Introduction:

ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard comes from the last four calligraphy of the word Pegasus. A mythical winged pony that they have chosen for their company name; it represents Strength, Creative Spirit and Purity. Flying Pony Encounter is not a upset you will find in droves here at TechREACTION, but rigorous hard and evaluation of manufacturers PC correlated products is. Strength is certainly an attribute ASUS brings to the table, being the largest motherboard manufacturer in the planet. Creative Spirit is epitomized both by being early to promote with new exciting technologies as well as the aesthetics that they place into their manufactured goods designs. Purity is exemplified by the total package encounter. Products that go privileged than and further than what one expects, and a knowledgeable staff to help get you effective and playing further than your expectations.

ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard

The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard is a LGA1155 Socket motherboard supporting Crossfire and SLI in a x8/x8 configuration, or a release GPU with up to 16 Lanes of PCIE 2.0 bandwidth at its disposal. 16+2 phase power supplies more than enough clean power to the CPU to max out the capabilities of the Grimy Bridge architecture, and 4 additional phases will handle the DRAM slots for pushing modern 2000+ MHz DDR3. The board facial appearance a UEFI BIOS, Bluetooth, Power Over E-SATA, and an Intel Network IC. Two integrated USB 3.0 ports with 2 more added through the built-in front panel additional room device, and 4 SATA 3 (6 Gbps) ports provided by the PCH and Marvell controller.

Digi+ Power Dual Processor enhancements allow the motherboard to both overclock, and enhance low power capabilities of the architecture, through use of the EPU and TPU processors. ASUS again institutes the Mem Ok! map to enhance reminiscence compatibility. Firewire is built-in on the IO panel, as well as up to 10 channel audio by incorporation the 7.1 rear relations with acquiescent 2 channel front panel audio.

LEDs proliferate with post indicators for Reminiscence, CPU, VGA, Boot diplomacy and RAM. (Dubbed the QLED Diagnostic logic).Decorative LEDs, a 2 numeral post code spectacle and lit on-board power and reset buttons around out the explanation fixtures.

In an effort not to place the cart before the pony, the full map part of the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard assess will follow an introduction to the new Grimy Bridge CPUs and Cougar Top based motherboards.

Grimy Bridge In Brief ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard

Grimy Bridge is the newest “tock” architecture from Intel. Based on the well loved Westmere chips of 2010, the CPU has been redesigned with manifold new facial appearance. Ring bus topology has replaced QPI with bandwidth up to 96GB/s, new 256 bit AVX directions for improved FP operations, an improved GPU with turbo map, and 32nm design for decrease power treatment. The Grimy Bridge CPU is more efficient than before generation CPUs. Grimy Bridge will also contain a Record Transcoder on-die, as well as a new cache for micro-ops.

Grimy Bridge uses an LGA1155 socket for mounting, and is not compatible with the before generation LGA1156; neither CPU or Motherboard. The heatsink mounting try out, even if, is 1156 compatible. So a new HSF will not need to be bought if you are upgrading from a P55 platform. Even as certain facial appearance wait the same, (IOH and ICH have been replaced with a singular PCH, like LGA1156) additional improvements have been made. In lieu of by an MCM design of CPU and NB on silicon, the LGA1155 is a right on-die chip with IMC and GPU built-in as a release unit.

The GPU shares L3 cache with the CPU and will come in one of two styles, release or dual core (referred to as GT1 or GT2), which will have 6 or 12 Execution Units correspondingly. The 12 unit GPU is reported to be copy to or best than a Radeon HD 5450 Discrete GPU, and vaguely more than twice as commanding as the ancient LGA1156 GPUs. The GPUs will also map Turbo mode, much like the CPUs do now. A unique motherboard (dubbed H67, with H61 unfilled at a prospect date) will be needed to use the integrated graphics core.

With the abolition of QPI and UnCore, the L3 Cache will now run at CPU speed. When CPU turbo is initiated, L3 Cache speed will also boost. Even if, CPU and GPU Turbos are mutually exclusive, and only one item can use the Turbo map at a time. The L3 Cache being tied to CPU means that when the GPU cores boost in speed, the reminiscence speed does not. This may not be an come forth at all as the amount of reminiscence is very tiny to start with, even if on reminiscence deprived discrete GPUs, reminiscence speed evenly has a very limiting look on performance.

DMI 2.0 will grant x8 PCIE 2.0 lanes in commission at 5GT/s (full speed PCIE 2.0). This doubles the bandwidth of the the LGA1156 DMI bus and is a much needed change, as USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbs drives are apt more ordinary, it will be simpler to oversupply the ancient ordinary. Providing 4GBs in one direction provides prospect scalability for manifold drives in RAID arrays, USB 3.0 Ready Boost diplomacy and Gigabit Ethernet.

The Grimy Bridge platform will have minimal Bus Timer adjustment capability in an effort to lower overclocking. Even if, to offset this, Intel has also lowered their prices on the “K series” CPUs, which are multiplier unlocked. Sorry to say, at this time even the unlocked multiplier CPUs have an high homogenize. Theoretically 57x, in do even if this digit is evenly much decrease.

Grimy Bridge Motherboards:

Not all “chipsets” are produced equally. At launch time, manufacturers released P67 and H67 motherboards. The main alteration according to Intel specification is door to the integrated GPU via the Bendable Spectacle Boundary (FDI). H67 also does not natively help dual 8/8 PCIE 2.0 slots, but only a release x16 Lane slot. Even if, Manufacturers will be free to make changes to these specifications based on 3rd party hardware as will be commented on in the subsequent assess.

H61 will be a low cost motherboard solution. Indifferent facial appearance will be RAID help, 2 less PCIE lanes for the DMI Bus, and 4 less USB 2.0 ports. None of the chipsets map USB 3.0 help, so manufacturers will contain them by chips from VIA or NEC (now called Renesas Electronics Corporation).

Another vital note is that H67 and H61 at this time map safe and signal reminiscence multipliers. The P67 does help unlocked reminiscence multipliers. Combined with the poor BUS speed adjustments unfilled on the Grimy Bridge platform, this may possibly upshot in a lack of high-end reminiscence sales for the H series chipsets.

Overclocking Limitations:

As mentioned earlier, Intel has resolute to homogenize overclocking on the Grimy Bridge platform. Even if, with the 2500K and 2600K bringing unlocked multiplier goodness to the masses at a reasonable price, the limitation to manipulate the BUS speeds will look persons purchasing the decrease tier CPUs more than anyone. The flexibility to control reminiscence speeds will also be hindered lacking the skill to control the BCLK further than a few points, except manufacturers place forward greater control over reminiscence multipliers than what is present on current gen motherboards.

The limitation of the overclocking skill is tied to the fact that Intel has one timer generator for each bus on the CPU. Be it USB, SATA, PCIE or CPU. ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard remains to be seen if motherboard manufacturers will be able to implement a work nearly as they have done in the past with PCI/AGP locks, or more just with PCIE.

ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard has been fantastic with Intel BUS speeds in the past, root for their R&D team to map out this dilemma.

The P8P67 Deluxe:

The ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard facial appearance a black PCB, with Black, Blue, Set alight blue and some colorless highlights. Fake protective coating ships on two of the heatsinks, the low profile PCH heatsink and the, for lack of a best description the op-amp heatsink in the the ordinary “chipset sink” location. We can easily see the 8 pin CPU power connector the 24 pin ATX connector, LGA1156 style levered socket maintenance means, 3 PCIE 16x slots (electrical) and 4 DIMM slots by the new 1 sided clip means.

The VRM heatsinks are a free form design that is reminiscent of waves, I don’t know ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard is the set alight blue color that makes it or just the design. Anodized aluminum the width and go up area should be more than adequate to handle the cooling needs compelling into account the digit of phases and the low power requirements of the Grimy Bridge platform.

The less vital sink handles 4 VRMs and is mounted with a push pin design. Touching the sink reveals it is not steadily mounted at all even with the offset alignment of the mounting clips. Even if it is only responsible for 4 VRMS. Note: After remounting the less vital VRM heatsink, ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard appears to be more solidly attached, although still not as steadily as the better sink. Whether this is due to settling of the thermal pad, or from shipping the package is unknown. Recommend reseating the heatsink if it appears to be too loosely mounted.

Nearly the less vital sink we see the 4 pin CPU fan slogan, as well as a tiny 3 pin slogan with no description on the board or in the manual. Like the R3F we reviewed last month, this is most likely for ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard use.

Moving towards the corner we have the 8 pin CPU power socket, located accurate to the edge of the board, so mounting this setup in a case should not be a problem. Even as under the heatsink we can find the Digi+ VRM IC. This facility in racing bike with the DIP2 map of the motherboard mentioned for a fleeting time privileged than and discussed in further top later in the assess.

The better VRM heatsink handles the remaining 12+2 phases of CPU power and is piped to the op-amp heatsink. The op-amp sink is approximately 3.5” x 2” generous and touches the op-amp and FET for the amp on approximately 5% of its go up. Initial depression is that the sink will be used to grant additional cooling to the VRMs. A side subsidy of the pipe and secondary sink that is mounted with screws and a jump clip design is the main VRM sink is very steadily mounted as opposed to the secondary VRM sink mounted only with jump clips. The 16+2 Phases of power are apply as 16 phases for the CPU with 2 additional phases for the Reminiscence controller (also on the CPU).

Removing the heatsink, the board is absolutely capped by Fujitsu – Nichicon capacitors, which should delight many public. Also noticeable is the BT GO! labeling on the board here. This is an ASUS implemented onboard Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR transceiver. Looking very meticulously we can make out a tiny FET for conniving the Power over ESATA port on the IO area as well. The tiny green SMDs with Italic ‘P’ on paper on them are fuses for the external connectors. This is to care for the motherboard from externally together diplomacy.

The CPU Land Grid Array 1155 has the same advent as the LGA1156. The area nearly the socket itself is honestly open and only the largest of heatsinks will have any problems with mounting. A Motherboard with as many facial appearance and phases of CPU power as the P8P67, ASUS did a excellent job keeping the socket area as open as doable for aficionado level cooling diplomacy. Fujitsu – Nichicon caps surround the socket and should be fleeting enough to handle any 1156 competent heatsink.

At the top of the IO area we find a inheritance PS/2 port for Keyboard or mouse, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, dual Ethernet, dual E-SATA, firewire, 6 analog and dual digital audio ports (Coax and TOSLink SP/DIF). The Blue fake blanket over the red ESATA and USB ports is the Bluetooth transceiver. One of the E-SATA ports is green to differentiate it because it facial appearance Power over E-SATA. A one cable solution for running SATA hard drives and SSDs as an external solution. No AC adapter or USB power will need to be provided.

The first Ethernet port (looking left to right) is gigabit speed powered by the Realtek RTL8111E which all additional current P67 motherboard manufacturers are by. Now only ASUS is also by the Intel NIC 82579V. Sorry to say no further in rank was able to be found on this IC as yet, but as the sticker on the IO area says, it is Intel Gbit LAN. Further in rank will be unfilled after Intel releases confidentiality on the IC, at present the reviewer is awaiting acceptance into Intel’s Privileged embedded forums to find out more in rank. In rank will be added as it is cultured and as it is allowable by Intel.

Trailing down the back of the board we find a digit of ICs that power the integrated peripherals. The first being NEC D7202000F1 USB 3.0 controller. This is an update of the original NEC controller and chains XHCI and uses near 1/5th power in idle situations. The next vital IC we have is the Intel NIC, mentioned privileged than. Realtek RTL8111E provides the additional Gigabit port, running off a release lane PCIE 1.1. Firewire is also built-in via the IO area and an additional external PCI sort that was not built-in in this try out, from the VIA VT6315N which is the same IC used on before ASUS boards to give 2 Firewire ports. The last IC of note on the back edge of the board is the audio controller, a Realtek ALC889. The ALC889 chains up to channel audio, 7.1 from the rear analog or digital ports and another 2 channels through the front panel slogan.

ASUS has also built-in Digital Acting Surround Sensation UltraPC licensing. This capability allows the decoder to transform stereo audio input into 5.1 surround signal. Even if it can also emulate surround through 2 channel speakers or earphone. DTS audio is a fantastic inclusion for an onboard audio device.

The P8P67 Deluxe carries 3 PCI-E 2.0 x16 electrical additional room slots, 2 x1 PCI-e Expansions slots and 2 PCI additional room slots. Due to the scenery of the Grimy Bridge Chipset the first two PEG slots will either run at 16/0 or 8/8 lanes correspondingly. The third PEG slot runs with only 4 lanes and is apposite well for RAID cards or additional additional room diplomacy that demand more than 500 MB/s bandwidth. The PLX PEX8608 chip located just not more than the first PEG slot is an 8 Lane PCIE 2.0 spec batter that can handle up to 8 ports for the integrated high speed IO diplomacy like USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps. This allows the skill to run SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 diplomacy even as not hindering the PCIE slot performance.

The PCI slots are provided by the AsMedia chip ASM1083, even as the dual PEG slots are broken down by the AsMedia ASM1440s located just north of the first PEG slot. Even as the board chains Crossfire and SLI multi-GPU setups, ASUS has built-in a 3-slot SLI bridge with the motherboard instead of a Crossfire bridge. AsMedia Equipment is an ASUS subsidiary and is compelling generous strides in the chip building meadow.

Near the top PCIE x1 slot we also find another 4 pin Fan slogan, this one labeled Chassis Fan 1.

Along the underside edge of the board we find the Front Panel audio slogan, with BIOS options this can be selected to either productivity AC’ 97 or HD audio plot. Frankly privileged than the FP Audio port is a 3 pin SPDIF out slogan. This can be used to productivity digital audio to an grown-up nVidia card, or to add digital audio productivity via an optional PCI additional room port device.

Next to it we have a Firewire additional room port for regard a second 1394a port to you PC. Again it requires an additional room port device that is not built-in with the packaging. This is scarce for ASUS, but for long time PC builders this will not be a problem as they should still have a dozen meeting in a desk or closet from the last 12 builds they have done. There is also a tiny SMD mounted fuse for the domestic slogan just as there are for the rear IO ports on the motherboard.

Here we have our first selectable choice. The EPU batter is for enabling the Energy Processor Unit which helps store up power by enabling and disabling phases as needed ensuing in privileged efficiency. All Grimy Bridge motherboards have this map, (SVID) but ASUS has offloaded the administer and made some incredible improvements to it as we will chat about in the DIP2 facial appearance part.

Onboard power and reset switches are clever for persons that run a setup lacking a case. Two USB 2.0 headers are located here for case additional room, or internally mounted USB diplomacy. Two 3-pin fan headers are also located along the underside edge of the board for power #2 and chassis #2. The 80-Post code debugger LEDs are located here as well. A break down of POST code errors can be found in the manual on page 2-20 under “Q-Codes.” More fuses can also be seen to the north of the USB headers. ASUS has gone out of their way to care for your investment.

Finally we find the Front panel connection slogan. A Case can connect its power and reset switches, Power and IDE LEDs and lecturer frankly to this slogan. For ease of use even if the ASUS Q-Connector is a fantastic addition. For open air benchers it will not be needed, thankfulness to the onboard switches and LEDs, even if for the user that runs a Case, this setup is brilliant.

North of the Front Panel slogan we see the TurboV Processing Unit (TPU) which is in effect an overclocker in a box (or more accurately on board). This IC handles performance aspects of the Grimy Bridge Architecture as well as some ASUS only innovations like Mem Ok! IT can be controlled via software through windows, or via BIOS options. With a flick of a batter you can boost productivity from an already commanding logic.

Next to the TPU IC we have a generous chip renowned as an LPCIO. This chip is a Nuvoton NCT6776F Handles monitoring power give voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures. It also handles inheritance IO such as Floppy Disk, Serial and Analogous Port relations. It’s function on the P8 even if is environmental monitoring and port 80 diagnostic post. (Sent to the Post Code LEDs located at the underside of the board).

Eight SATA ports are built-in on the motherboard. The first four set alight blue ports are SATA2 the Colorless/set alight grey ports are SATA3 and all 6 are powered off the Intel PCH. The remaining 2 blue ports are also SATA3 but run off the Marvell 9128 controller.

Located just north of the PCH heatsink is the Second NEC (Renesas) USB3 controller for the front panel USB3 device. Towards the forwards edge is the set alight blue 19 pin USB3 slogan (meticulously located are two more SMD fuses). This NEC chip chains XHCI, which most importantly the the boards a key role in virtualization options in the prospect. XHCI is a Intel backed specification that is attributed to USB2.0 and privileged than. If the citations is understood accurately, USB diplomacy that only work in Inheritance OSes, the inheritance OS would be able to be run in a VM, and the USB together and used as if the host in commission logic was that inheritance OS. For a full colorless paper on XHCI delight click here.

Macronix America supplies the onboard sparkle based tech for BIOS and EFI BIOS. The 8 pin socket chip located frankly north of the Marvell SATA port is the EFI BIOS which is has 32Mb of storage. Frankly west of that is a 512Kb sparkle storage also made by Macronix.

At the sensitivity of the all of this is the PCH. Gone is the ICHxx terminology of ancient. There is no ICH11 or ICH11R. The functions of the ICH are now built-in in the PCH. Intel Storage equipment drivers have been updated for the Cougar Top PCH, the H2 release of Grimy Bridge-E platforms will also contain the Intel PCH in lieu of break IOH and ICH.

The PCH is supplied by 8 PCIE 2.0 lanes off of the CPU via the Supervise over Media Boundary 2.0 BUS. This provides twice the bandwidth of the Ibex Peak (P55) PCH.

Proceeding up the chief edge of the board, we come to the set alight blue painted 24 pin EATX power socket, ordinary fare of the last few being. Frankly north of this we have the “Mem Ok!” pin. This pin tells the motherboard to quest for apposite reminiscence profiles, either manual entered or automatically generated, for reminiscence that is not on the QVL. In all honestly, ASUS has always been fantastic in supporting “unsupported” reminiscence, austerely by installing one stick in the DIMM furthermost from the CPU and booting. Issues with non-bootable reminiscence over the last few being on ASUS products have never occurred for this user, so a map like this very near seems like a dissipate of investigate in view of the fact that the investigate has made it a non-come forth. Even if, any user that has had issues with ill-assorted reminiscence even with the capabilities of the ASUS motherboards, will also be with you the benefits of a map like this and herald ASUS for rising this. Right next to the Mem Ok! pin is the post DRAM LED.

Next we have the TPU batter, and another 3 pin fan slogan this one labeled for Power Fan #1. TPU will be discussed further in the DIP2 part of the assess, the batter for TPU is a physical means of enabling or disabling the skill to automatically overclock the logic. ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard

Finally we turn up at the DIMM slots. Four slots are present with set alight blue and dark grey tones. Like the preceding generation the slot furthermost from the CPU socket is the first DIMM slot even if the labeling on the board is ambiguous as it calls that slot DIMM B2. In actuality the Set alight Blue slots are the primary reminiscence slots for running two brushwood in dual channel.

Asus again uses the release lock maintenance means it used on the Rampage III Formula assess try out we received (Q-DIMM). Even if the loose DIMM feel is no longer present. Creative spirit to be sure, this one follows through with slots as well-built as persons of a dual clip scenery. The thought behind the design is brilliant, removing the second clip reduces issues with hitting long graphics cards in the first PEG slot.

We also can see 4 phase V_DIMM power being supplied. Based purely on paper the Grimy Bridge platform should be able to handle 4 DIMMs at 2000+ MHz speeds and 4 phase power ensures that all 4 brushwood will get enough clean power to do so. An brilliant extent compelling into account so many users now are running 8 or even 16 GB of RAM. It should be prominent that this board will help up to 8GB brushwood for a whopping 32GB of total reminiscence!

Of the facial appearance mentioned earlier some of them demand more culture and as such we enlarge a bit on the facial appearance that make the P8P67 Deluxe a complete austere to use solution for maximizing the makings.

Thursday, July 28, 2011