The P8P67 Evo is a very unique motherboard in that it comes from a line of mainstream motherboards with features normally reserved for higher end enthusiast models. Features such as a digital PWM and hardware based system tuning are generally expensive and difficult to implement so most builders avoid using them except on the boutique level
GIGABYTE is one of the few companies that truly gets Overclocking and embraces it as part of their company culture. They’ve already been quite successful taking care of gamers with a specifically focused board like the G1.Killer series. Our recent review of the G1.Assassin definitely made that clear.
Today we have another great motherboard from ASUS: the P8P67 WS Revolution - B3 Revision. This motherboard is designed for the latest Intel Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, running on the LGA 1155 platform. It also sports a revised P67 Cougar Town chipset, to fix the problems that prompted the recall. For those that don't know about the Cougar Town recall, Intel had a major setback with the Sandy Bridge launch due to a chipset defect that would degrade the SATA III ports over time. With the B3 stepping motherboards, the problem is eliminated and the user is guaranteed to receive a fully functional chipset.
Now that the initial Intel Cougar Point chipset problems have been resolved, there is a plethora of motherboards on the market that support the latest Sandy Bridge processors. For enthusiasts, the current high-end SNB-supportive chipset is the Intel P67, of which there are also many different motherboards from various vendors. One of the P67 motherboards that attempts to provide some of the high-end features while at a mainstream price-point is the ECS P67H2-A2. This Elitegroup motherboard retails for less than $200 USD while it ships with two PCI Express x16 slots, USB 3.0, Serial ATA 3.0, and ECS overclocking features.
The P67 Professional Motherboard from ASRock is the Fatal1ty branded product from the series and comes with a lot of features like Digital PWM, XFast USB Technology, V16+2 CPU Power Phases, no less than 6 USB 3.0 ports and 6 SATA3, C.C.O., THX TruStudio Pro, and the unique Fatal1ty Mouse Port, which allows us to set the desired mouse polling rate, up to 1000Hz.
MSI’s mainstream offering to the P67 family is the P67A-GD65. According to the packaging the motherboard comes in it offers quite a bit in the form of overclocking, high quality on-board components as well as USB 3.0 and SATA III support. All the right things that a consumer are looking for. The packaging can say one thing but will its time on the test bench say the same? We will see.
The GIGABYTE G1 Assassin X58 motherboard packed with features. In fact, I don't think the could pack anything else on the board than they already did. In order to fit everything that they did, GIGABYTE had to move away from the standard ATX form factor and increase the size of the board to a XL-ATX form factor. The XL-ATX form factor measures 34.5cm x 26.3cm, opposed to the Standard ATX form factor which measures 30.5cm x 24.4cm. The increase in the form factor size gave GIGABYTE an additional 163.15 square centimeters. That's a gain of 21.9% in the total real estate on the PCB for all of the added features. Despite the increased real estate on the PCB of the GIGABYTE G1 Assassin X58 motherboard, GIGABYTE managed to fill it with features...
The board is based on Intel X58 Express chipset and is designed for LGA1366 processors. It boasts convenient design, extensive settings for system configuring and overclocking and is incredibly energy-efficient.
With the Cougar Point chipset and Sandy Bridge processor selling like crazy, so brings a new line of ITX motherboards. The first one we will take a look at is the ASRock H67M-ITX/HT. ASRock currently offers two motherboards in this small form factor: one being the HT, which comes with Wi-Fi and a Media Center controller; and the other being a non-HT, which lacks both. Otherwise you are getting the same great motherboard features with both, though we will be taking a look at the HT sub-model for you all today.
At the tune of over a billion dollars, INTEL’s issues with Sandy Bridge have finally been taken care of. The issue with production has been sorted out and Sandy Bridge’s little sidekick, Cougar Point, has been fixed up and is rolling off the assembly lines with properly working SATA ports. At the same time, companies are now fulfilling their RMA duties to all owners of previous boards. But the question remains, did anything change besides the chipset on the board?
Last week, we had a look at a complete solution from ZOTAC called the ZBOX ADO2 Plus which is a mini PC built on AMD’s Fusion platform. This time, we get to take our first in-house look at AMD’s FUSION platform as a bare motherboard solution. This GIGABYTE board known as the GA-E350N-USB3 is based on the Brazos platform which includes a 1.6 GHz Dual Core E350 AMD APU and a Hudson M1 FCH (Fusion Controller Hub). The graphics built into the E350 APU is a Radeon HD 6310 which accelerates Blu-ray playback and contains DirectX 11 so it can play today’s latest games at 720p with moderate settings.
The Fusion APU uses up to 18 watts of power which allows a fully functional system build with this board to use around the same power as a 60 watt incandescent light bulb. A full review will be coming up in the next few weeks so make sure you stay tuned.
As of late, hardware has become less expensive and more efficient and so it should with more competition than ever, more brands want to be top of the food chain as it were. There are some users including the gamers and enthusiasts with cash burning a hole in their pockets that will lead them to a high-end board such as the ASUS Crosshair collection or Gigabyte UD7 motherboards but the majority of users won't believe in paying these top prices for features they will most likely not use.
Thankfully motherboard manufacturer's don't just focus on the high-end market, but also on the mainstream market as well. This doesn't mean that the components are of any lesser quality, but instead it supplies the user with everything they need, and nothing that they don't.
Well the folks over at Elite Computer Systems have decided to ship us one of their motherboards. The ECS A785GM-M Socket AM3 motherboard. While most of you may remark that this board is kind of old and outdated by the newest AMD 8xx series boards, it still has something to give for the budget user.
