Review: EVGA P55 FTW (132-LF-E657-KR)

[hokiealumnus]

Hot off the presses, here's our review of the EVGA P55 FTW!

EVGA P55 FTW Review
(132-LF-E657-KR)



EVGA needs no introduction. They have now been around for more than a decade. Since the release of the X58 chipset, they have separated themselves as a top-notch enthusiast motherboard manufacturer. As of this writing, their X58 Classified holds two out of the top five world frequency records for i7’s in the CPU-z Hall of Fame. EVGA hopes to continue their dominance with their new lineup of boards based on the Intel P55 chipset.

Today, we are presented with the EVGA P55 FTW motherboard. This is one of quite a few motherboards EVGA has released for the P55 chipset, and is in the top three in terms of features.

Thanks to EVGA for providing the board for this review.

Long story short:

Pros:
* Extensive featureset; and it is all useful, nothing extraneous or useless in the bunch.
* Very strong CPU power section.
* Inclusion of both LGA1156 and LGA775 heatsink mounting holes.
* Inclusion of EVGA Control Panel.
* Detailed, extensive, yet easy-to-understand BIOS.
* Very strong overclocking options.

Cons:
* Entirely too much thermal paste on the P55 chipset.
* Contact on the longer MOSFET heatsink could be improved in the middle.

Here at Gilgamesh Reviews we have a three tier rating system. A Silver Award, an Editors' Choice Award, and our top honor the Gold Award. To achieve the Gold Award a product must demonstrate a performance level above and beyond the normal. This exquisite offering from EVGA does just that. While it is priced at the higher end of the P55 spectrum, its featureset and specifications more than justify that high price, especially when compared to other manufacturers' options at (and above) this price point. Therefore, we are very pleased to bestow another Gold Award upon EVGA for their efforts!

There you go! There is a TON of information in this review; seemed like it took forever to write. Please state any questions, concerns or comments. I'll also be benching this thing properly as I'm able with suicide runs, max BCLK, etc and posting it in here. Cheers!

{Mod/Admin, I'm pretty sure I'm not breaking any rules and am not just going to let this thread die; I'll respond to feedback and update with further results as time allows me to get them. Additionally, it would literally be ridiculous trying to port all of that information into forum posts, so a link is the only option. Please PM me with any concerns. Thanks!}

[hokiealumnus]

I didn't use these in the review, but here are everest cache & mem runs I ran at each clock speed:

Stock:


3.6GHz:


4.0GHz:


4.2GHz:

[SubZero.it]

come on...go up!!!

[hokiealumnus]

Hahaha...I plan on it. Just don't have time right now. Needed to get the review posted and 4.2 was all I had time for. I do plan on seeing how far up it will go on water and seeing what type of Bclk it can get on water. Probably like every other P55, it'll top out between 230 and 235; but that's no reason not to try!

[rbuass]

please
Is it possible to keep ratio 24 on i7 870 + EVGA FTW?
the sppedstep cause instability to overclocking (many variations in the ratio)
i used C1E disable, speedstep enable (its necessary to increase 22 to 24 the ratio)
What to do?
thanks

[dctokyo]

Nice review Hoki, long time no see, it`s been abit too long.

[hokiealumnus]

Yes, yes it has; great to see you as well! How are things in the far east?

rbuass - I'm sorry to say that Speedstep must be enabled to use Turbo. Can't find a way around it at all. All we can hope for is a BIOS that doesn't force the feature. Thankfully we're at the beginning of the P55 life cycle and have a maturing BIOS to look forward to.

In board/cpu related news, I'm presently stability testing at 3.8GHz, 1.304Vcore loaded (1.282v failed @ 12min, 1.294v failed @ 42min; hopefully it's the sweet spot).

EDIT - Looks like we have a winner - 3.8GHz stable! (Pending folding stability of course.)

[LardArse]

please
Is it possible to keep ratio 24 on i7 870 + EVGA FTW?
the sppedstep cause instability to overclocking (many variations in the ratio)
i used C1E disable, speedstep enable (its necessary to increase 22 to 24 the ratio)
What to do?
thanks

c1e disable, speedstep enable, turbo enable , cstate disable, vista power optuions = high performance, no problem

[pauld5999]

c1e disable, speedstep enable, turbo enable , cstate disable, vista power optuions = high performance, no problem

I will try this tonight, I was having the same issue with an x3470

cpu mulit's are also not correctly displayed in eleet overclocking tab, they ready 27x, 26x, 24x, 24x across the 4 cores, is this a known issue?

[hokiealumnus]

As I understood it, the overclocking tab multipliers are what you want Turbo mode to use. Normal Turbo mode uses the multipliers that are default in that tab. I assume (haven't tried this) you can reduce those if you're having stability problems at the multipliers Turbo uses.

[hokiealumnus]

We finally have a stable 3.8GHz. The above OC failed prime at 1hr 52min. Bumped Vcore one notch (1.317v loaded) and set a 6hr OCCT test then went to bed. When I got home from lunch I saw it had passed!

So (still pending folding), I'm going to call this one stable. Loaded up Prime95 & minimized it so voltages were correct and took these screenshots of both the monitoring and voltage tabs. OCCT reports are below as well.

[zfactor]

so bad board or chip you think for oc? i really like this board but your oc has me wondering..

[hokiealumnus]

Well, it's not really a bad overclock. I've seen lots of high numbers and suicide runs on many boards, but I've seen very few stable results. Seems OC Nub has me beat by 100MHz at the same Vcore, but it's not a drastic increase. I'm not sure how high these chips will go stable with just 1.3'ish Vcore...on any board. While certainly not omnipresent by any means, I just haven't seen enough stable results to tell you one way or the other. My instinct is that this might just be average, for any given board & CPU. There will probably be a D0 equivalent that will come out and everyone will clock a bit better. But that's all just my instinct; there isn't enough data out there right now to know. Time will tell.

[SubZero.it]

Why did you lower base clock?200 wasn't stable??

[KURTZ]

superb review! maybe i can get a FTW next week, but i'm still interested in a Asus M3F ... what do you think about?

nb. i've a Xeon X3460 chip ...

[hokiealumnus]

Why did you lower base clock?200 wasn't stable??

Well, I couldn't seem to get 4GHz stable (200 x 20) in time to get this review out, so I stopped trying for the time being. 191 x 21 didn't work either, so I think it's more the wrong voltage combination than anything to do with the Bclk. Right now, I've just set the default multi and am taking it one step at a time attempting to improve stable overclocked speeds. I think temps might get in the way before I get to 200 x 21.

superb review! maybe i can get a FTW next week, but i'm still interested in a Asus M3F ... what do you think about?

nb. i've a Xeon X3460 chip ...

Thanks for the compliment! I don't have an M3F to compare it to, but they do look like very solid boards. Just don't have enough info to make a recommendation either way. All I can say is that I really like this one, but would welcome the opportunity to compare!

[hokiealumnus]

Horray, it really IS stable this time. Twin SMP clients 90% done. Yay.

[hokiealumnus]

Allrighty then. Thanks to Brolloks' suggestions @ OCF, we finally have 4GHz stable (sans HT). Here's a shot while OCCT is running and the temperature graphs for the four cores. Note I was tooling around on the PC, which is why the usage spikes so much; other stuff taking away CPU cycles.

[KURTZ]

Thanks for the compliment! I don't have an M3F to compare it to, but they do look like very solid boards. Just don't have enough info to make a recommendation either way. All I can say is that I really like this one, but would welcome the opportunity to compare!

you know mate, you give me a strong reason to buy this EVGA mainboard ...

but i've a question: do you think that i should have some troubles with my X3460 Xeon processor? :p i know that right now EVGA don't support the Server processors, but do you think that there are bios' troubles?

anyone have already made a test with it?

edit: just another question: what the max bclock that you have reached with this mainboard?

[hokiealumnus]

As to the Xeon, I'd hate to tell you wrong and can't say one way or the other. Sorry for the noncommital answer, but the fact is I have no idea.

Max bclk I've booted with was 209; but I haven't had time to try very hard.

[KURTZ]

OK Hoki, EVGA has answered to me about the Xeons, Shamino has tested it, but right now they aren't supported officially ...

anyway, what about the BIOS? i've read that with the latest release there are too much troubles ...

[hokiealumnus]

Definitely stay away from the newest one (A29). Looking forward to the next release whenever it comes. It can't hurt to flash it in one of the three BIOS chips if you want to play, but here's my fun experience with it:

This bios has a very interesting bug I ran across when reviewing this board, just thought I'd point it out. It probably won't affect many, but if you run Prime95 Blend test, the second you start the test, the system begins going absolutely bonkers on the HDD. It's doing so much accessing the system slows to a crawl.

I didn't believe it either, but after testing it three times, the ONLY variable in the equation that was not equal was the BIOS. All other settings were the same. It was just a simple switch of the BIOS switch (flashed this one on #3).

If anyone feels like testing this, I'd be grateful to know if someone can reproduce it. Could be a bad flash, but I did it from DOS and it completed flawlessly. Cleared CMOS as well. Strangest BIOS bug I've ever seen.

[KURTZ]

really interesting

anyway, i'd asked @eVGA about the BIOS downgrade, but i don't understand one thing, if i can't boot cause i flash a bad BIOS, how i can recovery that chip without booting? is possible to clone a bios into another?

[Raja@ASUS]

really interesting

anyway, i'd asked @eVGA about the BIOS downgrade, but i don't understand one thing, if i can't boot cause i flash a bad BIOS, how i can recovery that chip without booting? is possible to clone a bios into another?

You should not have any non-post issues, but just in case you do;

Keep your working BIOS on one chip. Flash the second or third chip. If it does not work, move the slider back to the working BIOS. Use that working BIOS to post and then slide the switch over and reflash the BIOS chip that was not posting. No need to worry.

[hiwa]

as raja said just need to switch to second or third bios
http://forum.nexthardware.com/galler...hp?n=11010&w=o