Not a significant difference on OC between the Asus E 1.02 and the Asus Deluxe Wifi. I don't need Wifi now and hear the Asus on board Wifi ain't the best. They didn't test the P5B Deluxe (with out the WiFi) but looks like the same board with out the WiFi. It looks like the Deluxe offers a little better power / heat management features, along with the extra PCI-16 and Sata.
Aside from the extra PCI-16 and Sata is the Deluxe a better board than the Asus E 1.02? For ~$20.
You can't be serious to give the highest award to that Asus board. Apparently, the onboard sound is not working on all of the P5B boards (they all use some ADI 1988* chip). And Asus is totally ignoring that problem. Have you ever dealt with the Asus "support"? It is a complete waste of time.
So you are giving an award to them for putting together some crap and then letting the customers alone with it. I do not say that the other mainboard makers are better, but this is definitely not worth an award.
I've been looking to get the gigabyte after following the various chat on this site, but after this article was tempted to go for the Asus - even if the difference is small it's still worth getting the best, right?
Maybe not - i know prices fluctuate so it's not necessarily in anandtech's best interest to use price comparisons during review articles, but having just checked on a UK price comparison site, the best price for the Asus deluxe is 45% more than the best gigabyte. As jmunjr says, the difference in quality is negligible, hence a price difference of this magnitude could well swing it for many potential buyers: it will for me.
p.s. good article, cheers for keeping us up to date on the new revisions!
quote: In our overclocking tests the ASUS P5B-Deluxe WiFi-AP was absolutely superb and clearly offers the best overall performance.
Come on, quit insulting us. The differences in your tests are so minute the word "clearly" should not have been mentioned. The truth is with more than half of these boards not a soul would notice a difference, and the differences are so small that testing a duplicate model of any one of these mobos would yield results that according to you would be "clearly" better than the original. In gaming the difference is even more negligible.
quote: ASUS also utilized the ADI 1988B HD audio solution that provided the best overall audio capability and performance of the onboard solutions.
This sentence refers to P5B Deluxe. I'd like to ask if you're getting consistent results from other higher end models that use this chip. Do they all seem to be doing equally well as far as audio clarity goes?
ADI aside, have you anything negative to say about the Realtek ALC883 chip as compared with ALC888? According to ASRock, 883 is only "Vista Basic" certified, implying inferior properties, whereas the 888 is "Vista Premium" certified. ASRock thus sticks to the 888 across the entire produce line to enhance the user's experience. Does this make any sense in the real world?
quote: If are you are looking to get the highest possible overclocking results with an E6300 or E6400 processor then we would recommend the ASUS P5B-Deluxe at this time. Of course our preliminary results (which will be available shortly) with the Commando board will change this statement.
'If are you are looking . . '? typo :)
/me confesses to be one of those 'vocal' ABIT owners.
abit's QuadGT was mentioned a few times in the text, but it doesn't seem to actually have been included in the test. At least, it isn't in the benchmark tables.
its a pretty new board, with some fairly bad issues, ranging with being sent out with the wrong I/O backplate shield, to the inability to run RAID, and have an CD/DVD drive installed. Also, lets not forget Gary burning up a set of the Corsair good stuff™ , becasue of the uGuru MAJOR issue.
While I agree that the uGuru utility SHOULD NOT have done this, and I respect the opinions of the anandtech editors, IMO, overclocking should be done in bios, period. Yes, this application is designed to adjust bios settings on Abit boards from within windows and has proved successful in the past, but it is still software and as you guys found out the hard way, software usually is one generation behind the hardware!
Well, the simple fact, that you can not have the Intel + Jmicron controller both enabled at once, and have RAID working, is a show stopper for many users.
I have been very interested in a good MATX motherboard and only untill the release of the E4300 do i now firmly see a chance for a serious overcloking budget minded setup. The Abit Ip-90 which supports DDR2 and DDR and PCI-Express, I have heard this board reaching 400FSB+, or the Asus-Gigabyte-and Biostar Matx's which aare just as good can be paired with the E4300 9X multiplier for an exptremely innexpensive setup. Those people going for the E4300 want the best bang for the buck (E4300-$113 in Q2)(Abit Ip-90-$59 or Biostar at $49). With an 9x E4300 these boards will overclock like a good Asus-E6300 setup for 50%-75% less; extra money that can be spent on a better video card. Round up a bunch and throw down some reviews of these. The P965 are great, but old news.
You start getting that cheap with ANY motherboard, I don't care who made it, the chances of you getting a board with 100% stability isn't going to be good. I took a minor leap, with an Asrock AM2NF4g-SATAII board ($54 usd), and now, can not wait to dump this PoS into the nearest dumpster . . .
Is there any?
I mean we have I965 round up, and other reviews that target the I975 or the nVIDIA chipset almost exclusively, so if I wanted to buy a MB I need to look to all these reviews to see what suits me better with out ruining me... what we need is a review where the I965, I975 and the 650I MB are all put head on to really see the difference in performance and price.
Tomshardware created a chart for all the graphics cards under x benchmark so we can easily compare them, I’m not asking this for motherboards but something that would allow us to compare different motherboards (with different chipsets) easily with out the need to open a dozen pages...
No offense but I think what you're asking here has been covered many times, in various articles. As the title makes it clear, the article is meant to be a 'P965 Round-Up' and it should be treated as such. And I think many enthusiasts already know the differences between 975X/P965/680i/RD600, which are very distinctive just by their feature sets.
Aggregate charts like those @Tom's - I'd take them as a grain of salt. With constant BIOS/drivers updates, those charts are near meaningless. On top of that, the pure performance difference between these chipsets are already small enough so that AT's advice has been more focused on feature set, overclocking stability, broad compatibility, and customer service, etc. (I.E. overall experience)
anandtech tested ds3 and p5b in roundups, in different revisions, when a new bios came out and so on...iam bored and besides i want me a low power - max performance mAtx rig xD
test matx boards.
think about new ways to meassure power consumption of cpu (conroe, conroe L2, allendale) and mainboard (P965, matx stuff, 945g) seperately.
thats what interests me.
not all of us get wet ourselves if we dont get 3.7ghz but 2.7ghz only. some readers like to know about power consumption of different models, savings by undervolting etc.
we all know ds3 and p5b are good boards...u proved us in how many reviews again? time to move on and be a lil more innovative.
I'm interested in doing a mATX build next time around and would like to see Anandtech's take on the G965 boards and how they compare to each other and comparable boards/chipsets.
There are the mATX G965 boards ... but from what I understand the overclocking is very limited. The big question I have is how limited. I'd like to see them review the mATX Gigabyte and ASUS G965 boards and see how far they can be pushed.
Can the G965 FSB be pushed from 266 to 333? to 375? to 400?
I think many mATX people would be happy just to get 333 FSB. On the e6300/e6400 that alone would be around a 500mhz jump in CPU speed. Bringing the e6400 to 2.66ghz which is a great value booster. (2.6 Should keep a 8800gts well fed.)
I just wanted to comment on the Biostar P965PT, I just recieved one this week and have something to note about it. It is extremely picky in the BIOS and has some errors in it that do not make any sense. I am not the only person that was struggling to break 330-360FSB, it would be unstable or reboot itself. I just found out today that despite not being able to hit 330-360, I could jump right up to 400 FSB and it has been Orthos error free and running perfect. So I would highly advise against this board if you want Overclocking to be simple.
That happens to most of the P965 boards, and is not a board fault, but a chipset fault. Most of the Asus boards will do this too, but it's not of much concern since you won't be in such a low range of FSB values while overclocking, unless you're going to use an E4300 (in which case I'd simply suggest lowering the multiplier of that chip until you break the FSB hole, then start increasing the multiplier back up, while keeping your FSB higher than your hole).
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26 Comments
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BigTuna - Sunday, February 11, 2007 - link
Not a significant difference on OC between the Asus E 1.02 and the Asus Deluxe Wifi. I don't need Wifi now and hear the Asus on board Wifi ain't the best. They didn't test the P5B Deluxe (with out the WiFi) but looks like the same board with out the WiFi. It looks like the Deluxe offers a little better power / heat management features, along with the extra PCI-16 and Sata.Aside from the extra PCI-16 and Sata is the Deluxe a better board than the Asus E 1.02? For ~$20.
schlumpfi106 - Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - link
You can't be serious to give the highest award to that Asus board. Apparently, the onboard sound is not working on all of the P5B boards (they all use some ADI 1988* chip). And Asus is totally ignoring that problem. Have you ever dealt with the Asus "support"? It is a complete waste of time.So you are giving an award to them for putting together some crap and then letting the customers alone with it. I do not say that the other mainboard makers are better, but this is definitely not worth an award.
A frustrated Asus buyer.
dez93 - Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - link
I've been looking to get the gigabyte after following the various chat on this site, but after this article was tempted to go for the Asus - even if the difference is small it's still worth getting the best, right?Maybe not - i know prices fluctuate so it's not necessarily in anandtech's best interest to use price comparisons during review articles, but having just checked on a UK price comparison site, the best price for the Asus deluxe is 45% more than the best gigabyte. As jmunjr says, the difference in quality is negligible, hence a price difference of this magnitude could well swing it for many potential buyers: it will for me.
p.s. good article, cheers for keeping us up to date on the new revisions!
jmunjr - Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - link
Come on, quit insulting us. The differences in your tests are so minute the word "clearly" should not have been mentioned. The truth is with more than half of these boards not a soul would notice a difference, and the differences are so small that testing a duplicate model of any one of these mobos would yield results that according to you would be "clearly" better than the original. In gaming the difference is even more negligible.
dspboys - Sunday, January 28, 2007 - link
How did you manage to overclock the ECS P965T-A to 300FSB?What software did you use?Thanks!jeffrey - Sunday, January 28, 2007 - link
The most impressive board has to be the Biostar TForce 965PT.Costs only $105 and provided some of the best overclocking with the least amount of issues.
What features does this board give up to deliver such great results at such a low price?
yehuda - Sunday, January 28, 2007 - link
This sentence refers to P5B Deluxe. I'd like to ask if you're getting consistent results from other higher end models that use this chip. Do they all seem to be doing equally well as far as audio clarity goes?
ADI aside, have you anything negative to say about the Realtek ALC883 chip as compared with ALC888? According to ASRock, 883 is only "Vista Basic" certified, implying inferior properties, whereas the 888 is "Vista Premium" certified. ASRock thus sticks to the 888 across the entire produce line to enhance the user's experience. Does this make any sense in the real world?
yyrkoon - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
'If are you are looking . . '? typo :)
/me confesses to be one of those 'vocal' ABIT owners.
Wesley Fink - Saturday, January 27, 2007 - link
Corrected.yyrkoon - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
err, last page, paragraph two.orangesky - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
abit's QuadGT was mentioned a few times in the text, but it doesn't seem to actually have been included in the test. At least, it isn't in the benchmark tables.yyrkoon - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
its a pretty new board, with some fairly bad issues, ranging with being sent out with the wrong I/O backplate shield, to the inability to run RAID, and have an CD/DVD drive installed. Also, lets not forget Gary burning up a set of the Corsair good stuff™ , becasue of the uGuru MAJOR issue.customcoms - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
While I agree that the uGuru utility SHOULD NOT have done this, and I respect the opinions of the anandtech editors, IMO, overclocking should be done in bios, period. Yes, this application is designed to adjust bios settings on Abit boards from within windows and has proved successful in the past, but it is still software and as you guys found out the hard way, software usually is one generation behind the hardware!yyrkoon - Saturday, January 27, 2007 - link
Well, the simple fact, that you can not have the Intel + Jmicron controller both enabled at once, and have RAID working, is a show stopper for many users.http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=118701">Read.
oldhoss - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
Unless I'm missing something here, the Foxconn test results appear to be MIA (?), yet it tied for the Bronze....kdog03 - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
I have been very interested in a good MATX motherboard and only untill the release of the E4300 do i now firmly see a chance for a serious overcloking budget minded setup. The Abit Ip-90 which supports DDR2 and DDR and PCI-Express, I have heard this board reaching 400FSB+, or the Asus-Gigabyte-and Biostar Matx's which aare just as good can be paired with the E4300 9X multiplier for an exptremely innexpensive setup. Those people going for the E4300 want the best bang for the buck (E4300-$113 in Q2)(Abit Ip-90-$59 or Biostar at $49). With an 9x E4300 these boards will overclock like a good Asus-E6300 setup for 50%-75% less; extra money that can be spent on a better video card. Round up a bunch and throw down some reviews of these. The P965 are great, but old news.yyrkoon - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
You start getting that cheap with ANY motherboard, I don't care who made it, the chances of you getting a board with 100% stability isn't going to be good. I took a minor leap, with an Asrock AM2NF4g-SATAII board ($54 usd), and now, can not wait to dump this PoS into the nearest dumpster . . .kdog03 - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
That was a while ago that peeps jumped on the Asrock...Now there are much bette matx's worth looking at as the new E4300 takes the center stage.Strunf - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
Is there any?I mean we have I965 round up, and other reviews that target the I975 or the nVIDIA chipset almost exclusively, so if I wanted to buy a MB I need to look to all these reviews to see what suits me better with out ruining me... what we need is a review where the I965, I975 and the 650I MB are all put head on to really see the difference in performance and price.
Tomshardware created a chart for all the graphics cards under x benchmark so we can easily compare them, I’m not asking this for motherboards but something that would allow us to compare different motherboards (with different chipsets) easily with out the need to open a dozen pages...
lopri - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
No offense but I think what you're asking here has been covered many times, in various articles. As the title makes it clear, the article is meant to be a 'P965 Round-Up' and it should be treated as such. And I think many enthusiasts already know the differences between 975X/P965/680i/RD600, which are very distinctive just by their feature sets.Aggregate charts like those @Tom's - I'd take them as a grain of salt. With constant BIOS/drivers updates, those charts are near meaningless. On top of that, the pure performance difference between these chipsets are already small enough so that AT's advice has been more focused on feature set, overclocking stability, broad compatibility, and customer service, etc. (I.E. overall experience)
penga - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
anandtech tested ds3 and p5b in roundups, in different revisions, when a new bios came out and so on...iam bored and besides i want me a low power - max performance mAtx rig xDpenga - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
test matx boards.think about new ways to meassure power consumption of cpu (conroe, conroe L2, allendale) and mainboard (P965, matx stuff, 945g) seperately.
thats what interests me.
not all of us get wet ourselves if we dont get 3.7ghz but 2.7ghz only. some readers like to know about power consumption of different models, savings by undervolting etc.
we all know ds3 and p5b are good boards...u proved us in how many reviews again? time to move on and be a lil more innovative.
Treripica - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
I'm interested in doing a mATX build next time around and would like to see Anandtech's take on the G965 boards and how they compare to each other and comparable boards/chipsets.VooDooAddict - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
I don't know of any mATX P965 boards.There are the mATX G965 boards ... but from what I understand the overclocking is very limited. The big question I have is how limited. I'd like to see them review the mATX Gigabyte and ASUS G965 boards and see how far they can be pushed.
Can the G965 FSB be pushed from 266 to 333? to 375? to 400?
I think many mATX people would be happy just to get 333 FSB. On the e6300/e6400 that alone would be around a 500mhz jump in CPU speed. Bringing the e6400 to 2.66ghz which is a great value booster. (2.6 Should keep a 8800gts well fed.)
96redformula - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
I just wanted to comment on the Biostar P965PT, I just recieved one this week and have something to note about it. It is extremely picky in the BIOS and has some errors in it that do not make any sense. I am not the only person that was struggling to break 330-360FSB, it would be unstable or reboot itself. I just found out today that despite not being able to hit 330-360, I could jump right up to 400 FSB and it has been Orthos error free and running perfect. So I would highly advise against this board if you want Overclocking to be simple.Avalon - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
That happens to most of the P965 boards, and is not a board fault, but a chipset fault. Most of the Asus boards will do this too, but it's not of much concern since you won't be in such a low range of FSB values while overclocking, unless you're going to use an E4300 (in which case I'd simply suggest lowering the multiplier of that chip until you break the FSB hole, then start increasing the multiplier back up, while keeping your FSB higher than your hole).