Product Listing

ASRock P67 Transformer - Small Boon for Upgraders

By Vincent Chang - 18 Apr 2011
Launch SRP: S$215

Test Setup

Test Setup

Since the performance capabilities of the Intel Core i7-870 (which is the process of our choice in this test) and the Intel P55 chipset are known to us, we'll just test a couple of benchmarks - PCMark Vantage and Far Cry 2 - to verify that the ASRock is at least competitive with the previous generation. Then we switch our attention to finding out the exact amount of improvement offered by ASRock's decision to marry the P67 chipset with the older Lynnfield Core processor.

As mentioned earlier, the Intel P55 chipset itself does not have sufficient PCIe lanes to ensure optimal USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps performance. This is why ASRock turned to the beefier P67 chipset for the extra bandwidth. However, some manufacturers like ASUS have implemented their own solutions to increase the PCIe lanes on the P55 chipset, like the bridge chip on the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium.

Are these two solutions equally capable? That's what we'll find out in the HD Tune Pro 4.6 benchmarks, where we test the USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps performance on the two motherboards. We also included the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 as a classic example of an Intel P55 motherboard with inadequate bandwidth for full speed USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps.

General performance with PCMark Vantage and Far Cry 2 along with read, write and random access performance for USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps are tested with the following system configuration: 

  • Intel Core i7-870 @ 2.93GHz (Lynnfield)
  • ASRock P67 Transformer (Intel P67)
  • Comparison boards:- ASUS P7P55D-E Premium (Intel P55) and Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 (Intel P55)
  • 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 (CAS 7-7-7-20)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX (ForceWare 260.99)
  • WD Caviar Black 1TB (Intel 6Gbps interface)
  • LaCie 500GB USB 3.0 External HDD (Hitachi HTS725050A9A364 - Travelstar 7K500, 2.5-inch, 500GB, 7200RPM)
  • Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
  • Intel INF 9.2.0.1015 drivers
  • Intel Matrix Storage Manager


Benchmarks
 

  • Futuremark PCMark Vantage (1.0.3.1)
  • Far Cry 2
  • HD Tune Pro 4.6 (SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 testing)

 

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7.5
  • Performance 8
  • Features 8
  • Value 6.5
The Good
Interesting, unique attempt to address a niche problem
Decent layout with good mix of features
The Bad
Too costly for a niche solution
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