Is there a P55 board from Asus that Paul hasn’t looked at? All the features explained in depth here:

http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=5478

]]> http://www.benchtec.co.uk/index.php/2009/12/01/asus-p7p55d-premium-review/feed/ 0 http://www.benchtec.co.uk/index.php/2009/11/25/asus-p7p55-ws-supercomputer-review/ http://www.benchtec.co.uk/index.php/2009/11/25/asus-p7p55-ws-supercomputer-review/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:05:52 +0000 r1ch http://www.benchtec.co.uk/?p=1034 I don’t know how he does it. Sacha35 with another P55 board from Asus, this time their Workstation board.

Well done Paul, another incredibly in-depth review. You’ve seen a lot of P55 boards so you know when you’ve got a good one.

http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=5425

James runs the board through a number of tests on air, cascade and even LN2. All your favourite benchmarks inside.

http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=5397

Full credit to Paul for yet another quality review of an Asus product. This one certainly stands out from the rest.

http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=5381

Not that many of you won’t have heard of EVGA before today, but here’s a little introduction about the business and what their objectives are.

EVGA do have what seems to be a sort of ‘cult’ following, with many praising their customer service and Step-Up programme. Recently, they have expanded their motherboard range to include models aimed at the extreme overclocker, after they took on Peter “Shamino” Tan to help in the design.

Their X58-based Classified boards were widely accepted to be ‘the best’ X58 boards available, by quite a large margin. The price of such a high quality and well-performing board was always going to be high, but the sheer potential made it an extremely attractive option to all the extreme overclockers.

Specifications:

Performance

• Based on Intel P55 chipset
• Supports Intel Socket 1156 Processors

Memory

• 4 x 240-pin DIMM sockets
• Dual Channel DDR3
• Maximum of 16GB of DDR3 2600MHz+

Expansion Slot

• 5 x PCIe x16/x8, 1 x PCIe x4, 1 x PCIe x10 x 32-bit PCI, support for PCI 2.1

Storage I/O

• 8 x Serial ATA 300MB/sec with support for RAID 0, RAID1, RAID 0+1, RAID5, JBOD

Integrated Peripherals

• 8 Channel High Definition
• 2 x 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet

Multi I/O:

• 1 x PS2 Keyboard
• 13 x USB2.0 ports (7 external + 6 internal headers)
• Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, MIC)
• FireWire

Form Factor:

• EATX Form Factor

Features:

• DPHS – Double Play Heatsink Support
• 10+2 Phase Digital PWM using Volterra VT1185S MOSFETs
• EVGA Vdroop Control
• EVGA Dummy OC
• EVGA E-LEET Tuning Utility
• EVGA EZ Voltages read points
• Onboard Clear CMOS, Power and Reset Buttons
• 300 More Socket Gold + Low ESR/ESL Film Cap
• LICC Capacitors
• Onboard CPU Temp Monitor
• Passive Chipset Heatsink
• Triple BIOS Support
• Solid State Capacitors
• Dual Clock Generators
• EVGA Show-Volt
• EVGA ECP V2 Support
• PCIe Disable Jumpers
• EVGA EVbot Support

That’s a pretty long list of specifications. A notable mention for the DPHS, or Double Play Heatsink support which allows both LGA1156 and LGA775 heatsinks to be used. Also extra attachments like the EVGA Show-Volt, EVGA ECP V2 and EVGA EVbot all aim to make extreme overclocking that little bit easier.

Packaging

The box is a fairly standard affair, packed full of the bundled accessories.

The Board

With the exception of the P55 Micro, this is the only board in the P55 range to feature the red and black colour scheme; It also sports an anodised black  LGA1156 socket.  Underneath the PCI-E slots, there is power and reset buttons which double as LED’s for power and HDD activity. Next to these button’s, there the switch to select one of the 3 BIOS’s. The board also has dual clockgens, the one just above the NF200 chip ends with 139AKLF. Lastly, above the ATX power connector is the EVGA Show-Volt.

Video Tour:

And as this board has so many features to cover, I even needed a “Part 2″.

BIOS

Here’s pretty much everything in the BIOS in a logical order from top left Standard features, through to Frequency/Voltage Control, stepping down through each menu each time.

Test System:

EVGA P55 Classified 200 motherboard
Intel Core i7 870 B1 Stepping
2GB A-DATA Vitesta Extreme Edition DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20
nVidia Geforce 9500GT
Antec TPQ-1KW

LittleDevil CPU Pot
Dry Ice

Tests and Results:

CPU-Z:

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=795587

SuperPi 1M:
182.5 x 27 = 4928Mhz
BenchTec #1

Pifast:
183 x 27 = 4942Mhz
BenchTec #1

SuperPi 32M:
178 x 27 = 4807Mhz
BenchTec #1

wPrime 32M:
197.5 x 24 = 4740 Mhz

wPrime 1024M:
Sadly, I ran out of time for wPrime 1024M. Here’s a run on air at 190 bclk limited by voltage and temps.

Usage:

One thing I like to do when I review a board is to talk a bit about how the board is to use. It’s my way of trying to convey all those aspects of using a motherboard that you don’t get from just screenshots and pictures.

First up, the board didn’t like my Corsair Dominator 1866C9 1.65v DDR3 set. I suspect this is just an issue with my kit as I’ve not tested them with my other X58 or P55 boards and when I put my older Kingston or A-DATA DDR3 kits in the board, all of the issues went away.

There is quite a lot to learn with the BIOS, with a handful of very useful extensions to the standard AMI BIOS that EVGA have included. The ‘Auto’ settings are actually pretty good and will give you a good start. The good thing with the Auto settings is that the motherboard reports what voltage the Auto settings have chosen in the BIOS screens next to the options. This allows you to give the Auto settings a chance without worrying how high the board is pushing the voltages to achieve the overclock.

I wanted to show you all how the EVGA Show-Volt and ECP V2 features worked, so I made another video and put it on YouTube here.

Conclusion

Clearly, this is a motherboard with a very specific target audience. The board screams ‘extreme overclocker’ and anyone else will struggle to justify the extra cost over the P55 FTW boards. While the price is high, this board isn’t just a recycled design of the rest of the range, it’s specifically designed with the extra features and higher quality components in mind.

With recent studies showing that PCI-E2.0 slots running at 8x speed achieve 95-99% of the performance of full 16x speed, this board is a serious contender for multi-GPU setups as well as those after the ultimate LGA1156 CPU overclocking platform.

EVGA boards are backed by a large community and very good support in terms of product warranty and BIOS updates while the bundled EVGA E-leet software makes pushing that little bit further in Windows easy and guarantees those last few Mhz.

While the price and performance put it dangerously close to a LGA1366/X58-based setup, I predict that we will see quite a lot more of this motherboard when Intel’s 32nm Clarkdale dual-core CPU’s arrive. These CPU’s could have the potential to wipe the floor with benchmarks that are not dependant on multi-core and this board could well provide the ideal platform for many world records. This combination could be the new E8600 with Pifast and  both SuperPi’s, as well as 3D benchmarks like Aquamark and 3DMark01.

First up, let’s let Foxconn introduce themselves and the Quantum Force line up:

Amen! That sort of mission statement is exactly what we’re after here at BenchTec, a committment to enthusiasts and overclockers to produce the sorts of motherboard we dream of…hopefully!

Specifications:

Now if specifications aren’t your sort of thing I’ll move swifty on to the retail packaging and the board itself. Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

Packaging

Standard affair that we’ve come to see from Foxconn. Well presented and functional.

The Board

Foxconn have used the same sexy (yes I did just use the word “sexy” in a review) styling for their P55 motherboards as they did for the X58 motherboards. Black and red just work together so well and make it look like a classy piece of kit.

The board features three PCI-E 16x physical slots, and no NF200 chip which means you’ll get the best possible performance out of your single card and dual card setup with 16x PCI-E2.0 and 2x 8xPCI-E2.0 respectively.  It supports a third card in the lower black PCI-E slot, but this is limited to 4x PCI-E2.0 so would only be suitable for a low end graphics, PhysX or RAID card.

An 8-phase hybrid PWM circuit of DirectFET MOSFETs supplies the Core voltage while a 2-phase circuit supplies the Uncore voltage. The DDR3 voltage is also supplies bya  2-phase circuit.

On the side of the board we can see the voltage read points which first appeared on the BloodRAGE and it is good to see a few more added for this board. Also on this pic we can see the space where the “Fuzzy Equalizer” feature would be on the Inferno Katana board. This shows the number of active phases in use by the CPU at any time. It works together with the new i-Tweaker logic chip.

Video Tour:

BIOS

Foxconn have had to move from the Phoenix Award BIOS they have become used to on the BlackOps and BloodRAGE boards to an AMI (American Megatrends) BIOS for the Inferno Katana. This means that things are done in a slightly different way to normal for someone like me who is used to an Award BIOS. That being said, I am quickly getting used to it and it’s not all that bad.

Test System:

Foxconn Inferno Katana GTI (P02 BIOS)
Intel Core i7 870 LGA 1156 Engineering Sample
4GB Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 RAM
nVidia Geforce 9500GT
Antec TPQ-1KW

Evocarlos’ single stage rotary phase.

Intel TurboTech:

One ace that these P55 boards have up their sleeve is Intel’s Turbo Modes for the CPUs which are an extension of EIST. Simply with a stock BIOS, the CPU will adjust it’s multiplier on-the-fly to give you the best performance. Here’s a little table showing what happens with the Core i7 870 with Turbo disabled:

With Turbo enabled:

These are the potential multiplers and speeds that the CPU can automatically achieve, given a set of conditions are met. The CPU must be operating with temperature, current and power draw limits. If any one of these limits are exceeded, the CPU will drop to a lower multiplier until within the limits again. This is really good news gor us as extra multiplier mean the potential to overclock higher as we can overcome a potential motherboard limitation, but also because it gives us much more flexibility on the DDR3 multiplier.

Tests and Results:

For an early BIOS, the board is doing very well. Overclocking on this board really couldn’t be simpler, there are only two voltages to increase to achieve 90% of what the board can offer. CPU Vcore and CPU VTT can be increased as and when each one is needed. For the other two voltages, the CPU PLL can actually be reduced for less stress on the CPU down to 1.7v from 1.8v. Lastly, the PCH voltage can be increased from 1.05 to 1.10-1.15 when overclocking above 4Ghz for some added stability.

Due to a couple of reasons, one being simply time, and secondly the lack of a Windows tool to adjust the bclk, I wasn’t able to get the maximum performance possible out of this board. I’d be willing to put money on being able to get to 220bclk with setfsb or an equivalent, as the system could fully boot and run SuperPi 32M at 215.

CPU-Z:

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=720254

Bclk:
215

Potential for a lot higher, lack of setfsb limits

SuperPi 1M:

201×24=4820Mhz
Hwbot #4

Pifast:
198×24=4756Mhz
Hwbot #4

SuperPi 32M:
198×24=4756Mhz

wPrime 32M:
210×22=4624Mhz

wPrime 1024M:
208×22=4581Mhz
Hwbot #5

Usage:

One thing I like to do when I review a board is to talk a bit about how the board is to use. It’s my way of trying to convey all those aspects of using a motherboard that you don’t get from just screenshots and pictures.

The Inferno Katana GTI is a very easy board to use. The new BIOS layout is a breath of fresh air and overclocking involves just two voltages.

One thing the BIOS/board is lacking is an override for the Intel Turbo mode, if we had a “Current Feedback Override” like there is available on the BloodRAGE then it would be possible to force a 24x mutli for 4 cores, 26 multi for 2 core and a 27 multi for 1 core all the time, rather than it dropping to a lower multi under large current/power draw. I’ll write this one off as there’s only the one BIOS available, but this is something that needs to be in the next release.

In gereral, the board was extremely well behaved, and the overclock recovery worked fine every time. That being said, it would be nice to be told when it had recovered, and have it pause on the POST screen rather than boot to Windows only to realise it was at stock speeds.

Like I mentioned in the Flaming Blade GTI review before, this board overvolts the DDR3 and this time by 0.04v. I’m slightly disappointed to see this get worse with this board, especially with the Elpida “Hyper” kits dropping left right and centre, you’d think Foxconn could have this undervolting rather than over.

Conclusion

Foxconn might just be onto a real winner with this motherboard. We’re yet to hear what the final pricing will be, and actually whether it will be coming to all the global markets, but with some good news on those two fronts there’s nothing to stop this from being a serious contender for your hard-earned and well-saved money that wasn’t spent on a LGA1136 i7 rig.

While this GTI version doesn’t come with a few of the more fancy features of the non-GTI Inferno Katana like the Fuzzy Equalizer, extra 4-phase CPU PWM and Force Reset button, I think it offers the more sensible approach to a Lynnfield-based setup. P55 rigs will be built around price/performance parts and Foxconn have done right by this board.

Paul’s done a fine job of addressing every detail, check out the forum thread here:

http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=4852

Check out Paul’s immensely detailed review over in our forums:

http://www.benchtec.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=4823