ASUS P5E3 Deluxe: X38 and DDR3 arrives... almost
by Gary Key on September 18, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Memory Testing
The Sandra unbuffered scores on the Gigabyte X38 DDR2 board are around 2% better than the ASUS X38 DDR3 board and about 4% better than the abit P35 board. Our Gigabyte board is a production sample board with an early release BIOS. The scores have dropped about 1% from the engineering board we tested previously, although Gigabyte confirms that the BIOS is not fully tuned yet.
We did not expect the memory performance of DDR3 to be this close to the DDR2 board as we noticed significant differences on the P35 boards when running DDR3 at 1066. Intel and the board manufacturers have repeatedly said the X38 chipset will show improved performance with DDR3, especially with the 1333MHz FSB CPUs that allow DDR3 to run at stock 1333MHz rates. The latest BIOS spins show this trend and hopefully the retail releases will show the same progress we have noticed over the past couple of days. However, the price differential between the two memory technologies still means the DDR3 boards will be relegated to the very high end of the market for the near future.
Q6600 9x266
Q6600 9x333
Q6600 9x400
Our memory results are very preliminary considering the beta nature of the latest 1.4 BIOS. We are not showing comparisons to the other DDR3 boards until the BIOS is finalized, but at this time it appears performance is generally a few percent better than the X38 DDR2 boards. In the 9x400 results, the top screenshot is with the system set to the 400 strap and the bottom screenshot is with the 333 strap setting. The improvements in chipset latencies result in slightly better read/write/copy numbers and memory latency is improved about 5%, although tRAS timings were increased from 15 to 18. However, we had to increase our MCH voltage by .04V and CPU voltage from 1.375V to 1.41875V.
Speaking of CPU voltages, we had no issues completing our entire benchmark test suite with our Q6600 set to 1.1500V at stock settings, 1.19375V at 9x333, 1.3750V at 9x400, and 1.44375V at 7x505. Even though we are not at liberty to discuss overclocking results at this time, we do have permission to show our top FSB overclock with the Q6600.
We were able to reach a final FSB setting of 505 with our Q6600. This required the 400 strap setting, MCH voltage to 1.77V, and several other BIOS settings that we will discuss in the launch article. The board actually posted our Q6600 at 522FSB, but benchmark stability was not reached until the 505FSB level. We hit 498FSB with 4GB of memory and the same settings. Hopefully the latest chipset spin and BIOS tweaks will improve upon this result. Vdroop averaged around .02~.04V throughout testing with CPU Voltage Damper enabled; without it, we noticed Vdroop around .07V~.09V when overclocking a quad-core CPU.
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| Click to enlarge |
The Sandra unbuffered scores on the Gigabyte X38 DDR2 board are around 2% better than the ASUS X38 DDR3 board and about 4% better than the abit P35 board. Our Gigabyte board is a production sample board with an early release BIOS. The scores have dropped about 1% from the engineering board we tested previously, although Gigabyte confirms that the BIOS is not fully tuned yet.
We did not expect the memory performance of DDR3 to be this close to the DDR2 board as we noticed significant differences on the P35 boards when running DDR3 at 1066. Intel and the board manufacturers have repeatedly said the X38 chipset will show improved performance with DDR3, especially with the 1333MHz FSB CPUs that allow DDR3 to run at stock 1333MHz rates. The latest BIOS spins show this trend and hopefully the retail releases will show the same progress we have noticed over the past couple of days. However, the price differential between the two memory technologies still means the DDR3 boards will be relegated to the very high end of the market for the near future.
Q6600 9x266
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Q6600 9x333
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Q6600 9x400
 |
| Click to enlarge |
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Our memory results are very preliminary considering the beta nature of the latest 1.4 BIOS. We are not showing comparisons to the other DDR3 boards until the BIOS is finalized, but at this time it appears performance is generally a few percent better than the X38 DDR2 boards. In the 9x400 results, the top screenshot is with the system set to the 400 strap and the bottom screenshot is with the 333 strap setting. The improvements in chipset latencies result in slightly better read/write/copy numbers and memory latency is improved about 5%, although tRAS timings were increased from 15 to 18. However, we had to increase our MCH voltage by .04V and CPU voltage from 1.375V to 1.41875V.
Speaking of CPU voltages, we had no issues completing our entire benchmark test suite with our Q6600 set to 1.1500V at stock settings, 1.19375V at 9x333, 1.3750V at 9x400, and 1.44375V at 7x505. Even though we are not at liberty to discuss overclocking results at this time, we do have permission to show our top FSB overclock with the Q6600.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
We were able to reach a final FSB setting of 505 with our Q6600. This required the 400 strap setting, MCH voltage to 1.77V, and several other BIOS settings that we will discuss in the launch article. The board actually posted our Q6600 at 522FSB, but benchmark stability was not reached until the 505FSB level. We hit 498FSB with 4GB of memory and the same settings. Hopefully the latest chipset spin and BIOS tweaks will improve upon this result. Vdroop averaged around .02~.04V throughout testing with CPU Voltage Damper enabled; without it, we noticed Vdroop around .07V~.09V when overclocking a quad-core CPU.
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Gary Key - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
It is scheduled in late October now. However, we do have the NV MCP73 launching next week and it looks like a very interesting part at this time. The big issue with G35 at this time is the driver situation. Intel is just now getting the G965 operating correctly under XP and the latest Vista drivers are still a joke. We were hoping to have a G35 preview with the G33 roundup and MCP73 release next week but that has been called off until drivers are in better shape.
SunAngel - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
What are you referring too? The Hardware and Lighting. It was out last month. We have to wait until SP1 for microsoft to fix some issues. Other than that, the G965 drivers are operating flawlessly.
Gary Key - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
Actually, the beta drivers and the first 14.31 release still had issues with Vertex Shaders along with HW Lighting hiccups. 14.31.1 has corrected about 98% of the problems under XP and there should be a follow-up release shortly to correct corruption issues in BF2 terrain along with flashing in several games and hopefully Alpha Blend, Tiled Alpha, and Tiled4 Alpha blends will work correctly 100% of the time. However, under Vista with the 15.6 drivers, there are still numerous problems from HDMI not working to OpenGL failing to Hardware Lighting not working at all in many cases.SunAngel - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Add another who is dying for the G35, although it doesn't add much over G965 other and DX10 and port multipliers.This X35 board is hot. Look at all that connectivity on the back panel. If I were not in bed with Intel Viiv at the moment, this would be the board for me. I know never to expect something like this from Intel, but it would be nice if Asus made this G35 board a Digital Home board supporting Viiv.
I'm also going to be sorely disappointed if G35 don't come in DDR2 flavor. I refuse to blow my 4GB of DDR2 800 on a slight chipset revision. But then again, to me upgrading has lost its aura. It used to be fun witnessing speed increasing, but it seems of the late increase are getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Warcraft III can be played with the earlier IGP with 1600x1200 full. I reach frame rate limits of 60 fps with my E6600+G965 combo as it fluctuates between 59-60. G35 is supposed to be coming in October, it doesn't seem like its coming soon looking at the lack of news updates.Old strategy game playability is not impressive when it wasn't the most demanding one back 3-4 years ago, even on an IGP. Playbility on the later games like BF2/Supreme Commander is impressive. We'll see how much better G35 is over G965.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
G35 has been pushed out several times already, just like X38. Currently it's scheduled for release in October. (Originally, it was supposed to be out a lot closer to the P35 launch.)Gary Key - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
As of today, X38 has been moved to October 11th. G35 will probably go to November and to top it off, the DX10 capable drivers will be sometime next year.Nickel020 - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
Does this mean you can't publish full reviews as planned on the 24th?Gary Key - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
Working with Intel on that question right now.....GeorgeP.gr - Thursday, March 25, 2021 - link
Is there any way to use the sdd Toshiba OCZ TR20240G01 with this motherboard (REV.1.02G No deluxe No pro) ?