The Next Gen. P55 Motherboards (SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0)

First Sightings of SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0

By now, most of you would have heard all about the next-gen storage interface, SATA 6Gbit/s and the ubiquitous USB 3.0. SATA 6Gbit/s, as its numbers would indicate is exactly twice that of the existing SATA 3.0Gbps specifications. Already, we have seen the first SATA 6Gbit/s hard drive available from Seagate (Barracuda XT) and more will be released next year as solid state drives are quickly hitting the limits of SATA 3.0Gbps. USB 3.0 meanwhile, extends the maximum transfer rate of the current version 2.0 by up to 10 times. Crucially, it is backwards compatible, so a new USB 3.0 device would degrade to the slower standard if the other party (host) is only USB 2.0 compatible.

They both sound like significant additions to the technology, especially USB which is so popular among users. Portable storage for instance would benefit greatly from the increased data transfer rate. Unfortunately, there's a potential hitch in plans. Intel has delayed plans to integrate USB 3.0 in its chipsets to 2011; its current mainstream P55 chipset has already launched with a disappointing lack of support despite initial plans.

While we believe SATA 6Gbps will be more quickly adopted than USB 3.0, the fact is that current chipsets do not have support for either. This is where motherboard vendors and third-party vendors come into the picture. With no official chipset support, it's an opportunity for vendors to appeal to the early adopters and power users by including these new technologies. ASUS and Gigabyte are two such motherboard brands that have such products out now (you can get them from the usual retail channels) in their revised P55 motherboards.

Today, we'll be taking a look at these two motherboards, the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium, based on the original P7P55D Premium and the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6, which is a revised Gigabyte P55-UD6. These boards are based on existing models but enhanced with these new features. As for the performance of these boards when it comes to SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0, we'll be covering them separately in the near future.

The Thing about SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0

Before we move to the usual motherboard tests, there is however a difference in approach in implementation between the two vendors, ASUS and Gigabyte that we need to highlight. Since these features are not found in current chipsets, both companies rely on third-party controllers. For SATA 6Gbit/s, this controller is from Marvell while the USB 3.0 controller is manufactured by NEC.

These controllers are embedded on the motherboard, though other motherboard vendors may ship with add-on cards instead. ASUS is taking this latter route to add support for these features for the more affordable models in its line-up while Gigabyte will be releasing 'A' versions of all its P55 motherboards, like the P55A-UD6 that will come with SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0.

One note about the controllers is that both ASUS and Gigabyte are using different Marvell controllers, with Gigabyte going for the 9128 chip that comes with an onboard micro-processor to reduce CPU utilization and also enable SATA RAID 0 support. ASUS chose the no-frills 9123 chip which just provides the basic SATA 6Gbps feature. Both vendors however use the same USB 3.0 controller model from NEC.

What's crucially is how the new features are implemented on the P55 chipset. As you may know, the Lynnfield Core i7/i5 processor integrates the PCIe 2.0 controller with 16 lanes into its CPU die. There is no PCIe 2.0 functionality on the P55 chipset by itself. This is fine for a mainstream platform since dual SLI or CrossFireX can be executed by having the graphics cards in dual mode with 8 lanes each. 3-way CrossFireX or SLI is another issue that requires some compromise and switching of PCIe 1.1 lanes available from the chipset.

This limitation of the chipset poses a problem for the SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 controllers. They each require the full 500MB/s bandwidth from a single PCIe 2.0 lane to reach their maximum speeds. If these controllers are connected to the P55 chipset, they can only do so via the chipset's PCIe 1.1 lanes, which are capped at 250MB/s per lane. It's either that or connecting these controllers to the processor's PCIe 2.0 lanes, which will then affect the reserved graphics bandwidth.

This approach of tapping into the PCIe 2.0 lanes is exactly what Gigabyte did with its P55A-UD6. As it states in red on its product page online, the SATA and USB functionality will revert to the normal SATA 3.0Gbps and USB 2.0 if you have installed two graphics cards on the board in SLI or CrossFireX configuration so as not to affect the graphics bandwidth. In short, this is not the ideal board if you plan to have dual graphics cards along with the expectations of using SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0.

ASUS meanwhile uses a bridge chip on the P7P55D-E Premium to enable what it calls 'true' SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0. What this bridge chip does is to convert four PCIe 1.1 lanes on the chipset to a bandwidth equivalent of a pair of PCIe 2.0 lanes. These can be used by the new SATA and USB controllers for the full bandwidth. Of course, this is still a compromise and technically not perfect, since these lanes have to come from somewhere but chances are, users are probably not too concerned about the loss of their PCIe 1.1 slots for example or the lanes from the Gigabit LAN (since there are two LAN controllers on the ASUS). The bridge chip however is additional cost that may be reflected in ASUS' pricing.

So, there you have it, the difference in implementation between the two boards featured here. We'll have to give the advantage to ASUS here since not having the full bandwidth for SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 when using CrossFireX or SLI is not what an early adopter or power user would have signed up for.

Technical Specifications

The ASUS P7P55D-E Premium

As the flagship of ASUS' P7P55D series, the Premium is the most costly and feature packed. In some ways, it rivals ASUS' Republic of Gamer (ROG) P55 offerings but with less of a focus on the overclocking aspect (don't worry, it still has plenty). The layout of course is quite similar to the earlier version that was released without SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0. You can expect the basic features of the P55 chipset to be present, along with extras like IDE support (no floppy however). Other ASUS characteristics like Express Gate is also present and the unique retention clip mechanisms for the graphics and DIMM slots.

While there's no floppy, ASUS has gone back to supporting two PS/2 ports after a period when we only saw a single PS/2 port on quite a few of its boards. There's no eSATA/USB combo port that's popular among top board models. In fact there's no eSATA support on this board at all, which is not that much of a loss since USB 3.0 exceeds it in transfer rate and would be more ubiquitous than eSATA in time to come. The Clear CMOS button is another feature that we expect on a top motherboard and it's here, along with dual Gigabit LAN and both coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs.

Evidently, ASUS had to juggle the SATA ports around, with two of the normal SATA 3Gbps shunted to the area with USB headers to accommodate the newer SATA 6Gbps ones. The bridge chip is located near the PCIe x1 slots which it's using to provide the bandwidth for the SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 controllers. Meanwhile, the NEC USB 3.0 controller is found near the rear I/O panel where the actual ports are.

As usual, there are four DDR3 DIMM slots in dual-channel mode. Memory compatibility is something ASUS is serious about recently and its MemOK! feature that we saw on previous ASUS boards makes an appearance here too. This, together with the DRAM LED, will be useful when troubleshooting memory issues.

The expansion slots are arranged quite differently from most motherboards, no doubt due to the bridge chip. At least we don't see any issues with dual-slot graphics cards and the area was free of interference except possibly if one is trying to remove the onboard battery for some reason.

We have seen more crowded designs near the CPU socket so the rather minimal heatsinks on this board means ample space for your CPU cooler. ASUS has greatly increased the number of ferrite core chokes around the socket to boost the signal quality, reduce the work load on each of them and better regulate the power delivery to the processor and memory. With a '32-phase' power delivery design to the processor and three more power phases for the memory, this is certainly a feature that motherboard vendors are competing fiercely over. As part of its hybrid power design, this board also comes with ASUS' T.Probe, a chip that actively monitors and regulates the power load so that temperature and power efficiency is optimal.

Moving on to the usual ASUS frills, we find some familiar ones, like these overvoltage switches which will increase the upper limit on voltage settings available in the BIOS. Personally, we feel this is not very useful and could be done simply by having warnings in the BIOS instead of hardware switches. One of the newer ASUS features however is the TurboV Remote. Technically, it's not like the usual remote, since it has a cable that must be connected to a header on the motherboard. This is basically another way to tweak your motherboard settings. It could prove useful to some who have the need to tweak their systems while in the midst of a benchmark or application but like some of ASUS' innovations, it's handy only to a niche group.

The Gigabtye GA-P55A-UD6

Like the ASUS motherboard before, the 'A' version of Gigabyte's flagship P55 motherboard is almost identical to the original. The new SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 features are unobtrusive enough on this board, especially since Gigabyte does not use a bridge chip. As we mentioned earlier, this means that with a dual GPU setup, the SATA and USB functionality would degrade back to SATA 3Gbps and USB 2.0.

Gigabyte also appeared to have added more polish to this board, with the top surfaces of the ferrite core chokes and the LGA1156 socket made of some reflective material. The board itself feels heavy and rather solid, no doubt due to the amount of components and the eight layers of PCB used, enhanced too by Gigabyte's Ultra Durable mantra of adding twice the usual copper to the PCB than usual. It all adds to a board where you can literally feel its worth in weight.

The rear I/O has an impressive number of outputs, with the new pair of USB 3.0 ports in blue. It's also otherwise identical to the original P55-UD6. Compared to the ASUS, this board has the slight edge in terms of the output variety. Of course, it's all moot if you don't really need them. In order to make space of the SATA 6Gbps ports, Gigabyte had to drop one of its usual extra SATA controllers, though the more expensive Marvell SATA 6Gbps chip included comes with RAID 0 functionality.

Perhaps it's the amount of board components but we didn't really like the rather haphazard way Gigabyte went about placing the onboard power, reset and Clear CMOS buttons. Typically, one finds them located together near the front panel headers but Gigabyte has decided to play hide and seek here with them. Also, the reset and Clear CMOS buttons are small tiny buttons, so they can be a bit more difficult to locate for the first-time user.

Gigabyte's six DIMM slots here may seem special at first glance but as we discussed in our review of the P55-UD6, the catch is that underneath those six DIMMs is the same dual-channel memory architecture and the same eight memory addressing lines from the CPU. So when all the DIMMs are populated, one can only use single-sided memory modules in the blue slots. This severely reduces the usefulness of having more slots.

Finally, you'll also get Gigabyte's 24-phase power design, with more than sufficient ferrite chokes to share the load while the software part of the design is in the form of its Dynamic Energy Saver 2. From what we have seen of the P55-UD6, this 'A' version should be no different when it comes to keeping your components adequately powered and at the best efficiency levels.

BIOS Settings

Based on our previous reviews of ASUS' P55 motherboards and the Gigabyte P55A-UD6, the BIOS settings in these latest two boards have not changed. One thing we did notice is that previously, the Gigabyte P55-UD6 did not have a 24x multiplier for the CPU ratio but the P55A-UD6 now has that option. Before this, we only found such an option in ASUS' motherboards.

Neither has the overclocking limit seen any improvement, as with our Core i7-870, we could only hit 210MHz for the base clock before they both failed to boot.

We did give a short spin to ASUS' TurboV EVO Auto Tuning utility. With that auto-overclocking utility, we managed to hit a very decent maximum of 3.91GHz (195 x 20). This however took some time as the utility will incrementally raise the base clock and test for stability. Basically using a 'rinse and repeat' routine until it hits its maximum. There's no doubt that it works and at times, with better overall results than competitors like MSI. The time taken however could be shorter.

Finally, we have collated the more important BIOS settings below:

Test Setup

We continued with Windows 7 Ultimate as our operating system and tested all our P55 boards here on this platform. We also managed to get 3DMark Vantage and PCMark Vantage working and will be using selected results from these benchmarks as we slowly build up our testing database with results. HyperThreading and Turbo Boost were enabled for testing and here's the rest of the configuration:

• Intel Core i7-870 (@2.93GHz, Intel Turbo Boost, HyperThreading enabled)
• 2 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 @ 7-7-20 CAS 7.0 (ECS P55H-A was running DDR3-1333 @ 8-8-8-24)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
• ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB - with ForceWare 190.38 drivers
• Intel INF 9.1.0.1007 and Intel Matrix Storage manager 8.6.0.1007 driver set
• Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

The following P55 motherboards were compared in our benchmarks:

• ASUS P7P55D-E Premium
• Gigabyte P55A-UD6
• DFI LANParty DK P55-T3eH9
• ECS P55H-A
• Gigabyte P55-UD6
• MSI P55-GD80

The following benchmarks were used to determine the performance of the P55 motherboards here:

• BAPco SYSmark 2007 (with Patch 3)
• Futuremark PCMark05 (ver 120)
• SPECviewperf 9.0
• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
• AquaMark3
• Far Cry 2

Results - SYSmark 2007 Preview

The two new boards performed as expected in our system benchmark suite. The numbers were marginally off the top scorers but it was a very slight difference. The further results breakdown showed that these numbers were typical of these P55 boards, with the ASUS doing better than the rest in Productivity but less so in 3D.

Results - Futuremark PCMark05 Pro

While the scores were mostly similar in SYSmark 2007, we saw more obvious differences in PCMark05. Thanks to its performance

in the hard drive segment, the ASUS was surprisingly top overall here, especially since it did not stand out in the other areas. More so we're not using the new SATA 6Gbps drives or the controller yet. The Gigabyte UD6 also performed well overall, taking the second spot and ranking competitively in the CPU and memory segments.

Results - SPECviewperf 9.0

We have been seeing quite some fluctuation in SPECviewperf 9.0 on our Windows 7 system with these P55 motherboards and again, the ASUS and Gigabyte produced some varying results. While the ASUS did fairly well in both viewsets, the Gigabyte had a more mixed outcome, doing pretty well in the memory intensive PRO/ENGINEER workload but failing to impress in 3dsmax.

Results - Gaming Benchmarks

We got 3DMark Vantage working on our updated test bed and are gradually collating results. For a start, we have the two P55 motherboards

today, along with DFI's version. However, the results were quite predictable, with all the boards scoring similarly in Vantage. This was the same for the other graphics benchmarks. Despite whatever differences that were shown for the previous benchmarks, when it came to an actual real-world application like games, the differences were negligible.

Temperature

Given the pedigree of the ASUS and Gigabyte boards, we weren't too concerned about their heat output and we were proven right. Although we have seen lower temperatures before, these two boards were close enough to show that everything was fine with their thermal quenching solutions.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was another area where these two boards performed like the top tier boards that they belong to. The ASUS had slightly higher idle power draw than its competitors but it was not significant and its peak power draw was similar to the best performers. The Gigabyte P55A-UD6 meanwhile had one of the lower idle power draws, though it did pull in slightly above average power at peak. Overall, both boards are doing fine, considering that they have extra components that may draw more power.

Conclusion

Intel may have appeared to drop the ball on introducing SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 standards to the mainstream but so far, motherboard vendors have been aggressive in getting the technologies out. Obviously, this makes sense as with the increasing role of the processor in recent CPU architectures, there's less room for product differentiation by motherboard vendors. Personally, we would rather they focus on useful features like these than the next iteration of a little used, niche 'feature'.

ASUS and Gigabyte have been the fastest out of the blocks when it came to implementing these new features on their boards, with revised editions that are on sale now. Expect other vendors to pipe in with their own versions, either implemented directly onboard, or through third-party expansion cards. With no native SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0 support in the P55 chipset however, there's a catch to having them on these boards, as seen in their two divergent approaches. ASUS' bridge chip adds more cost but looks to provide the best performance while Gigabyte compromises by giving users a choice between SATA/USB speeds and dual graphics. Other manufacturers, especially those with add-on cards are likely to go for the compromise.

At US$280, the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium deserves its premium billing and will be a tough sell to all but the most high-end enthusiasts. It's surprisingly not the most expensive P55 board out there but it's close. And it gets most things right, with its full support for SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0 complemented by a very decent layout and feature set. As usual, there are ASUS proprietary features that may be superfluous but perhaps there are indeed some who will find them useful. The performance aspect was more or less what we had expected and even at its worse, this ASUS was still very competitive.

The Gigabyte P55A-UD6 meanwhile is a compromise. It makes for a more palatable US$250 price tag; in fact, that's exactly the same price for the older P55-UD6 that does not include SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0. For those that do not need two graphics cards though, this is an acceptable compromise. The performance too, is predictable and up to par with its competitors for the most part; our gaming benchmarks could not distinguish between the P55 motherboards. While we did have some minor complaints about the layout, there's no doubting the quality in this board. Plus not to forget is that the Gigabyte board has more storage related options like more storage controllers, SATA and eSATA ports - great for storage freaks. Like the ASUS, both of these boards are among the most costly of their class and it shows.

With SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 devices hardly seen in retail, these two motherboards are definitely ahead and chasing the early adopters. Based on what we have seen, they are worthy of their flagship status, but given the different approaches, the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium was our favorite as it provides full bandwidth performance to these new connectivity standards as well as dual graphics cards. While we've noticed enthusiast discussions in our forums that are willing to spend for speedier storage technologies, it remains to be seen if most consumers would buy into these boards for the future instead of waiting for the supporting devices. We'll be keeping you updated with SATA 6Gbit/s and USB 3.0 performance soon when we have these devices.

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