february 27 2010

aphnetworks reviewed the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium

This board was compared to the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6. There is a dedicated page for the Asus Express Gate Onboard Linux.

Conclusion: The P7P55D-E Premium is an ultra high end mobo that has a relatively refined board layout, good performance, tons of features like excellent onboard sound, USB3, SATA3, great reliability and quality, and it simply works out of the box with no troubles.

Overclocking:
-An Intel Core i5-750 was OCed @ 4013.1MHz BCLK 200.7 multiplier x20,
-Base Clock overclocking resulted in a 225.1MHz BCLK.

Benchmarks: PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0, SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R10, Onboard Sound (RMAA 6.2.3) Analyzation, Everest, PC Mark Vantage, 3dmark06.

february 25 2010

hardwareheaven tested the Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5

This board was compared to the Asus Crosshair 3 Formula.

Conclusion: The 790FXTA offered exceptional results, on top of that you'll get a USB 3.0 controller that also squeezes extra performance out of 2.0 devices and Marvell's 9128 SATA 6GB/s controller.

Overclocking: hardwareheaven OCed an AMD Phenom II X4 965BE @3.978GHz, vCore 1.45v , 204BCLK x 19.5 multiplier. The cooler used was a Corsair H50 watercooler.

Benchmarks: Adobe Media Encoder, SiSoft Sandra Pro Business 2009 SP4, dBpoweramp, PowerDVD 9, Photoshop CS4, Cinebench R11.5, Fritz 11, Everest Ultimate, FrapsCounterStrike: Source, World In Conflict: Soviet Assault, CCCP.

february 23 2010

hardwarezone reviewed the DFI LanParty MI P55-T36

The MI P55-T36 was compared to the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium, Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6, ECS P55H-A, Jetway Kuroshio BI-700, MSI P55 GD-80.

Conclusion: If you are looking for the mini-ITX dimensions there's no equivalent in the market yet. Because of the miniITX form factor the number of connectors has been limited to the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and 3 SATA ports, installation and removal of components is probably more difficult because of the lack of space. The passive heatsink of the chipset was warmer than usual. Because the VRM has no cooler, a CPU cooler that also cools the environment is recommended. This motherboard could keep up with the (micro)ATX boards in most cases and was sometimes slightly behind.

Overclocking:
-Automatic overclocking: DFI's ABS II will automatically overclock your CPU.
-Base Clock overclocking: This mainboard managed to reach the 200MHz barrier.

Benchmarks: BAPco SYSmark workload breakdown, SPECviewperf 9.0, AquaMark3, Far Cry 2, Futuremark PCMark05 and 3DMark Vantage.

february 20 2010

overclock3d reviewed the MSI H55M-ED55

This mainboard was compared to the Asus P7H57D-EVO in the benchmarks

Conclusion: Throughout the test the H55M ED55 could keep up with the Asus P7H57D EVO, a mainboard that's about 50% deerer. Of course the mATX form factor limits Multi GPU solutions, this board has a lesser power phase design and is not equipped with USB3.0 and SATA 6.0GB/s ports.

Overclocking
-Tools: The OC Genie tool a truly flopped during the tests, It's not the "one second" operation as it suggests, nor did it attain an overclock of any sort.
-Base Clock Overclocking: Max BCLK was stable @191MHz.
-Overall Overclocing: The maximum stability of the Intel Core i3 530 core speed was reached @4104MHz after lowering the base clock to 186.5MHz.

Benchmarks: HD Tune,PassMark, Windows HD Showcase, Flash HD Video Playback, Left 4 DeadSisoft Sandra, Everest, PC Mark Vantage, 3dmark06, Winrar.

february 18 2010

pureoverclock reviewed the MSI P55-GD85

This board was not compared to another board and except for sata3 hard drive performance there are no benchmarks.

Conclusion: Of course SATA III and USB 3.0 are one of the extras this mobo delivers, it has a good layout but some connectors could be better placed though. This mainboard has a great performance, power efficiency and ease of use.

Overclocking: There is a dedicated page for the OC genie, the genie OCed a Core i7 870 @3852MHz (188x19), a respectable result for pushing a button. Manual base clock overclocking resulted in 219MHz, the 870 ended up running @3950MHz. The air cooling used was a Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B with a Scythe Ultra Kaze 3000 fan. The Kingston HyperX DDR3-2133 memory modules reached 2225MHz.

Benchmarks: ATTO Disk, HD Tune Pro.

february 16 2010

techwarelabs reviewed the Jetway BI-600

This mainboard was not compared to another board in the benchmarks.

Conclusion: the good thing about this mobo is its affordable price. The BIOS wasn't very versatile in overclocking options, besides that the layout of the motherboard could use some work.

Overclocking: With a core i7 920 techwarelabs reached 3.6 GHz with a Base clock of 180 and the vCore voltage set to 1.275v.

Benchmarks: Sisoft Sandra, 3D Mark Vantage.

february 13 2010

ocworkbench reviewed the Biostar TH55XE

This board was compared to the ECS H55H-CM, ASUS P7H55-M Pro, ASRock H55M Pro and ASRock M3A785GMH/128 (Phenom II X3 710 @3.3GHz)

Conclusion: The Biostar TH55XE has no CrossFire or SLi and LGA 775 heatsinks are not supported, on the other hand it has eSATA, Firewire and a flexible BIOS with very advanced settings. The manual is very datailed, also on configuring the G.P.U features of the board, and has 59 pages.

Overclocking: A Core i5 661 was OCed @ 4.46GHz(165x27), CPU voltage was raised with only +0.1v. T-series are meant for overclockers, the BIOS option O.N.E is a simple tool for overclocking, choose V6, V9 or V12, after that you have an (automatically) overclocked system. The TOVCLOCKER is the software for Windows.

Benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP4, Cinebench 10 (64bits), DiVX 7 encoding, - 3DMark2006, 3DMarkVantage, F.E.A.R, Unigine Heaven DX10 Demo, Hawx Demo.

february 11 2010

guru3d reviewed the Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3

The H57M is compared to the ECS H55M and in the same charts with many AMD and Intel CPUs. There is also a YouTube video that will guide you through the BIOS screens.

Conclusion: This mobo has a very good overclockability, BIOS features and tweaking options are wide and there's a great feature set. There's no extra PLX chip for additional PCIe bandwidth. guru3d gave it a tweakers essential award.

Overclocking: A core i5 661 was overclocked @4160.5MHz, 26x160, vcore 1.4v.

Benchmarks: Video transcoding, Brothers in Arms, Resident Evil 5, Far Cry 2, Sisoft Sandra, 3D Mark Vantage, Crysis, 3dmark06,

february 9 2010

hardocp reviewed the Gigabyte X58A-UD7

This mainboard is ready for Core i9 CPUs with six cores and was compared to the ASUS P6T6 WS, P7P55D DLX and the MSI P55 GD80. There are lots of images from the overclocking software Easy Tune 6.

Conclusion: This board had some minor issues, but it has a great feature set and a superior design, the performance is very high. Because of the high price this might become an enthusiast-only motherboard, most people are probably getting better values with a P55 board.

Overclocking: A core i7 920 was overclocked @3.99GHz with a 190MHz BCLK. With 'base clock overclocking' and a core i7 975 they even reached 205 MHz. As for 'normal' overclocking with the 975 they reached a stable 4.45GHz, this was done with a Koolance Exos 2.5 and Model 350 water block.

Benchmarks: IOmeter, DUmeter, HiperPi, DivX, Lame, Videora iPod Converter, TMPGenc Xprs, Lost Planet, Call of Juarez, Quake 4, Far Cry 2, Sisoft Sandra, wPrime, Crysis, Winrar.

february 6 2010

overclockersclub reviewed the ECS A785GM-AD3

This mainboard uses 15µ Gold Contact, being three times the standard amount of gold plating on the contacts of both the CPU and memory areas for a longer life span and better reliability. The ECS A785GM-AD3 was compared to the ECS A785GM-M, Sapphire PA-AM3RS785G, Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P and GA-MA785GMT-UD2H.

Conclusion: On the one hand ECS used gold plating to reduce oxidation to improve the life-span of the board, on the other hand most of the capacitors they use on this board ar not solid, these capacitors are influencing the life-span....more

february 5 2010

tbreak reviewed the Gigabyte H55M-S2H

The Gigabyte H55M-S2H was compared to the ECS P55H-A, ASUS P55D Deluxe and the MSI P55-GD65 in the benchmarks.

Conclusion: A decent motherboard for people on a budget, with HDMI this mobo is a good choice for a Home Theatre PC. As far as the Performance is concerned, this mainboard is might be considered as mediocre.

Overclocking: Allthoug tech.tbreak showed us some bios screens from the MB intelligent tweaker, they did not perform any overclocking.

Benchmarks: Cinebench, PC Mark Vantage, ET:Quake Wars, Crysis, 3dmark06, Supreme Commander, HalfLife 2, Stalker, Winrar, iTunes, Photoshop, Firefox.

february 3 2010

hardwaresecrets had a look at the MSI P55-GD85


The P55-GD85 is the first mainboard by MSI with a P55 chipset that has USB3 and SATA3 ports, next to these features there are some other differences with the MSI P55-GD80. New features include better chipset cooling (8mm heat-pipe instead of 5mm) and a PLX PEX8608 PCI Express chip for eight more PCI Express lanes.

Conclusion: Better cooling and USB3 and SATA3 are its unique selling points when compared to the the P55-GD80, but it has no overvoltage protection switches and no displays to show the current CPU base clock, active phases on the VRM.

Overclocking: hardwaresecrets did not perform any overclocking. As for the boards features it has 10 phases for the power supply, 8(CPU Vcore) + 2 (memory VTT rail), there are also voltage monitoring points to measure CPU, chipset and memory voltages.

Bechmarks: none.

february 1 2010

pcstats reviewed the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5


If you use the last PCI Express slot for a third video card the rear eSATA and the PCI Express x1 will be disabled. There are also hybrid USB/eSATA slots to provide power from the USB2.0 port to an eSATA device using a hybrid cable, to give some extra power to an eSATA device.

Conclusion: The GA-P55-UD5 extras compared to for example the GA-P55-UD3R are more features like NVIDIA SLI and better build quality like more power phases for overclocking.

Overclocking: with a Core i5 750 the BCLK speed was raised to 195MHz, pcstats only performed base clock overclocking, that is trying to keep the the multiplier as low as possible and pushing the BCLK to its MAX.

Bechmarks: SysMark, Sandra, PCMark Vantage, 3DMark 06 and Vantage, FEAR.