reassuring, "Hmmmm, let me think about that." My phone, or whoever/whatever is in the background doing all the thinking, already knows when I was born, where I grew up, all the little details about my first car, and the Clark gas station on the corner where we all hung out, and everything there is to know about my best friend in High School, including the things that only he and I know, and all about my first girlfriend, ditto for her. My phone knows everything, and just like the best friend that it is, it won't tell anyone anything unless I ask it to. I have this same dream every night.
How are you going to fit all that into a phone, you ask? You cant, at least not yet. But I bet I could fit it all onto a medium-sized server and SAN in my house, if I tried hard enough. I also bet my phone can communicate with my server, that's child's play. Now all I need is an app.
Classic Systems Engineering principles teach that the way things are interfaced, or linked, is at least as important as the characteristics of the individual components. So it is with information. Maybe I can document every gallon of gasoline I've ever purchased, but without a rich network of contextual information, that list of purchases doesn't tell me enough. Maybe I want to write a chastising letter to BP and tell them how much money I've passed their way over the years, and an estimate of the future purchases I'm not going to make from them unless they clean up their act. I need a completely different set of contextual links, to go along with the base data set of my purchasing history, than I did to answer the first question I had today regarding gasoline.
Congressional Research Service or outsource it to Bangalore
https://www.loc.gov/crsinfo/whatscrs.html
The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant?
https://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/06/the-personal-outsourcing-olympics-bangalore-butler-or-american-assistant/
So, I already know that such an outcome is already available for a fee. Congress does it, the idle rich do it, my boss does it to me, and everybody's got a service monkey, except me.
By now, you're no doubt asking, "What does this have to do with an article about a mid-range motherboard that uses one of Intel's latest processors?" Well, there's a certain element of "Build it and they will come." at work here. The very existence of the iPhone generated an explosion of apps, and in amongst the drivel was some very useful functionality. So, I keep building faster and more powerful computers, in the evergreen hope that one day my app will come.
The success of Google is not an anomaly, you know; people have questions, and the answers are out there. The thing is, we all want our very own, personal Google. And my Google will be so smart, and so powerful, and so in touch with ME, that it will become a part of me. Here's the kicker: I don't want my Google in the cloud. I want it tucked away behind a firewall in my basement. I may use the cloud as a communication network, I will have to use it to access other pools of information, but my Google needs to belong exclusively to me. I don't ever want it in the public domain, ever! When I die, I want my Google buried along with me.
What do you think, dream or nightmare? Check out this discussion topic here at Benchmark Reviews and let me know your thoughts. Please don't use the comments section below, as this discussion is by design, a bit off-topic...and bound to get even further so as it unfolds.
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro Conclusion
Although we strive to be as objective as possible, any review will reflect to some extent the perceptions and biases of the reviewer. Also, keep in mind that the computer market is very volatile, and that today's killer super product can easily become yesterday's also-ran as the market competition changes. Don't base a purchase decision solely on this review, but use it as part of your research.
The performance of the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard was excellent, with outstanding memory performanceand a stable power supply leading the way. I always check the stability of the main motherboard voltages, and the derived ones, using OCCT as a stress test when I'm testing a board. The 12+2 power supply works well here, even if it doesn't have the bragging rights of the 16+2 systems currently out there. Once the next generation of SSDs gets filled out a bit, the SATA 6Gb/s capability will allow even higher performance. I've been using SSDs for awhile now, and they make a substantial impact on the responsiveness of the system, but most of them are not pushing SATA 3Gb/s to the limit yet. The USB 3.0 performance is wonderful, right now. The first thing I did when this board arrived is go out and buy replacement enclosures for my old USB 2.0 external drives.
The appearance of this motherboard is very nice, and I especially like the anodizing treatment on the heatsinks. I am ready to move on from the Blue-Grey-White color scheme, though. At this point, it's hard to tell some products from the top two motherboard competitors apart, from across the room. I realize there's a certain synergy with the Intel colors, but I'd like a little more variety. The board's component layout definitely helps with the appearance of a fully assembled system. There are a number of status LEDs that provide a decent light show during system startup, in the event that you have a window to see them through.
Construction quality was impeccable. It was interesting to note that the assembly and soldering was better than I've seen lately on several video cards. I guess motherboard buyers have a longer history of being ultra picky about manufacturing quality. ASUS knows this and has done what it takes to get the top tier and stay there. My only complaint on the component layout was the inconvenient location of the single SATA port along the bottom edge of the board. Performance-wise, it's best suited for the Optical Drive, but it's a long way from the 5.25" drive bays on most chassis.
Functionally, there are more features on this board than most people will want to use. I know that sounds like a strange statement, so I'll try to explain. In a rare display of honesty, one forum member's tagline reads, "I learned how to overclock my PC in order to improve its gaming performance. Now I spend all my time tweaking and very little time playing!" So, I tend to appreciate features that just sit there and make the product perform better, or features that make some tasks so much easier, that it's worth mastering them. Lo and behold, the major features that ASUS highlights on the front of the box are the ones I'd pick as standouts. Full support for USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s are achieved without any penalty to the main PCI-e lanes, which support a single card with 16x, or two cards with two 8x connections. That leads up to the full support this board provides for both SLI and CrossFireX. Even without a full 16x connection on both slots, there is only a minimal performance hit with PCI-e 2.0 connections. The 16 Hybrid Phase Design has some tortured reasoning behind its name, but the performance is rock solid, and helps keep the CPU and chipset happy while they're being pushed around by massive overclocks.
The ASUS P7P55D-E Pro falls in the middle of the pack when it comes to pricing for P55-based motherboards. Compared to enthusiast-level Intel X58 motherboards, this board is a steal at $179.99 at NewEgg. With its best-in-class integrated memory controller, the P55 often outperforms the X58 in head-to-head competition. By integrating USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s into the motherboard, without disturbing the precious few PCI-e 2.0 lanes that need to stay dedicated to graphics processing, ASUS has created a real challenger to the high end P55 boards, and the low-end X58 models. I know that AMD is a strong competitor in the "Value" segment, especially in the CPU department, but I think that with this motherboard, and the right i5 (or even i3) CPU, AMD has a fight on their hands for the mid-market.
Pros:
+ Two SATA 6Gb/s ports, two USB 3.0 ports
+ PCI-e bridge keeps SATA and USB apart from graphics interface
+ Excellent build quality
+ Excellent board layout
+ Supports either SLI or CrossFireX applications
+ More overclocking features than you will ever use
+ Power supply is very stable
Cons:
- SATA port limited to 5Gb/s by PCI-e 2.0 interface
- Only one PCI-e x16 slot is wired for x16
- SATA port for Optical Drive located at bottom of board
- Second set of DIMM sockets located under the CPU cooler (YMMV)
Ratings:
-
Performance: 9.25
-
Appearance: 8.25
-
Construction: 9.0
-
Functionality: 9.5
-
Value: 8.75
Final Score: 8.95 out of 10.
Quality Recognition: Benchmark Reviews Silver Tachometer Award.
Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.
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Comments
I'm a little confused by the choice of ASUS p7p55d-e motherboards: standard, lx, pro, evo, deluxe, premium.
Is there is real reason to choose the deluxe version over the pro version reviewed above (I'm not an overclocker, so not sure if all the power lanes will make a difference, and the only other differences I see are the variety of audio ports and an extra LAN port)?
Thanks for any advice.
If you're not overclocking, then search for the best price to fit your needs. All P55 motherboards, regardless of manufacturer, will produce roughly identical performance results (minus OC). Just make sure that it has the extra features you might need down the road.
Putting it another way, is there a disadvantage of the Deluxe over, say, the Pro version (e.g. power consumption), apart from the price?
Dual LAN Controllers with "Teaming" feature.
TurboV remote control included with Deluxe.
16+3 PWM phases v. 12+2.
If you're not overclocking, and you don't need the two extra audio channels and you don't need dual NICs, then don't spend the extra money. I don't see any of the included features helping to future-proof your system. The USB 3.0 and the SATA 6Gb/s are the keys for that, and both boards have that.