Asus complete P55 line up

[trans am]

yeah... good point... nowadays even entry level boards offer bios features and voltages we used to have to buy a premium board for before...

i do like the usb connected external tweak thing, but yeah, its more of a toy than really useful... only useful if you bench and oc a lot and want to push things the extra 5% or so...

true... it would still be some feature that would make it possible for people to justify buying the highend version though... at least something, even if its useless for the next 6 months or 1 year

idk, some raid chip or better nic or something else... there should be something on the highend boards that is missing on the entry level and mainstream boards that really adds a useful 24/7 feature imo... even better fanspeed control would be a useful feature that would make it worth it to buy a more expensive board than a cheaper one for some people!

atm what you pay extra between most of those boards is for what?
1 more nic
1 more sata
1 more pci
2 more usb...

thats not really that motivating for most people i think...
not a good way to diferentiate the boards...

on the premium boards you get
better bios
better pwm
remote toy
better sound

whats missing imo is:
more sata
better raid
better nic
pciE switch (to allow sli+raid and xfire+raid or tri sli and tri xfire)

especially the last is what id expect for a 250-300$ board...


i dont know what chips this one uses... but previously asus used the same chip they use on their xonar soundcards iirc, and those are very good...
not the best soundcard you can get but close afaik

I agree. I thought the onboard wifi that came on the x38 p5e3 dlx /wifi was a cool feature. I haven't seen asus do that much these days. maybe time to bring that back.

[sholvaco]

The D version without false 3rd PCI-Ex looks good,could be better with angled sata...already took my decision:UD4 or GD65
Is there only a sata port difference between the pro and the evo?

That "false" 3rd PCIe costs next to nothing in terms of engineering effort and provides the user an extra x4 slot for everything from sound cards to RAID cards to network cards... why anyone would be against it, is beyond my capacity to reason. BTW the "vanilla" board (the only D version would be the Deluxe, the D in these boards' family name "P7P55D" stands for Xtreme Design) doesn't even provide an option for SLI/CF setup. Since there are no lane switches in sight the slots run at x16 by x4 (PCH driven), so by your logic it only has one real x16 slot and the other one is the "false" x4. Why did they even bother adding the fake one, right?

i dont know what chips this one uses... but previously asus used the same chip they use on their xonar soundcards iirc, and those are very good...
not the best soundcard you can get but close afaik

The bundled audio modules use the same trick the Quantum Force SONAR X-FI modules did: move the codec to a PCIe daughterboard and add some Creative hardware like the X-Fi crystalizer and maybe better filtering. The ADI codecs (there were more versions) used on these modules are the same as the ones they use on their high-end onboard integrated audio solutions. The ASUS Xonar cards on the other hand use a dedicated audio processor (an ASUS branded C-Media OxygenHD).

[saaya]

That "false" 3rd PCIe costs next to nothing in terms of engineering effort and provides the user an extra x4 slot for everything from sound cards to RAID cards to network cards...

mhhh raid might actually cause problems, if it really uses the 4 lanes... cause its 4 pciE 1.1 lanes, they are 2.0 "compatible" but the bw is 1.1... and they are connected to the sb, which is connected to the cpu via... right, dmi which is? 4 pciE 1.1 lanes... ^^
and those dmi lanes are shared for everything else on the sb... hdd, audio, nic1, nic2, pci, etc... so its not even a real pciE 4x slot... but yeah better have than no have, sure

The bundled audio modules use the same trick the Quantum Force SONAR X-FI modules did: move the codec to a PCIe daughterboard and add some Creative hardware like the X-Fi crystalizer and maybe better filtering. The ADI codecs (there were more versions) used on these modules are the same as the ones they use on their high-end onboard integrated audio solutions. The ASUS Xonar cards on the other hand use a dedicated audio processor (an ASUS branded C-Media OxygenHD).

trick? why trick? and no, sonar isnt pciE afaik, its a custom connector daughterboard, and it uses the realtek 888 codec and the creative stuff is all done in software, mostly, they do use the realtek hw as well of course...
it helps to move the sound to a seperate pcb, you can revise and rework it independantly and improve the signal quality of both the pwm and the audio circuicy cause there is absolutely no corsstalk or emi, plus you have extra pcb space if your using a beefy pwm... and you can shield it easily...
when you say trick it sounds as if its meant to fool people into believing its a propper sound card bundled with the board. idk if asus does that but foxconn and dfi def dont, and msi doesnt either afaik...

the ADI codec was better than the realtek or via or any other audio codecs found on cheap soundcards or mainboards i thought? and yes, asus uses the ADI codec with a special creative driver that uses the hw and adds some features via software (uses the cpu). asus xonar uses c-media? wow i didnt know that...

so then msi actually has the best onboard sound since they use an actual REAL xifi sound chip on some boards, right?

some boards used the pre audigy creative chip which creative renamed to xifi something, dont remember if its asus or msi... and that chips is worse than any onboard audio lol... gee, so confusing to figure out how good onboard sound really is, there are so many creative xifi onboard sound solutions based on entirely diferent stuff... realtek and ADI, propper xifi chip, relabeled ancient creative chip...

[sholvaco]

some boards used the pre audigy creative chip which creative renamed to xifi something, dont remember if its asus or msi... and that chips is worse than any onboard audio lol... gee, so confusing to figure out how good onboard sound really is, there are so many creative xifi onboard sound solutions based on entirely diferent stuff... realtek and ADI, propper xifi chip, relabeled ancient creative chip...

See? That's why I used the term "trick".

To be honest though, none of the mobo manufacturers bundling these really refer to them as sound cards and use the term "audio module" instead. The rest is up to consumer interpretation.

[zalbard]

i dont know what chips this one uses... but previously asus used the same chip they use on their xonar soundcards iirc, and those are very good...
not the best soundcard you can get but close afaik

It does little to none hardware acceleration unlike real Creative X-Fi (Titanium for example), though, doesn't it? For games I mean.

[GAR]

How many pci-e lanes does the P55 have compared to X58???

[Smartidiot89]

How many pci-e lanes does the P55 have compared to X58???

P55 has 16 PCI-E 2.0 while x58 has 32(?) PCI-E 2.0

[sholvaco]

The X58 IOH provides 36 PCIe 2.0 lanes while the P55 PCH provides 8 PCIe 1.1 lanes (only four can be bonded into a single x4 slot AFAIK). The 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes on the Ibex Peak platform (LGA1156 CPU + P5x chipset) come from the CPU integrated PCIe controller.

[Chickenfeed]

It's interesting that they the made the Maximus III heatisnk assembly bigger. Likely just to increase surface area but interesting none the less given the lack of a NB/IOH. At least we shouldn't have to worry about temp issues on these boards ( something that can't be said about all x58 boards sadly )

[sxs112]

Maximus III Gene and P7P55 WS SuperComputer with P7P55D Premium coming soon

[twwen2]

Maximus III Gene and P7P55 WS SuperComputer with P7P55D Premium coming soon

Like this one?

[sxs112]

Like this one?

Yes

[Leeghoofd]

Damn I still need to get the maximus II gene for review and the III is imminent lol... I'm getting too old for this pace

[initialised]

It does little to none hardware acceleration unlike real Creative X-Fi (Titanium for example), though, doesn't it? For games I mean.

No but the improvement going from a SoundMaxII to a SoundMax X-Fi is noticable due pretty much to the X-Fi software which can be made to work on all RealTek onboard audio for the cost of the license ($29).

[SoF]

Here is a german review of Asus P7P55D Deluxe. I really start to like the new plattform

[onethreehill]

Asus P7P55 WS Supercomputer P55 Preview



http://www.tomshardware.com/pictures...rcomputer.html

[twwen2]

Damn you beat me by 5min!

[Kinc]

Here we have P7P55D Premium:



Whiteish SATA ports are 6GB.

[sholvaco]

What's up with the Premium's PWM setup... Lemme guess: they can't live with themselves unless they've got more phases than Gigabyte.

Those blue ports on the I/O panel are USB 3.0 right? Which controller, NEC or the rumored Fujitsu?

PCIe lanes are only x16(CPU) by x4(PCH)?

[sdsdv10]

Here we have P7P55D Premium:

<image removed>

Whiteish SATA ports are 6GB.

Have you done any testing? Were the initial report of problems with the SATA 6GB controller overstated or have they been corrected?

[sxs112]

P7P55D Premium Preview

[Andrew LB]

So far I've only been able to play with the Evo. Working on getting 4GHz stable on a 750. I like the board and can't really see a compelling reason to step up to a Deluxe or Maximus, all they really add is toys.

Toys? I don't typically regard all the extra sata ports (which I use EIGHT), better voltage regulation, higher quality components, better cooling, etc..... as Toys.

My currently "dead" EVGA 780i SLI FTW had nowhere near the amount of features as my backup Asus Striker Extreme and I use almost every one of those features. I run a RAID-0 array for my OS and Apps, a RAID-1 array for added data safety for all my music, financial documents, photography, and backed up images of all my software. In addition to those 4x SATA hard drives, I have 2x internal optical drives, and on my desk are another 2x 640gb drives for storage, partition backups, etc.

Asus has always made motherboards with incredible amounts of features and I say 'more power to 'em'.

[Oki]

Damn I still need to get the maximus II gene for review and the III is imminent lol... I'm getting too old for this pace

Hey i would like to read that with pleasure. Howcome you didn't get one like you did rampage 2 gene ???

I have one maximus 2 gene here, but also i'm busy as hell these days cause vacation is over etc etc... really looking forward for your review !

sorry for offtopic everyone !

[LinkinParkBoy]

P7P55D Premium Price?

[Kinc]

Here we have the little Maximus III GENE