Shootouts

Intel H67 Motherboard Roundup - Four of a Kind

By Vincent Chang - 6 Mar 2011

ASUS P8H67-V

ASUS P8H67-V

Our first contender in the H67 field is the ASUS P8H67-V, which comes in the standard ATX form factor. It means plenty of board space for ASUS to be creative with their features and layout. Hence, we find some extras, like ASUS' MemOK! technology and GPU Boost, both of which can be activated through hardware switches onboard.

What was a bit of a surprise is that ASUS has included an VIA PATA controller for your older storage devices. It's certainly something that one don't find too often nowadays, but perhaps ASUS had a little too much PCB space to work with.

The ATX form factor also means that multi-GPU setups are supported, but only AMD's CrossFireX (up to quad GPUs) is certified. The first PCIe x16 slot gets the full 16 lanes of bandwidth while the second only gets 4 lanes. Additionally, the PCIe x1 slot shares the same lanes as the second PCIe x16 slot, so you cannot use this PCIe x1 slot in conjunction with any CrossFireX setup.

Besides CrossFireX support, this ASUS board also comes with two USB 3.0 ports, with an ASMedia USB 3.0 controller taking up the task. We have to admit that we haven't seen this controller around, but it's about time that we find some competitors to the popular NEC USB 3.0 controller.

 

It's recognizably an ASUS board from the color scheme and its proprietary technologies.

A common trio of video outputs from the H67 chipset is accompanied by four USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports (blue). There's also an optical S/PDIF and a PS/2 combo for either a keyboard or a mouse.

We are not fans of SATA ports that point skywards, but given that they are unlikely to interfere with your add-on cards at their current location, we can give it a pass. The ones in blue are SATA 3Gbps and the white ones are the newer SATA 6Gbps. There are also plenty of USB headers and the jumper to clear the CMOS.

Sandwiched in between the memory DIMM slots and the power connector is surprisingly, an IDE connector. We may not use such devices anymore, but there should be some who are still using that interface. The problem is that this area may be too cramped for all those cables and connectors.

If you're having an issue with your memory settings, ASUS' MemOK! technology promises to solve it with a touch of a button.

An auto-overclocking tool that can be accessed here or via the BIOS, this is a quick and easy way to increase the graphical performance without taking too much effort and time. Only the GPU clock is affected.

There's enough space between the PCIe x16 slots for a dual-slot graphics card (CrossFireX) setup.

This small heatsink is all you need. It's a mainstream motherboard after all.

As you can expect from ASUS, the build quality appears very decent, with solid capacitors used throughout. Although it may not be one of ASUS' more costly and feature-rich models, it looks like a capable board. More so when you factor in the snazzy EFI BIOS that ASUS has included. It's something that we have seen in ASUS' P67 boards before and it should give ASUS a slight edge in this department.

We also got a small boost in performance by turning on the GPU Boost feature, which increased the GPU to 1650MHz from the default maximum of 1350MHz. In Far Cry 2, it translated to a gain of 3 FPS, which is substantial enough considering the relatively low 20+ FPS that the system was hovering at.

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