Budget Micro-ATX P55 Faceoff: Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 and ASRock P55M Pro
by Gary Key on October 5, 2009 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Audio-
We are planning on taking an in-depth look at all of the current on-board audio codecs and compare them to a couple of discrete audio cards from ASUS and AuzenTech in the near future. In the meantime, we will provide a quick overview of the control panels from the two competing solutions today and a quick subjective analysis.
ASRock utilizes the VIA VT1708S 8-channel audio codec on the P55M Pro motherboard. To be honest, I had low expectations of this particular chipset. In actuality, it is a decent competitor to the Realtek ALC 888B utilized by Gigabyte. In fact, VIA has made great progress in their driver set and at this point I firmly believe the actual implementation by the motherboard manufacturer in regards to shielding is more important to audio quality than the any potential differences between the two chipsets.
That said, VIA has a very good control panel and option setup, certainly more so than Realtek in this particular case. The most beneficial item is the equalizer as you will need it for music playback. Midrange performance on this chipset is lacking depth and highs at times sound tinny. Both chipsets scored about even in Rightmark’s excellent Audio Analyzer software test suite with THD+ numbers slightly favoring the Realtek solution.
Unfortunately, my ears thought the difference in quality between the two solutions was a bit greater. The main problem with the VIA solution as implemented by ASRock was background noise that was directly attributable to electrical shielding problems on the board. In headphone mode, I could hear a slight background hum that would rise and fall with load activity on both the CPU and storage subsystems. It was very slight, but just enough to be noticeable in several classical and jazz soundtracks. It was also present in several games, mainly simulations and RTS games where there is not constant gunfire present in most first person shooters.
Gigabyte utilizes the Realtek ALC 888B 8-channel audio codec on the P55M Pro motherboard. Audio quality in music was better than the VIA VT1708S thanks to clearer midranges, but highs were still leaned on the tinny side and bass was even between the two chipsets.
Otherwise, I preferred the Via solution in games and movie playback, not by much, but channel separation was slightly better. Of course, if you really want better analog output a good discrete audio card is the solution. For most of us, either of the audio solutions will suffice, but thanks to the lack of background noise, we will have to give the Gigabyte board the win here.
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Sunburn74 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Thanks.Which board? I searched the thoughts section and don't see any mention of sleep :(
I just know its a huge problem with gigabyte boards, pretty much every p45- and a good number of the x58 boards mysteriosly can't s3 sleep with significant overclocks in place and its something I'm seriously going to explore before my next mobo purchase.
Ryun - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
I purchased and Asrock 760g, which is a great little motherboard, yet it does not support S3 state (standby mode). I have an email from Asrock's (surprisingly quick-response) tech support saying that none of their boards officially support S3 state and to use their Instant Boot technology instead.Did the Asrock motherboard you tested allow you to go into S3 state/standby mode? I really like Asrock's boards but the lack of standby is a deal breaker for me.
Gary Key - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
S3 is fully supported on the ASRock board. In the power consumption section I did note what needed to be enabled for it work. Also, this was probably in the wrong spot, but in the OC section I briefly mentioned that the board had no problems resuming from S3 with the Bclk set to 215. I can understand why ASRock wants you to use Instant Boot, but S3 operation is just fine, even when overclocked.Ryun - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Ah, looks like I missed that part. Many thanks for pointing that out. Sadly though, I don't have those BIOS options on the 760g board I have but perhaps I can tinker a bit more.n7 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Just wanted to say a massively huge thank you for testing with 8 GB!It's extremely encouraging to see, as the large majority of reviewers do not bother testing with all slots populated.
Thanx again.
vlado08 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Which board has the quickest Power On Self Test?With fast CPU's and SSD I expect fast booting!
Now I have a Gigabyte board (P965 DS4) and when the Sata is in AHCI mode POST is quite long.
I hope that in future articles you will include this information.
MadMan007 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
S3 is your friend. Really, who boots their computer every time any more?strikeback03 - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
I usually do, since I dual boot and won't necessarily know which OS I need the day before.Gary Key - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
Cold Boot - Quick Boot turned off in BIOS - AHCI enabled, External Hard Drive attached via IEEE 1394a, LAN attached to our Promise NAS via a Gigabit Switch.Time reported is from the time we turn on the board until Win7 has correctly installed the network stack. So this is the full POST and OS is usable process that is being timed.
ASRock - 44.7 seconds
Gigabyte - 53.2 seconds
I have the information since we run this for every board, just did not know if anyone would care to see it. ;)
vlado08 - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link
Thanks GaryBut I was interested in time from pushing the power on switch until the begining of the OS loading. I think that there might be difference between boards depending on their BIOS.
Time from begining of the OS loading until fully functional OS depends on the computing power ot the CPU and the speed of the HDD (SSD) and not on the design of the board.
And because you (we) want to distinguish between the boards I thought that this might be one of the criterion.