In addition to maximum overclock, what would be useful to see, for all overclocking testing, are the following:

--- maximum overclock on stock voltage
--- minimum voltage that still allows for nominal clocks.

Knowing XBits Labs, it could even be possible to draw up a graph of frequency/voltage/power consumption.

These results would give a better measure of a processor's headroom. I know I don't want to increase power usage by 50 % to get to 4.7 GHz if I can get to 4.0 GHz on stock voltage.

Thanks for yet another good X-Bit review.

On motherboards, I would REALLY like to see more details on fan controls. Though unrelated to performance, these will usually have a big effect on the overall build and nobody ever discusses them thoroughly.

I'm not an Asus fanboy (no pun intended), but have to note that they usually provide far more in this regard than does Gigabyte. But even in cases where the difference is huge (Maximus IV vs P67A-UD7) the extra effort, hardware, and capability appears to go unnoticed by reviewers.

In contrast, board color differences get paragraphs of discussion. Maybe this is all because reviewers have the mobos on open test stands, whereas 99.9% of the people using the info will be putting the board in a case, with fans.

Here, the P67A-UD4 has headers for two 4-pin and two 3-pin fans. One 4-pin is for the CPU fan and is no doubt (?) controlled by thermal feedback (?), or some load signal (?). The two 3-pin fans are stated to have voltage control meaning (?) that you can set and read their speed via the BIOS, but there is no (?) thermal control. The second 4-pin is a mystery... can its speed be set? Does it control on anything?

X-Bit always does good technical reviews and I check the site almost daily. By methodically including fan controls in yor mobo reviews you can further distinguish yourselves.

Papoulka