A couple of P67 motherboards assessed

[El_Capitan]

Well, I've had the pleasure of getting introduced to Sandy Bridge and overclocking pretty early with a few different motherboards. I tested it pretty much on the same system, so the CPU, PSU, and memory were all the same through different motherboards. This isn't a review, just an assessment of the different boards.

 

The motherboards:

ASUS P8P67 Deluxe

ASUS Sabertooth P67

GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD7

MSI P67A-GD65

 

Overclocking:

The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe and the Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7 were by far the better overclockers. The ASUS Sabertooth P67 wasn't far behind (actually pretty good depending on the BIOS version). However, both the ASUS motherboards were the simpler of the two to overclock. The MSI P67A-GD65 I had could have been a bad motherboard, still, I noticed very bad LLC. The voltages were everywhere. You can see more of my results of most of my overclocks here.

 

One other thing to mention was that taking benchmarks using Cinebench 11.5, the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe always had a higher score at the same frequencies over the other motherboards.

 

Problems:

The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe had a faulty Intel LAN port, and the PCIEx1 slot eventually stopped working. Other than that, this motherboard rocked as far as performance and stability.

 

The ASUS Sabertooth P67 has problems fitting in graphics cards. Depending on the computer case (notably the Lian Li Lancool PC-K62), I had to install the graphics card(s) in first, before mounting the motherboard to the motherboard tray. That is a pretty bad design overlook right there. Other than that, the motherboard is pretty solid.

 

The Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7 reset CMOS doesn't work when you have a bad overclock. The system will constantly loop shutting down and starting up and shutting down, etc. The only remedy is to remove the CMOS battery as well, but if you have a 2nd card in SLI/Crossfire, that means you have to pull it out to get access to the battery. The PCIEx1 slot is also pretty much useless. The heatsink to the right of it is raised, so no luck fitting in a sound card in there. Very poor design overlook there, too. However, even though this motherboard supposedly has two PCIE2.0x16 lanes, my GTX 570's in SLI perform worse than on the ASUS motherboards that use two PCIE2.0x8 lanes due to the NF200 chipset latencies. The PCIE2.0 lanes are also pretty close in together, so good luck trying to fit in some wide graphics cards. Overall, I'm very disappointed with this motherboard for the cost.

 

The MSI P67A-GD65 just didn't work. There were just too many problems with stable voltages, even at stock. It could have been a dud, but researching online, it's a very common issue.

[Nyt]

Seems like I'll stay LGA1366 for now A friend of mine has a spare 980x that he'd sell for cheap to me

But then I bought my second 580 , maybe I'll take him up on his offer later this year .

 

Back to topic .... What builds were the ASUS Sabertooth P67 and MSI P67A-GD65 for ? Did you send the GD65 back ?

I thought the UD7 was like the king of all lga1155 boards , seems the Maximus IV Extreme has that spot after the UD7's trouble .

That CMOS button is a serious issue for me , that sucks especially if I got it since I'll have two cards too .

[El_Capitan]

I sent the MSI P67A-GD65 back for a refund. The ASUS Sabertooth P67 was originally for me, but my brother's currently using it because his ASUS P8P67 Deluxe was sent in for RMA, but the Sabertooth will be going to a co-worker's build, and I'm currently using the Gigabyte UD7. When I visit my brother in a bit, I'll have him use the Gigabyte UD7, and I'll be waiting on the RMA'd ASUS P8P67 Deluxe for getting my main system back up.

[Praz]

However, even though this motherboard supposedly has two PCIE2.0x16 lanes, my GTX 570's in SLI perform worse than on the ASUS motherboards that use two PCIE2.0x8 lanes.

Asus has been criticized for the x8 slot speed when using 2 video cards with the Maximus IV Extreme when there is a NF200 chipset that will allow x16 speed. But your findings show why this route was taken. The x16 speed does not make up for the added latency imposed by the NF200 chip. But x16 sounds good in the marketing info.

[El_Capitan]

Asus has been criticized for the x8 slot speed when using 2 video cards with the Maximus IV Extreme when there is a NF200 chipset that will allow x16 speed. But your findings show why this route was taken. The x16 speed does not make up for the added latency imposed by the NF200 chip. But x16 sounds good in the marketing info.

Yeah, I just wished that any review out there caught this, but I didn't see anything of the sort.

 

Marketing got the best of me.

[El_Capitan]

Update: The GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD7-B3 was a non-refundable item, but Newegg made another exception and gave me store credit. Newegg ftw!

 

I won't be going back to Gigabyte anytime soon. Their customer support just said to handle it through Newegg.