by Doors4ever
03/13/2009 | 01:44 PM
If we want to get an adequate idea of the technologies and features that contemporary mainboards possess, there are two companies in the market today, two largest mainboard developers, whose solutions we absolutely can’t miss. Of course, I am talking about AsusTeK and Gigabyte. We started getting acquainted with mainboards on Intel X58 Express chipset designed for LGA1366 socket with two top solutions from Gigabyte: GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-Extreme. We liked the functionality of both mainboards, but it is pretty difficult to be objective in judgment if there is no solution for adequate comparison. ASRock X58 SuperComputer that we have just reviewed is not quite up to this task. Today we are going to talk about the junior model in AsusTek’s lineup on Intel X58 Express chipset – Asus P6T. This will allow us to kill two birds with one stone: we will not only check out the indepth functionality of Asus mainboards for LGA1366 processors, but will also make a final conclusion about the competing solutions from Gigabyte.
Asus P6T mainboard comes in a box of standard dimensions. It was pretty unusual to see that even a small box like that had a flip-open front panel. There were no windows cut out in this box that have become pretty common lately and that reveal part of the solution or accessories to the potential buyer. This additional space allowed to place on the box more marketing data in six different languages besides English (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese) about the board’s features and functionality.
Inside the box there is a mainboard and the following accessories:
Even the most traditional “standard” mainboard usually has at least one distinguishing feature. It may be unusual components layout, special cooling system, rare interface, unique bundled accessories or something else. And what catches your eye when you look at Asus P6T?
The first thing that attracted my attention was the CPU socket. I am talking not about the actual LGA1366 socket, but the retention holes around it: there are two sets of those. The distance between the farther holes corresponds to the LGA1366 retention, while the closest holes are fit for an LGA775 cooler!
It is a very interesting solution. Once you decide to upgrade the old platform, you won’t need to run looking for LGA1366 retention kit for your cooler, if it exists at all for your particular cooler model. And you won’t need to buy a new CPU cooler, because your good old LGA775 cooler may be efficient enough to cope with the new CPU, too. Of course, it only makes sense if you decide to upgrade using new Asus P6T mainboard. The photos suggest, that even top Asus mainboards based on Intel X58 Express chipset, such as P6T Deluxe or Rampage II, cannot boast the same compatibility with LGA775 CPU coolers.
If we continue checking out the upper part of Asus P6T PCB, we will see a pretty common and well thought-through layout. Eight-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry uses low RDS MOSFET transistors, ferrite core chokes and high-quality Japanese solid-state capacitors. All power connectors are placed very conveniently, there are six DDR3 DIMM slots. The only thing we were a little surprised to find were the Power On and Reset buttons that from now on are more and more often placed on the upper part of the PCB instead of the lower part, where they used to be before. We have seen these buttons in exact same place on Gigabyte mainboards, too, which are going to compete with Asus P6T today. The buttons are big enough, they are highlighted when the board is on or receives power, so you can clearly see them at all times.
The processor voltage regulator MOSFET are topped with conventional aluminum heatsinks, without any sophisticated twists, while the unusually shaped heatsink fins on the chipset North Bridge does in fact catch your eye.
To wind up the description of the cooling system on Asus P6T, we would like to offer you a photo of the ICH10R chipset South Bridge heatsink. Its shape is also far from traditional:
Looks like they had to move the buttons to the upper part of the mainboard PCB, because there is simply absolutely no free space at the bottom, where most connectors, pin-connectors and additional controllers always take all the spots.
Two blue PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots for graphics cards work at full speed; the third white slot works at x4 speed. Asus P6T mainboard is equipped with JMicron JMB363 controller responsible for PATA and SATA interface implementation. One of its SATA ports is laid out on the back panel as eSATA (SATA On-the-Go). The second port is split into two with the help of JMicron JMB322 controller. They do not require any drivers and are very convenient for backup needs, for instance (Drive Xpert Technology). The IEEE1394 support is provided by VIA VT6315N controller.
The connectors panel bears the above mentioned eSATA and IEEE1394 ports, as well as PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, six USB ports, a network RJ45 connector (Realtek 8111C), optical and coaxial S/PDIF and six audio-jacks implemented via the eight-channel Realtek ALC1200 HD codec.
Overall, Asus P6T mainboard proves up to our expectations from the functionality standpoint and meets all the requirements for contemporary mainboards. You can clearly see it from the detailed technical specifications table:
The components layout helps to better understand design advantages and drawbacks:
This time we can see an unusually large number of jumpers for a contemporary board (these components are marked with number “4” on the picture). Asus P6T BIOS has such extensive voltage adjustment options that the developers decided to play safe and lower the maximums of the supported intervals. You will be able to increase the CPU Vcore, QPI bus voltage and memory voltage to their maximums only if you reset the corresponding jumper.
However, this is just a peculiarity of Asus P6T mainboard. Speaking of the design drawbacks, we have to say that we don’t see any connectors that could be used for the rear panel fans. For some reason there is a processor fan connector there instead. It is very strange that Asus engineers made a mistake like that, absolutely unforgivable for high-end developers like themselves. Far not every system case is equipped with a front panel fan cooling the HDD chassis, while the rear panel fan is a much more frequent solution. However, its cable may not be long enough to connect to Asus P6T mainboard.
Asus P6T mainboard uses AMI BIOS that looks quite common for those of you who have worked with Asus mainboards at least once before. However, there appeared a number of small but very pleasing modifications that make working with the board an even easier and more pleasant experience.
Most parameters that will help you push your system performance to the maximum are located in “Ai Tweaker” section. However, you don’t have to make any adjustments on your own, if you don’t want to, because the board will set the most optimal values for you.
This section contains all the parameters for adjustment of frequencies, multipliers and voltages necessary for configuring your system in the most optimal way. Here you can also change the memory timings, but there are so many of them that they decided to list them all on an individual page.
The next section is called “Advanced” and includes a number of subsections. “CPU Configuration” is one of them:
All parameters related to processor settings and technologies are usually singled out into a separate subsection called “CPU Configuration”, however, it would be much more convenient to be able to make all adjustments in a single BIOS section. For example, starting with Intel X58 Express based mainboards, Gigabyte moved all parameters connected to the CPU from “Advanced BIOS Features” into “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)”. As for Asus, these features are only partially duplicated in the “Ai Tweaker” section.
Then we go right to the “Power” section, where we are primarily interested in the monitoring functionality that turned out to be pretty modest:
As for the board’s advantages, we could mention the ability to automatically control the rotation speed of two case fans and a CPU fan, but only if it has a four-pin connector. “Power Fan” rotation speed cannot be adjusted; the list of controlled temperatures and voltages is pretty scarce.
Now let’s move into the “Tools” section, where we find those small but pleasing innovations w mentioned in the beginning of this chapter.
“Express Gate” function allows to quickly load a Linux based operating system that will allow you to surf the Web, talk to your friends on IM, look through pictures and even play games. However, you need to install this OS first. “AI NET 2” subsection will help you check the network cable status, while “Drive Xpert Configuration” will help configure the drives connected to two additional SATA ports.
As for us, we are primarily interested in “ASUS EZ Flash 2” and “ASUS O.C. Profile” parameters. The built-in “ASUS EZ Flash 2” utility helps you to update the mainboard BIOS quickly and easily. Now it has become even faster and simpler, because the utility learned to read the data from the HDD partitions formatted for NTFS. The only case when you may need to connect a USB Flash Drive, is when you need to save the current BIOS version. As for BIOS reflashing, you can do it even from the system drive.
“ASUS O.C. Profile” technology has been long allowing to save two complete BIOS settings profiles and to load the necessary one quickly when needed. You can finally name these profiles on your own, so that you could remember what type of configuration they contain.
Besides, you can launch the built-in “O.C. Profile” utility that looks very similar to “ASUS EZ Flash 2”. “O.C. Profile” allows saving settings profiles on external media and exchange profiles with other users. Moreover, you can read the info even from an NTFS hard drive.
Overall, the BIOS of Asus P6T mainboard has everything one may need to successfully overclock and fine tune the system. Let’s see how these features work in real life.
All experiments were performed on a testbed with the following configuration:
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.
We discovered certain peculiarities about the implementation of XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) technology on Asus P6T mainboard. If the board supports this technology, it allows loading all the settings automatically, including the higher voltages. As we already know from our article called Kingston HyperX DDR3-1866: 3GB Overclocker Memory Kit for Core i7 Platform, the modules SPD contain 1866MHz and 1800MHz respective frequencies. To activate XMP technology on Asus P6T mainboard, you have to change the “Ai Overclock Tuner” from “Auto” to “X.M.P.” and select the corresponding settings profile. By selecting the first profile the memory frequency is increased to 1867MHz, the memory voltage – to 1.66V, and “QPI/DRAM Core Voltage” – to 1.5V.
Gigabyte mainboards worked the same way, but we did find the differences when we selected the second profile, which has the memory working at 900MHz as DDR3-1800. Gigabyte mainboard lowers the processor clock frequency multiplier from x20 to x17, but increases the base frequency from 133MHz to 150MHz in this case. So, the resulting CPU frequency makes 2.55GHz, which is very close to the nominal 2.66GHz, and the memory works at 900MHz as DDR3-1800. The QPI bus voltage is increased to 1.45V. Asus P6T mainboard does exactly the same thing, but the CPU clock frequency multiplier is lowered not to x17, but only to x18. Asus’ approach seems to be more correct, because we don’t lose any of the CPU frequency, but even win a little bit, because it makes 2.7GHz instead of 2.66GHz. However, this frequency increase is so insignificant, that any CPU can work in this mode just fine.
However, 1.5V and even 1.45V voltage on the QPI bus seems to be a little too high. Gigabyte mainboards have it set at 1.175V by default, while Asus P6T has it at 1.2V. That is why we tried to do with a lower voltage setting without losing any operational stability. We succeeded with Gigabyte boards by raising the voltage only to 1.335V. Asus P6T, however, wouldn’t pass any stability tests until the voltage was set at 1.45V. The difference is not that dramatic in nominal mode, but during overclocking it mattered a lot, because increased “QPI/DRAM Core Voltage” pushed the CPU temperature up a lot.
We also noticed a few differences with the implementation of the Turbo Boost technology on Asus P6P mainboard. Theoretically, if the CPU power consumption and temperature are within limits, this technology raises the core frequency one or even two steps up for single-thread workload. Processor clock frequency multiplier rose to 22 multiple times during our test session, so we could easily take a corresponding screenshot:
Gigabyte mainboards act differently. They only increase the multiplier to 21, which makes the use of Turbo Boost not as efficient. You can achieve the same on Asus P6T if you disable “Intel C-STATE Tech” in the “CPU Configuration” section or set it to C1 manually. Moreover, you can also choose C3, C6, C7 or Auto mode, when the frequency multiplier may also increase to 22. Gigabyte mainboards do not let the user select the mode. They do it only in Auto mode, most likely setting C1 at all times.
Theoretically, more “correct” implementation of the Turbo Boost technology should work to an advantage of Asus P6T mainboard over the solutions from Gigabyte, because the CPU will work at higher frequency in case of single-thread workload. However, the x22 multiplier appeared on Asus P6T only for a short while, when the load appeared or disappeared and was pretty spasmodic. For example, SuperPi utility splits the calculations in 20-22 cycles and we could see the multiplier at x22 multiple times. However, under constant and even load, such as in Fritz Chess Benchmark, the clock frequency multiplier on Asus P6T increases only to 21. So, it doesn’t mean that we will see any practical effect from the more “correct” implementation of the Turbo Boost technology on Asus P6T mainboard. But we are going to compare the mainboards performance a little later in the corresponding chapter of our review. Now let’s check out Asus P6T efficiency during CPU overclocking.
There is a certain algorithm of actions that you need to stick to ideally, when you test a mainboard’s overclocking potential:
I have to confess that I messed up the testing plan above. I believe you are mostly interested in the first two plan items, just like me. However, I do not doubt the ability of Asus P6T mainboard to overclock processors. Of course, it can overclock, all we need to do now is find out specific numbers. But if the board can overclock processors and retain all Intel processor power-saving technologies and how far this overclocking can go, this is a much more interesting question, IMHO.
The thing is that there is an old problem about Asus mainboards that the company has known about for a long time, but for some reason doesn’t hurry to fix. When you overclock processors by raising the base frequency or FSB frequency on previous-generation chipsets, all processor power-saving technologies do work as they should for a while. They lower the processor clock frequency multiplier and core voltage in idle mode, thus reducing the power consumption, heat dissipation and noise. At some point during further frequency increase “smart” Asus mainboard decides that the CPU can no longer work stably and increases its core voltage. As a result, next time the system will go idle, the clock frequency multiplier will still be lowered, but the Vcore won’t: it will remain increased. However, as we know it is the core voltage that is most crucial for the CPU power consumption and heat dissipation.
So, what’s the big deal, you may ask? Asus mainboards only increase the processor Vcore on their own, when the corresponding BIOS parameter is set to Auto. Just set the numbers manually, choose the nominal voltage setting for the CPU and you will avoid this excessive and unnecessary voltage increase. True. The Vcore will not increase any more, but the problem is that it won’t be lowering either. Once you set the processor Vcore manually on an Asus mainboard - even if you set it below the nominal – Intel processor power-saving technologies will stop working. The CPU clock frequency multiplier will be reduced, while the voltage won’t.
I have to admit I am pretty frustrated with this issue of the Asus boards. How can the board know for sure what my CPU is capable of? I work hard on finding out the potential of my CPU to make sure that my system will work in the most optimal and efficient way from all standpoints. Once there is significant workload from games or computational tasks, the system should boost its forced to the maximum to ensure the fastest processing. But in idle mode when I am typing or reading, I don’t need super-high speed. This is when the frequency and power consumption should go down, in order to also lower the level of generated noise for more comfortable working experience. Unfortunately, Asus mainboards do not let me do it that is why I haven’t used an Asus board in my home system for a while already. They fit best when the CPU works in the nominal mode or is slightly overclocked. If you have an Asus mainboard for Intel platform, you can check it yourselves. I tested boards on all chipsets starting with Intel 975X Express. Maybe this problem goes back to i945 or even older chipsets, but I don’t have any solutions like that at my disposal anymore.
It would be really sad, but not too frustrating, if the problem existed on any mainboards built around Intel chipsets. Luckily, it is not the case. Abit mainboards, for instance, used to be ideal in this aspect and the best example is the legendary IP35 Pro. Even if you increased the processor core voltage during overclocking, the mainboard would still lower it in idle mode. Not to where it used to be in the nominal mode, but in proportion to the Vcore increase. As a result, the system remained stable and energy-efficient in any operational mode, even during maximum processor overclocking. But Abit mainboards are long gone, unfortunately, and looks like ideal overclocking is no longer possible these days. Let’s see what the other manufacturers’ solutions act like in this case, for example, Gigabyte mainboard that is going to compete against our Asus P6T today.
At first glance, Gigabyte mainboards work just like Asus ones. They will also increase the CPU Vcore automatically during overclocking, if they consider it necessary and the corresponding BIOS parameter is set to Auto. And the processor core voltage will no longer lower in idle mode, if you set it manually at a certain level. However, Gigabyte mainboards have the magic “Normal” setting for every voltage-related parameter including CPU Vcore that will prevent the smart BIOS from acting on its own. Yes, Gigabytte mainboards are still far from the universality of the Abit boards (for now), because if you increase the CPU Vcore the processor power-saving technologies will stop working and the voltage will no longer get lower in idle mode. However, thanks to the “Normal” mode you will be able to overclock your CPU as much as it allows you without increasing its Vcore, and all power-saving technologies will be up and running just fine.
When we overclocked using Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-Extreme, our Intel Core i7-920 CPU with 1.225V nominal core voltage remains stable up to 181MHz base frequency (133MHz nominal base frequency). It is important to enable “Load-Line Calibration” parameter that will prevent the voltage from dropping under heavy load. If you are using Turbo Boost technology that increases the multiplier to 21, the resulting CPU frequency will be 3.8GHz. I believe it is an excellent result, and considering that we didn’t touch the voltage it is absolutely brilliant! So what will Asus P6T mainboard respond with? Unfortunately, only 152MHz. You will be able to enjoy increased performance on your Asus P6T without losing any of the power-saving benefits up to 152MHz base frequency. The moment base frequency reaches 153MHz+ all Intel processor power-saving technologies will stop working and the core voltage will no longer get lower in idle mode.
As you can easily calculate, at 152MHz base frequency even with enabled Turbo Boost and increased clock frequency multiplier of 21 the resulting CPU frequency will be only about 3.2GHz. I would say it is a defeat compared with the 3.8GHz that our CPU sample is capable of reaching at its nominal voltage setting without losing stability.
Unfortunately, nothing changed with the launch of the mainboards based on new core logic sets. Asus still doesn’t want to fix this issue. It is especially unusual, because Asus Company has always cared about energy-efficiency and environmental friendliness. There is even an entire site, which name speaks for itself: Green Asus. And there is more than just words to these initiatives: the company switches from polymeric to more nature-friendly cardboard product packaging, cares about recycling, provides mainboards with energy-efficient technologies… However, the well-promoted Asus EPU technology that lowers the number of active phases in the processor voltage regulator circuitry in idle mode doesn’t work during overclocking, so when it works it only saves 3-7W of power, while tens of watts of power go to waste during CPU overclocking on Asus mainboards. However, we are going to talk about specific numbers in relation to power aspects a little later in our review, and now let’s find out how far we can overclock processors on Asus P6T mainboard.
Let’s get to the actual CPU overclocking experiments on Asus P6T mainboard following the plan mentioned in the previous chapter. At first, I couldn’t find the maximum base frequency, at which the board would remain stable. I lowered the processor clock frequency multiplier to the minimal value of x12, reduced the memory frequency, but the board would only boot. It couldn’t even load the OS, not to mention passing any of the stability tests. Luckily, I recalled that we have already talked about overclocking the same Intel Core i7-920 CPU on a board from the same family – Asus P6T Deluxe (see our article called Intel Core i7-920 Overclocking Guide for details). As we said before, when we lower the memory frequency on Gigabyte mainboards, they allow overclocking processors without increasing any of the voltages at all. Asus, however, needs “QPI/DRAM Core Voltage” parameter to be increased once you pass 175MHz base frequency limit. True, once we increased this voltage to 1.35V we could not only load the operating system but also pass all stability tests at up to 210MHz base frequency.
This is a good result, pretty typical for Intel X58 Express based mainboards. This is more than enough for our CPU to hit its maximum frequency, so the mainboard shouldn’t become a bottleneck. However, it did.
It doesn’t make sense to overclock processors on Asus P6T without increasing the voltages. We will be able to overclock it only to 152MHz base frequency and then we will lose all the advantages of this smart overclocking because Intel processor power-saving technologies will simply stop working. It also makes no sense to stop at 3.2GHz, because our CPU can do way better than that. However, when we increased the CPU Vcore, we had to deal with growing heat dissipation. As you remember, we had to also increase “QPI/DRAM Core Voltage”, that is why the temperature went up a lot. As a result, the best we could do was 190MHz base frequency that will give us 3.8GHz resulting clock speed with x20 frequency multiplier.
That is not too much, but we can enable Turbo Boost technology and limit the frequency multiplier increase to x21 maximum by setting “Intel C-STATE Tech” Parameter to C1. We had to set this limitation, because with x22 multiplier the CPU frequency got way too high and caused instability. This maneuver will allow us to slightly lower the base frequency and keep the resulting CPU speed at the same level or maybe even a little higher. However, our hopes didn’t realize. If we increase the voltage the CPU temperature goes up and at 94°C the board lowers the processor clock frequency multiplier from 21 back to 20. If we increase the Vcore a little less, the system fails the stability test. Therefore, we had to stop at 181MHz base frequency. Although we had to increase “QPI/DRAM Core Voltage” to 1.45V to ensure that our memory would work at high frequency with relatively low timings and to increase the CPU Vcore to 1.2375V, too. In this case the CPU temperature reached only 88°C during the “Small FFT” test in Prime95 program. It is also a high temperature, but we can deal with it.
What else could we do to lower the heat dissipation? For example, we could disable SMT technology that allows each core to process two computational threads at the same time. It will improve the performance in some cases, when the resulting CPU frequency is more important than the number of active cores and threads. However, higher frequency requires higher core voltage setting – up to 1.3V. The temperature kept growing, so this time we had to stop at 191MHz base frequency having reached 4GHz CPU speed. This time we managed to slightly increase the memory frequency and lower the timings at the same “QPI/DRAM Core Voltage” setting of 1.35V without losing stability.
Summing up everything I have just said about our experiments, let me offer you a comparative table of our Intel Core i7-920 CPU overclocking achievements on Asus and Gigabyte mainboards:
Asus P6T mainboard yields to Gigabyte during CPU overclocking, however, it is not too far behind the leader. Of course, we will have to disregard the most optimal overclocking mode when all Intel processor power-saving technologies keep working. In this mode, Asus definitely cannot compete.
Now it is time to compare the performance of Asus and Gigabyte mainboards. We will start our tests with the nominal operational mode when the mainboards adjust all their settings automatically. We have included the SuperPI test into the list of benchmarks on purpose: it will show the advantage of a more “correct” Turbo Boost implementation on Asus P6T (this technology increases the clock multiplier to 22 in case of single-thread workload). Let’s check out the results:
The mainboards performance is overall similar. Despite our expectations, Asus mainboard is behind Gigabyte in SuperPI test. However, it performed unexpectedly well in synthetic Everest memory tests. What’s the trick? Does Asus know some secrets about memory work on an Intel X58 Express based platform, or it all comes from increasing the multiplier to 22 vs. 21 on Gigabyte boards? We can easily find out the truth. Let’s limit the maximum multiplier setting on Asus board to 21 as described above and repeat the tests:
The results have leveled out, which means that during the first round of tests Asus benefitted from a higher x22 multiplier. Unfortunately, more “correct” Turbo Boost implementation on Asus P6T is not correct enough to guarantee performance advantage in real applications. If the theoretical advantage doesn’t find any practical use and can only be noticed in synthetic tests, then it is not really an advantage anymore. Unfortunately, Turbo Boost is implemented incorrectly on all mainboards we have tested so far including solutions from Gigabyte, ASRock and Asus.
Now let’s compare the mainboards performance during processor overclocking. We have often seen mainboard performance drop during overclocking, even though it performed as fast as the competitors in the nominal mode. To ensure that it would be a fair comparison, we overclocked our processor to its maximum on Asus P6T. As for Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme, we couldn’t let it go full throttle on us, even though it can do more. We overclocked our test CPU to 3.8GHz, the memory was working at 1810MHz with 8-8-8-22-1T timings.
Luckily, there were no surprises this time. The boards performed equally fast. Now let’s see what price we have to pay for these results.
We measured the power consumption of our test systems running in the nominal as well as overclocked modes. We used Extech Power Analyzer 380803 device. This device is connected before the system PSU, i.e. it measures the power consumption of the entire system without the monitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself. When we took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completely idle: there were even no requests sent to the hard drive at that time. We used Fritz Chess Benchmark to load the system and recorded the maximum reading in the end of the test after several runs.
As you see, the boards demonstrate comparable power consumption readings only in nominal mode. Asus is more power-efficient in idle mode, while Gigabyte – under load. However, during CPU overclocking everything changes. Asus loses quite a bit to Gigabyte in idle mode, but the difference is especially significant under load. There are several reasons for that: not functioning processor power-saving technologies, as well as overall higher voltages that were needed to achieve the same overclocking results as on Gigabyte mainboard. It is important to keep in mind that the obtained result is the maximum only for Asus P6T. Gigabyte mainboard allows to overclock the CPU even more.
Now that we compared Gigabyte mainboards against Asus P6T we have every right to say that Gigabyte once again designed an extremely successful product line. We admired their Intel P45 Express based solutions, and now we are extremely happy about Gigabyte mainboards on Intel X58 Express. We hope that this great tendency will go on. As for the main hero of our today’s review – Asus P6T mainboard – we would like to wind up this article on an optimistic note despite a few issues we pointed out.
Let’s think for a second, can we use Asus P6T to overclock processors? Of course, we can. It does fall behind the competing solutions, but not too badly. Certainly, you won’t get an acceptable result for the most optimal “smart” overclocking mode when all Intel processor power-saving technologies remain intact; besides, it consumes too much power when you increase the voltages during overclocking. So, you can use Asus P6T mainboard to overclock processors, but it won’t be the most optimal solution.
And can we use Asus P6T mainboard for efficient work in nominal mode or during slight overclocking? This is what it does best without any “if’s” or “but’s”. It runs fast and offers comparable power consumption up to 152MHz base frequency. Just make sure that the price of this mainboard in your region corresponds to its functionality and is about the same as the price of the competitor solutions.
The most remarkable thing about Asus P6T mainboard that we will definitely remember it by is the opportunity to install an LGA775 processor cooler on this LGA1366 mainboard. All in all, it is a good board with good functionality, with its advantages and drawbacks.