P67 Motherboard Roundup: Nine $150-200 Boards

[akula2]

@Do not expext any real difference in real life apps - they do not "know" anything about new possibilities.

You were spot on.

My builds are nothing like a typical review based testing what we generally find on web. Those workstation class PCs serve damn good under lot of work loads, many does a great job with Visualization, Eyefinity etc. So, performance is key for me to make a call. If I don't get at least 15-20% more then it would be waste of my money for the sake of just getting a 'new' tag

All my PCs use the Turbo levels only, say most of them rock at 3.2 GHz which is more than enough to me. Yes, Cooler I never compromise. I use Thermalright 120-MUX, Megahelams Rev. B and the recent one is Scythe Mugen Rev. B.

For Storage, I use a couple of disk combinations on my PCs as per my requirement but few are SSDs with HDDs. I don't use any PC RAID because I got a few IBM Linux Servers for the main storage and other purposes.

Processors always work with GPUs. Common set up for me is 3 LCD based PCs, thanks to the amazing Eyefinity feature which saved lot of $ to me

My main doubt was:

Intel positioned the Lynnfield based processors on par with 2nd generation processors. I forgot where I saw that figure. What's stunning is, the review results show it otherwise!

I've plans to build a 6 LCD based workstation by next month. So, I'm thinking to build the same with the Sandy Bridge + MOBO? I need to do some work on the MOBO front. What do you say?

 

[lradunovic77]

To me this is step back from x58 boards. No decent 3SLI, no 4SLI, layout just sucks, no triple memory channel support, no six cores.

 

[akula2]

@stasdm


Here's the URL I was talking about:

http://blogs.cancom.com/elogic_400000040/files/2011/01/desktoproadmap.jpg

So, Intel positioned the Lynnfield above the 2nd generation aka Sandy. How come the results are showing otherwise? I don't get it. Anyone?

 

[fatalccc]

hello guys.
I am new to the forum.
Hmm.
I just wanna ask, can i run ddr3 memory at 1600 mhz without overclocking on the asrock p67 extreme4?
Thx.
Please answer, i was confused

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]fatalccc[/nom]hello guys.I am new to the forum.Hmm.I just wanna ask, can i run ddr3 memory at 1600 mhz without overclocking on the asrock p67 extreme4?Thx.Please answer, i was confused[/citation]Yes! No! Intel says if you run DDR3-1600 on ANYTHING you're overclocking. But memory ratios are available on the test CPU up to 2133. Don't ask about any other motherboard, this is a CPU issue!

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52214

 

[stasdm]

@akula2

From Wikipedia: When AVX instruction is used in conjunction with these improvements, it provides double peak FLOPS performance compared to using SSE4 instructions on CPUs.
---
But current applications know nothing about AVX (many do not use even SSE!).

And there is no other speed-concerned differences on CPU part.

Of cause current LGA1155 will be generally inferior to LGA2011 chips (well, even to current 6-core 56xx ones).

As for overclocking - keep CPU and PWM (must be checked separatly!) temps below 75C and you can overclock as much as the temp is not above.

 

[Archimag]

[citation][nom]stasdm[/nom] Also, in x8/x8 PCIe configuration nearly all NVIDIA cards (exept for low-end ones) will loose at least 12% productivity - with top cards that is about $100 spent for nothing (AMD cards would not see that difference). So, If those cards are coming as SLI-"sertified" they have to be, in the worst case, equipped by NVIDIA NF200 chip (though, I would not recommend to by cards with this PCIe v.1.1 bridge). As even NVIDIA GF110 cards really need less than 1GB/s bandwidth (all other NVIDIA and AMD - less than 0.8GB/s)and secondary cards in SLI/CrossFire use no more than 1/4 of that, a normal PCIe v.2.0 switch (costing less than thrown away with x8/x8 SLI money) will nicely support three "Graphics only" x16 slots, fully-functional x8 slot and will provide bandwidth enough to support one PCIe v.2.0 x4 (or 4 x x1) slot(s)/device(s).[/citation]

I do not understand why would nVidia card loose up to 12% productivity. Is is because number of lanes have dropped from 16 to 8? If its so, the it contradicts with what you wrote about its maximal bandwidth - ~1Gb/s which is one full PCI-E V.2 lane, or only 2 one-way lanes.

 

[stasdm]

@archimag
In x16 slot nVidia cards use "Graphics PCIe" interface - 16 lanes, no parity.
In x8 slots they have to use stendard PCIe with parity.
that give extra bits its internal bridge has to handle (at the same data speed - limited by internal bus).
Really 12.5% is correct for GF100 chip. For GF110 the number a bit less (~11-12% - faster internal bus). For GT200 the number is about 10-11%. For "junior" version the number is generally less (variing - highly dependent on the amount of "skins" loaded).

 

[aritai]

Might want to do an article about the SATA raid competition between AMD and Intel. Looks like the SB850 will drive six SATA3 ports (and the raid-xpert drivers will span a 10 wide RAID5 set if port multiplexors are use), and best I've seen on the Intel ICH10R side is six SATA2 (or four SATA3). And it appears that the AMD driver and management utilities are more sophisticated than Intel's - and perhaps match dedicated full function RAID cards - amazing that a general purpose system can match special purpose RAID controllers and still have cycles left for, say, being a good HTPC.

 

[Archimag]

[citation][nom]stasdm[/nom]@archimagIn x16 slot nVidia cards use "Graphics PCIe" interface - 16 lanes, no parity.In x8 slots they have to use stendard PCIe with parity.[/citation]
I still do not understand why the performance draws back. You stated that even X1 (2-way) lane would be suffice, since the video cards only use up to ~1 Gb/s (your figures). Then why would X8, that 8 times the bandwidth of X1, won't suffice? I am considering the case of single video card configuration (in X8 lanes slot Vs. X16), not SLI.

 

[68vistacruiser]

I'm sorry if I missed it somewhere, but being the owner of the ASUS board and Intel CPU used here, I would have liked to see what the settings were to achive the overclock that you got.
Thanks.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]68vistacruiser[/nom]I'm sorry if I missed it somewhere, but being the owner of the ASUS board and Intel CPU used here, I would have liked to see what the settings were to achive the overclock that you got. Thanks.[/citation]http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p67-motherboard-roundup-lga-1155-sandy-bridge,2837-5.html

 

[stasdm]

@Archimag

PcIe bus is external both with AMD and nVidia.

AMD then uses 32-bit PCIe-to-PCI-X bridge able to provide up to about 1GB/s (= PCIe v.1.1 x4) throughput, but needs at least x8 connection (so, it's PCIe bus speed is about 1/2 of PCIe v.1.1.

nVidia uses propriatary internal bus and bridge. The PCIe bus also runs at lower speed - in my estimations, on GF100 it is about 1/4 of the normal PCIe v.1.1., somewhat higher on GF110, though not too much - just enough to support 512-core chip (on GF100 difference between 512 cores and 480 cores cards was less than 2%, instead of expected 6%, that's why 512-cores GF100 did not come to market)

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]stasdm[/nom]@Archimag PcIe bus is external both with AMD and nVidia.AMD then uses 32-bit PCIe-to-PCI-X bridge able to provide up to about 1GB/s (= PCIe v.1.1 x4) throughput, but needs at least x8 connection (so, it's PCIe bus speed is about 1/2 of PCIe v.1.1.nVidia uses propriatary internal bus and bridge. The PCIe bus also runs at lower speed - in my estimations, on GF100 it is about 1/4 of the normal PCIe v.1.1., somewhat higher on GF110, though not too much - just enough to support 512-core chip (on GF100 difference between 512 cores and 480 cores cards was less than 2%, instead of expected 6%, that's why 512-cores GF100 did not come to market)[/citation]
There's a discussion in here that might interest you:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/page-297645_28_50.html#t2235849

 

[stasdm]

@Crashman

Lot of rabbush (with some good thoughts)

Really the "slave" cards in CrossFire need only PCIe v.1.1 x4 connection (if used with the CrossFire bridge). W/o the bridge even x16 connection would not allow full-speed utilization. Same for SLI (x8 connection needed).
So second and third slots may nicely be x8 if the first is x16.

Why: SLI/CrossFire bridges are external extensions of internal buses and pass on data much faster than using double convertion via (non-standard ultra-slow) PCIe bus.

 

[Thor]

It's pity you don't talk about how slow for memory have each motherboard.

I find it a necessity since memory is cheap and now we can buy to have 16 GB or 24 GB.

Thanks for this review.

 

[youssef 2010]

You seem to ignore the major factor in favor of UEFI. That's Storage support. Traditional BIOS can't boot from a hard drive that is bigger than 2.2 TB without silly workarounds.

 

[bs27975]

The motherboard feature chart only shows 3 of the motherboards. Should I be seeing a scrollbar at the bottom of the chart or something?

 

[bs27975]

[citation][nom]bs27975[/nom]The motherboard feature chart only shows 3 of the motherboards. Should I be seeing a scrollbar at the bottom of the chart or something?[/citation]

Never mind, my bad. Wasn't picking up on the chart label background colour change. Pity the chart isn't downloadable as an OpenOffice calc file, or something.

 

[boiler1990]

Awesome. I snagged a Gigabyte UD4 on a forum for $50 under MSRP (NIB) and am glad it holds up so well against other boards in its price range!

 

[Guest]

Hi all,

I'm not a big gamer nor do I care all that much about overclocking etc. I just want a computer that works. I have a DP67bg motherboard in my computer and I've had nothing but trouble with it. Mostly memory configuration errors when trying to start it up. It never even makes it to Windows, just beeps and crashes. The only way it works is if only one DIMM slot is occupied. My memory is 1.5v memory and I noticed this article said:

"Unfortunately, we suffered “cold boot” issues with memory set higher than DDR3-1600 with two DIMMs and DDR3-1333 with four. High memory settings that only work if you never shut your PC off really don’t work, so these are the values we reported in overclocking comparison. "

Does this mean I should buy some other kind of memory with lower voltage?