P67A-UD7 Most In-Depth Preview/Review!!

haha sorry man, performance review will be up earliest tomorrow morning or latest the day after morning.

BUT for some reason SLI on P67A-UD7 is faster/equal to than SLI on X58A-UD5 at same clock and different clocks.

I ran my benchmarks all at same ram, same timings, same psu, same ssd, both cpus have HT, at 2.8ghz both cpus perform the same almost one does better at one point the other at another. FSB really helps X58 chips catch up to SB in GFlops, but SB in outright speed is the winner b/c of its cache and front end throughput inprovments.

The SLI really got me, I am so confused, I ran the benchmarks over and over and the same results X58 slower then P67 w/NF200. 3Dmark11, Vantage, COD4, Hawx, Unigen, all the same results. its good i guess but hard to buy. I THINK its becuase of the nature of how PCI-E controller is, straight up the 2600K just has a better pci-e controller than x58.

Looking forward to the performance review Sin ;)

OCM :up:

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Originally Posted by OC Maximus

Looking forward to the performance review Sin ;)

OCM :up:

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Same here! :up:

That's what Im thinking too, looking forward to seeing the full comparos. Great review man, you moved the bar up a level. :clap:

EDIT: ha nm, just found it 1 thread down

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Originally Posted by sin0822

2600K just has a better pci-e controller than x58.

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thanks, well my performance review has been posted, if you didn't already see it. its called the Ultimate Sandy bridge OC Guide + P67A-UD7 performance review.

How would this board compare with ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME, since they so close in price.

nice review..

Hi,

I read that the first pci x1 slot is rendered lame by the heatsink in front of it. Is this true? Can it take a sound blaster xfi titanium or other card? Will you need a riser card?

Thanks.

Interesting review, good work sin.

I have a comple of comments about the board. Lack of BIOS Profiles is a big fail, especially on a board that has problems with OC recovery. I can see the idea behind protecting the 2nd BIOS, however I would really like to update it so I don't have to flash the primary every time the board does a BIOS recovery. I'm hoping for a magic BIOS that solves these problems. The board does clock memory very well with good performance.

BIOS profiles, press F11 to SAVE and F12 to load.

... even safe/load to/from HDD/FDD/USB drives. Perfect after bios update when your profiles are gone. ALT + F12 at boot up flashes the backup bios chip with the bios from the main chip.

You can flash the main bios to the backup one if you want...Alt F11, so choose your favorite bios, put it in the main and flash it to the backup.

respect!!:up: for the great review man, thanks!

I have read another review of the P67-UD7 vs MIVE.
and it shockt me a little bit what he had to say about the 24 vrm design.
Because when its true what he says, any 8 fase is just as good ore even beter than the 24fase design of the UD7, because of the frequentie drop by the menny dividers used. can you explane pleasse?

Now i am douting, because i was going to buy the UD7. But it seems the MIVE has a mutch lower ripple. http://forums.xtremelabs.org/viewtopic.php?f=90&p=24023

well here is the deal with that, asus provided both boards...
Everything about the UD7 board was negative or just bland, they guy talked a lot of good about the ASUS. Ok so if the frequency of the pwm was split then how is it on the UD9(with two 6 phase pwms) can the UD9 output 1300watts? if it was split ont eh ud9 into two then switching frequency at half what it theoretically can(35x24x1.8v=1512) the UD9 can output 30amps per phase at half the switching frequency? The guy could have said lower switching frequency improves efficiency, could have said a lot of good but didn't say one thing, could have also said that the vishay can output 35 amps at 300khz which is actually what vishay spec says, it can output 30amps at 1mhz, but at 300khz its MUCh more efficiency and can output 35amps. Also blurred out the numbers on the GB PCH so that GB can't find out which board it was and when it was made.

3rd party testing is done by an independent certified lab that is provided samples from both parties individually, that is how it works in every field. You don't give a review your competitors board and your board and expect him to say bad stuff about your board. LOL.

he also said foxconn socket on UD7 same as M4E socket burn time will tell, well hey that again only shows foxconn on UD7 and puts same bad image in people's minds. There is no socket burn problems with GB P67 boards, one anomaly. You do have the M4E socket melting tho ASUS germany confirmed.

I used a dmm to monitor voltages manually and ended with different results, but i did read the same SA voltage.
If you give credit to that review so be it, but i don't buy it. For example again the heatsink fail to fit, are you joking everything i have tried has fit on this board, it has very good clearance. No one has complained about a heatsink failing to fit.

No Power output tests? hmm because the Vishay even at 300khz can output 35amps still.

Mini drop by drivers? Um how about automatic phase switching which is controlled by a secondary gpio, an ite chip, phases automatically drop out when not needed. Also there are no problems with the driver MOSFETs on this board, they were used on the UD9 and other X58 boards where they proved themselves. You can make this not happen by overclocking. The problem with that "analysis" with me is that the samples were provided by one side, you can do a lot to make results skew your way, idk why they picked that voltage spot and you know i just wont say more. All i will say is that i have seen this board to 5.7ghz with ease and most people who have it are maxing out their chips, this board hasn't been recalled like the m4e and it is sturdy construction. it might be true that both boards will reach same max OC, but what you want to look for are features you like in the board and looks, the UD7 is damn hard to beat, oh and its a 24+4 phase cpu power to be exact, 24 phases power the cpu and a secondary 2 channel pwm powers the (uncore/vccio/qpi/vtt and vccsa/system agent voltage). if you re-read it you can see how its a pro ASUS in every way, i wonder why...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sin0822

well here is the deal with that, asus provided both boards...
Everything about the UD7 board was negative or just bland, they guy talked a lot of good about the ASUS. Ok so if the frequency of the pwm was split then how is it on the UD9(with two 6 phase pwms) can the UD9 output 1300watts? if it was split ont eh ud9 into two then switching frequency at half what it theoretically can(35x24x1.8v=1512) the UD9 can output 30amps per phase at half the switching frequency? The guy could have said lower switching frequency improves efficiency, could have said a lot of good but didn't say one thing, could have also said that the vishay can output 35 amps at 300khz which is actually what vishay spec says, it can output 30amps at 1mhz, but at 300khz its MUCh more efficiency and can output 35amps. Also blurred out the numbers on the GB PCH so that GB can't find out which board it was and when it was made.

3rd party testing is done by an independent certified lab that is provided samples from both parties individually, that is how it works in every field. You don't give a review your competitors board and your board and expect him to say bad stuff about your board. LOL.

he also said foxconn socket on UD7 same as M4E socket burn time will tell, well hey that again only shows foxconn on UD7 and puts same bad image in people's minds. There is no socket burn problems with GB P67 boards, one anomaly. You do have the M4E socket melting tho ASUS germany confirmed.

I used a dmm to monitor voltages manually and ended with different results, but i did read the same SA voltage.
If you give credit to that review so be it, but i don't buy it. For example again the heatsink fail to fit, are you joking everything i have tried has fit on this board, it has very good clearance. No one has complained about a heatsink failing to fit.

No Power output tests? hmm because the Vishay even at 300khz can output 35amps still.

Mini drop by drivers? Um how about automatic phase switching which is controlled by a secondary gpio, an ite chip, phases automatically drop out when not needed. Also there are no problems with the driver MOSFETs on this board, they were used on the UD9 and other X58 boards where they proved themselves. You can make this not happen by overclocking. The problem with that "analysis" with me is that the samples were provided by one side, you can do a lot to make results skew your way, idk why they picked that voltage spot and you know i just wont say more. All i will say is that i have seen this board to 5.7ghz with ease and most people who have it are maxing out their chips, this board hasn't been recalled like the m4e and it is sturdy construction. it might be true that both boards will reach same max OC, but what you want to look for are features you like in the board and looks, the UD7 is damn hard to beat, oh and its a 24+4 phase cpu power to be exact, 24 phases power the cpu and a secondary 2 channel pwm powers the (uncore/vccio/qpi/vtt and vccsa/system agent voltage). if you re-read it you can see how its a pro ASUS in every way, i wonder why...

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well i'm just a reader and my englische is pretty good if i must say so myself haha, but the hard thing for me is to understand something technical like this. thought' i will probably read youre review 6 times before i fully understand it, and thats why i probably overread that he was een Anus guy, He! i am a GB fan two previously had a x58a-ud7 rev1.0 and i loved that board so much it was rocksolid in every way.

But thanks again YOU convinced me, i'm getting myself an new UD7:cool:.
It's just that i felt kinda dissapointed wen i read the Asus guy's review.
But you clear that for me thanks again:up:

Edit; i was also going to get new memory @ 1.5 volt http://www.corsair.com/memory-3/veng...m2a1866c9.html But its not on the QVL list, would it work?

I Cant boot more than 5.4Ghz (2600K + P67A-UD7)

which setting will be significant in BIOS (I adjust only Vcore)

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Originally Posted by jbkappirossi

well i'm just a reader and my englische is pretty good if i must say so myself haha, but the hard thing for me is to understand something technical like this. thought' i will probably read youre review 6 times before i fully understand it, and thats why i probably overread that he was een Anus guy, He! i am a GB fan two previously had a x58a-ud7 rev1.0 and i loved that board so much it was rocksolid in every way.

But thanks again YOU convinced me, i'm getting myself an new UD7:cool:.
It's just that i felt kinda dissapointed wen i read the Asus guy's review.
But you clear that for me thanks again:up:

Edit; i was also going to get new memory @ 1.5 volt http://www.corsair.com/memory-3/veng...m2a1866c9.html But its not on the QVL list, would it work?

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I think it should work fine, if you want C9 1866, i have a dual channel dominator kit made for lga1156 with 1.65v needed it is rated 1600mhz C8 and it does 1866 C9 and it was cheap.
I think those vengeance should do fine, but I have not tried them out, so i cannot guarantee anything.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PatRaceTin

I Cant boot more than 5.4Ghz (2600K + P67A-UD7)

which setting will be significant in BIOS (I adjust only Vcore)

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CPU PLL voltage itself increase it, some people even used upto 1.96, but id try 1.89 first as that is intel max recommended.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davidm71

Hi,

I read that the first pci x1 slot is rendered lame by the heatsink in front of it. Is this true? Can it take a sound blaster xfi titanium or other card? Will you need a riser card?

Thanks.

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Yes, is very badly located. My XFi doesn't fit in there... Actually, none of my PCIe fits in there... so it's useless. And because of PCIe rearangements done by Gigabyte, i was forced to change my PCIe tuner with a PCI tuner...

[QUOTE=sin0822;4717922 Ok so if the frequency of the pwm was split then how is it on the UD9(with two 6 phase pwms) can the UD9 output 1300watts? if it was split ont eh ud9 into two then switching frequency at half what it theoretically can(35x24x1.8v=1512) the UD9 can output 30amps per phase at half the switching frequency? [/QUOTE]

stop posing as some kinda power guru, you're so muddled up in your knowledge you even mix up current thresholds with switching frequency

Impact of switching frequency is transient response (side effect is efficiency and heat). What I like about ASUS's implementation is that you get user level control - set it down to 250KHz when running 24/7 systems, and boost up when going for outright suicide runs.

Trouble is, SB doesn't respond that well to reference clock manipulation outside Intel's chosen async offsets. On X58 though, when going sub-zero I found any board I had with Gigabyte's 24 phase system would clock CPU benches a little lower than the EVGA driven Volterra or ASUS R3E (Wprime 1024M and Vantage CPu tests) - about 50~100MHz with the same CPU right at the hilt. Vcore was in the 1.7 to 1.82V range (as much as the cooling would take on all boards while EPS input current was peaking around 30 amps - allow around 10~15% losses on that to two rails; VCC and VTT). Fortunately this is not something that manifests for 99% of users anyway, so not a complete deal breaker.

-Raja

Edit I should add that Tin's chosen measurement spot for noise was bang on too - north side of the socket (where VCC pads are) and the final ACCESSIBLE decoupling location prior to socket losses. To do any more than this would require Intel's transient test tool; something that not is openly available to home hobbyists.

raja thank you. From what i see he did ripple tests, basically shows how well LLC is programed. Ok well then how is it that the 24 phase design in the old X58A-UD7 rev 1.0 beat out volterra and the classy in trans. response time in the OC mag test? They did the correct Intel transient test like they wrote about? It really doesn't matter. Soon with VRD12 servers will require 180 amps through 4 phase designs. Since Digital VRM systems can do this much easier than Analogue VRMs and its power density ratio is much larger then we will see them become the standard in Q3 2011, The VRD12 spec will suggest a digital PWM as Intel's new boards use.

Can you link me to that issue of the magazine please??

Ripple can become an issue with clock margins so you ideally want low noise and a fast transient response to get the best out of a processor when chasing every last MHz.

Nevermind, I found it. To quote verbatim: "From the results, we can see that no board is the best in every test. Though top in the transient performance tests, the EVGA Classified 760 exhibited poor efficiency, likely due to its high switching frequency."

I think that answers the question on transient response right there. Bear in mind I think the tests were run on the Classified board at base 800KHz, not 1066KHz or 1333KHz - which would have changed things somewhat once again.

Hope this helps clear things up for you. BTW Sham does have a point, please check information before posting it if need be as it can be quite misleading.

-Raja

ok thanks, anyways the isl6366 was designed to work with phase doublers, which intersil calls their proprietary phase doubling technology.

Not sure where or why that is relevant - I wouldn't pay too much weight to that, you can do the same with other controllers with a MUX (I think the first time I saw it on a motherboard was when ASUS used a 4 phase ADP controller with a MUX for phase shifting to 16 phase, I recall seeing scope shots of that implementation and it was done pretty well).