Testbed and Methods

We have already tested a mainboard based on Intel P35 chipset before. However, we would still like to perform the full set of tests because Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R we tested in our previous session sometimes didn’t perform that well because of some BIOS issues.

We will compare Asus P5K Deluxe not only against Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R mainboard, but also against a few solutions from the same price range but based on the older chipsets. Namely we will take Asus P5B Deluxe on Intel P965 chipset and Asus P5N32-E SLI on Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset.

We used a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor overclocked to 3.2GHz that was configured as 12 x 266MHz. The memory was working at 800MHz with 4-4-4-12 timings.

Our testbeds were configured as follows:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 at 3.2GHz (12 x 266MHz);
• Mainboards:
• Asus P5K Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P35);
• Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R (LGA775, Intel P35);
• Asus P5B Deluxe (LGA775, Intel P965);
• Asus P5N32-E SLI (Nvidia nForce 680i SLI);
• Memory: Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5D working as DDR2-800 4-4-4-12;
• Graphics card: OCZ GeForce 8800GTX (PCI Express x16);
• Disk subsystem: Western Digital WD1500AHFD (Serial ATA-150);
• Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista x86.

Notes:

• We disabled 1T Command Rate mode on Asus P5K Deluxe because it wouldn’t work in the above described conditions; Transaction Booster option set to Auto.
• We enabled 1T Command Rate on Asus P5N32-E SLI.