[18th Anniversary] Asus Black Pearl - P5k-Premium Testing Report

[sesdave]

Interestingly enough my current Premium is rev.2.00g made in China - Must just be a flaky board that's all.

Reading around the net, it looks like several users of the P5K series are having similar boot problems to mine. Wonder what's going on?

Yeah I've heard about some flakiness with the Maximus Formula.... but then it is a new board so That's to be expected. The Striker Extreme was touchy at times until Asus finally got most of the kink's worked out of their BIOS. Funny enough it was one of their earlier BIOSes (1102 I think?) that actually worked really well with my Mushkin ram, too bad it doesn't support the G0 core CPU's.

Anyway, I don't think the Striker will be going back in... its been in and out of my PC a couple of times and makes for a good standby if needed, but I think I'd rather just get another premium or try something else.

Read what you have said and apply it to the premium-lol!. Its not exactly an old MB is it.
But back to more important things - it half time in the rugby world cup and France are leading England 6-5!

update -21:40-GMT - England with the worst playing record as Cup holders since the tournament began have just allowed France to play all the rugby in the second half but beat them 14-9 to go into the final. Wilkinsons boot saves them again. - I am Scottish but it was the French after all - lol!. wish I had put money on the so called no hopers!

[jamiee]

Read what you have said and apply it to the premium-lol!. Its not exactly an old MB is it. But back to more important things - it half time in the rugby world cup and France are leading England 6-5!

Is that real world time or technology time?

Real world time = Brand spanking new (Almost born yesterday)
Technology time = Somewhat new-ish (certainly not the latest and greatest, but more than acceptable) Will be completely outdated in another 6 months!





GO ENGLAND!!!!!

[sesdave]

Is that real world time or technology time?

Real world time = Brand spanking new (Almost born yesterday)
Technology time = Somewhat new-ish (certainly not the latest and greatest, but more than acceptable) Will be completely outdated in another 6 months!





GO ENGLAND!!!!!

Both could be applicable depending on how you look at it- but thats the name of the game, lol! If your not after crossfire with 2900xt's just how much a performance gain will x38 with DDR3 give????? benching - yes cos any improvement is leapt upon but real world applications I cant see that much of a gain. So the P5k will have legs for some time to come and its cheaper with ddr2.
P.s good game tomorrow at 20:00 GMT - Argentina vs South Africa. That will be a battle of the packs! I must put the light on cos I keep having to edit my spelling.

[jamiee]

Both could be applicable depending on how you look at it- but thats the name of the game, lol! If your not after crossfire with 2900xt's just how much a performance gain will x38 with DDR3 give????? benching - yes cos any improvement is leapt upon but real world applications I cant see that much of a gain. So the P5k will have legs for some time to come and its cheaper with ddr2.
P.s good game tomorrow at 20:00 GMT - Argentina vs South Africa. That will be a battle of the packs! I must put the light on cos I keep having to edit my spelling.

Oh I have no interest in going the DDR3 route yet. Its too expensive for only a bit of increase in performance. The Maximus Formula is DDR2 based and does have the advantage of alot more settings being available in the BIOS than the Premium.
The more simplistic nature of the P5K-P's BIOS is kind of nice, but limiting from an overclocking perspective.


All this motherboard talk reminds me that I need to get building my buddies machine. He's getting my "old" components: P5WDH, E6700, 2Gb DDR800, etc...
Hmmmm... wonder how the P5W would run with my E6850 in it??? -NM-



Argentina vs. South Africa eh? That should be a very good match.

P.S. didn't your mother ever teach you to watch the tv with the lights on?

[lowdog]

I have a P5K-Premium made in China rev 2.00g and had a flaky boot problem....it was because the vid card wasn't seated properly, i'd bumped it when doing stuff in the case!

Aside from that one session where it caused me grief it's been running fine with 8gb of ram and my Q6600 @ 3.6GHz with 1.4v real and 4 x WD Raptors in raid 0. Overclocks set and stick fine in bios, no problems at all, great board so far after a few months use.

[jamiee]

I have a P5K-Premium made in China rev 2.00g and had a flaky boot problem....it was because the vid card wasn't seated properly, i'd bumped it when doing stuff in the case!

Aside from that one session where it caused me grief it's been running fine with 8gb of ram and my Q6600 @ 3.6GHz with 1.4v real and 4 x WD Raptors in raid 0. Overclocks set and stick fine in bios, no problems at all, great board so far after a few months use.

All the more reason to think my board is somehow defective.
I suspect it's either a flaky northbridge controller or something to do with the power regulators around the CPU.

I've been through just about everything to troubleshoot this board multiple times over with no improvement. Oddly enough the beta 0402 BIOS seems to have made the problem worse, so this does leave the possibility that it could be somehow BIOS related but then why don't many others suffer from the same fait? At the end of the day I'm kinda tired of dealing with it, so I think I'll go out today if I have the chance and see what's available. I'd kinda like to try the Maximus Formula just for a change but if it's not available then I'll likely get another P5K Premium.



-EDIT-
Just called the shop and they said they won't have the Formula in for another two weeks at least, but they do have several Premiums in stock..... So I guess it's another Premium for me.
Hopefully 2nd time is a charm.

[jamiee]

Alright folks, I picked up the new P5K Premium this morning, got it home and waisted no time installing it...

So far so good!
It booted right away and has done so after every BIOS setting change I've saved. I'm even running on a slight overclock right now

This board is ver. 2.00g : made in Taiwan and comes with BIOS 0204.

There's is some obvious differences between the two boards in terms of capacitors used as well as the box colours and graphics.

The first board has the Serial No.: 76M0AIL
And the new one is: 78M0ACL


An interesting note is that this new board feels snappier in windows, I notice programs opening quite a bit faster and I don't think its due to the mild overclock either. Strange.... but good


Well I'm off to do more testing (wish me luck).

[Dynasty]

All the more reason to think my board is somehow defective.
I suspect it's either a flaky northbridge controller or something to do with the power regulators around the CPU.

I've been through just about everything to troubleshoot this board multiple times over with no improvement. Oddly enough the beta 0402 BIOS seems to have made the problem worse, so this does leave the possibility that it could be somehow BIOS related but then why don't many others suffer from the same fait? At the end of the day I'm kinda tired of dealing with it, so I think I'll go out today if I have the chance and see what's available. I'd kinda like to try the Maximus Formula just for a change but if it's not available then I'll likely get another P5K Premium.



-EDIT-
Just called the shop and they said they won't have the Formula in for another two weeks at least, but they do have several Premiums in stock..... So I guess it's another Premium for me.
Hopefully 2nd time is a charm.

www.ncix.com

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...nufacture=ASUS

they have asus maximus formula in stock for an decent price...

[TWY]

Does the 0402 fix the "problem" of the board turning off and then on again whenever you first power on the system (when it's overclocked) after you have switched off the mains previously?

[Enoc]

from what etailer did you guys got the rev2 taiwan?
i want to buy mine but don't want to get a bad rev....

[jamiee]

Does the 0402 fix the "problem" of the board turning off and then on again whenever you first power on the system (when it's overclocked) after you have switched off the mains previously?

Hmm... my new board only does this "sometimes" after setting a new overclock setting in the BIOS, but only happens the one time after I've saved the settings and the board reboots.
After I've shut down the system for a period of time and then re-start it, it just boots the one time like it would if it was at default settings.
This is with the 0204 BIOS. I haven't felt the need to flash to any of the new betas yet as everything has been solid so far.


sesdave,
Now is all that baldness due to puters or is it really the wife/girlfriend/kids ??
A..hummmm...

Now...., have you tried disabling some of the graphical features/effects in vista?
Some of them can tend to make programs seem more sluggish at times.

I wouldn't characterize my Vista Ultimate 32bit experience with my first P5K-P as being/feeling slow exactly... if anything it was maybe on par to slightly slower than when running the Striker Extreme, yet did seem a bit slow compared to the experience I remember when running my older P5W DH Board.
I'm not sure what it was about the P5W, it just felt snappier in certain situations. The new P5K-P certainly has that feel to it and maybe a little improvement to boot.

One interesting thing to note is that with the first Premium I could noticeably see a difference in boot times depending on the settings used in the BIOS. With this new board it seems to boot consistently every time.

[btdvox]

I dont know, It seems these problems are really really scattered and not tied to "Old or New versions of the MoBo"
there are many people with the older Chinese model that are perfectly working
Including me, while many people of the new version have working Motherbaords and ones that dont work. So it seems pretty much luck of the draw.

[sesdave]

This is a neat way of dispalying all temps using PCwizard 2008 http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=1351
kindof like everest but more compact. Thanks to Justchill for this pointer. I havent used the product for some time but will now.