Testbed and Methods

All experiments were performed on a testbed with the following configuration:

• Mainboards:
  • Asus P6T (Intel X58 Express), rev. 1.01G, BIOS 0306;
  • Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme, rev. 1.0, BIOS F4;
• CPU: Intel Core i7-920 (2.66GHz, 133MHz base frequency, 8MB L3 cache, Bloomfield, rev. C0, 1.225V Vcore);
• Memory: 3 x 1024MB DDR3 Kingston HyperX DDR3-1866, KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX, (1866MHz, 9-9-9-27, 1.65V voltage);
• Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB (RV770, 750/750/3600MHz, 800 SP, 40 TMU, 16 ROP, 256-bit 512MB GDDR5);
• HDD: Samsung SP2504C (250GB, SATA II, 7200RPM, 8MB, rev. A);
• CPU cooler: Cooler Master GeminII (120mm Protechnic Electric MGA12012HB-O25 fan, 1500-2500RPM);
• Thermal interface: Noctua;
• PSU: OCZ GameXStream OCZGXS700 (700W);
• Case: Antec Skeleton.

We used Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 x86 operating system and ATI Catalyst 9.2 graphics card driver.

I have to say right away that we didn’t experience any problems or even smallest difficulties when we assembled an Asus P6T based platform, installed the OS and drivers, and started the system. However, Asus P6T mainboard does differ from the solutions we have reviewed before, and these differences are of various nature.