Military Grade - ASUS SABERTOOTH 55i

The First TUF Board

Thermal shock test? Check. Vibration test? Check. Mechanical shock test? Check. moisture resistance test? Check. Solder bath test? Check. The list continues on the certificate of reliability issued by an accredited third-party laboratory that's found with every unit of ASUS' latest motherboard, the SABERTOOTH 55i.

Yes, in case you're still puzzled, the first ASUS' TUF motherboard, the SABERTOOTH 55i is now available in the market. 'TUF', pronounced 'tough', here stands for 'The Ultimate Force', which is ASUS' new series of motherboards that are geared towards stability, durability and all-round compatibility. To ensure that it lives up to its claims, all the capacitors and MOSFETS used on the SABERTOOTH have to pass rigorous testing usually meant for military class components.

It's not the first time that we have heard of PC vendors going for the durability and stability angle, even to the extent of boasting military-grade components. MSI for instance has outfitted some of its graphics cards with military grade components, like the MSI N260GTX Lightning Black Edition. Gigabyte too has been pushing the reliability slant earlier than most, with solid capacitors and an obsession with power phases present in its 'Ultra Durable' motherboards.

So it's not surprising that ASUS has chosen to travel down this route too. Besides the tough military grade hardware, the SABERTOOTH 55i also comes with the vendor's new ceramic-based heatsink coating technology that claims to improve heat dissipation on heatsinks. Throw in the usual multi-phase power design with active phase switching and you can see where ASUS is going with this new motherboard.

The ASUS SABERTOOTH 55i

Before we get into the ASUS SABERTOOTH 55i proper, let's get the ASUS branded jargon out of the way first. There are quite a few of these proprietary features and technologies on this board. Some are not new to those who are familiar with ASUS' motherboards. Others are unique to the 'TUF' boards. First, there's the CeraM!X heatsink coating that's applied to the heatsinks around the socket and on top of the Platform Control Hub (PCH). This technology and concept was first applied on concept P45 boards which ASUS showcased during events like CeBIT and Computex earlier this year. So to us, it's exciting to see it actually translate into a real motherboard product.

According to ASUS, the micro-porous nature of this ceramics-based coating improves heat dissipation since its rough surface means that there are very small indentations on its surface that together adds up to a larger surface area than a perfect flat heatsink surface. We have found some prior research and application of ceramics as a heatsink material so it's not unheard of but like all tech, the proof is in the pudding and it's something we'll find out in our temperature testing later.

As a premium motherboard, the socket of the SABERTOOTH is inevitably surrounded by ferrite chokes, solid capacitors and MOSFETs (these are also the military grade components touted by ASUS), though there's plenty of space for mounting the CPU cooler. It is comfortably located away from potential obstruction like the graphics cards and on the P55, there's no 'Northbridge' to speak of.

A 12-phase CPU power design is used for this board, with an additional two phases for the integrated memory controller. Together with the switching power design that regulates the voltages for the processor, graphics card and other onboard components, the three make up the 'TUF Engine' as ASUS coins it. Other features that fall under this umbrella are the Efficient Phase Switching power design and T.Probe, the sum of which has to do with managing the power phase loading to ensure temperatures keep to the norm and power efficiency is maximized.

Major vendors like Gigabyte and MSI too have their own, similar power designs to ensure there is sufficient power, especially for overclocking, while taking into account of efficiency during less demanding workloads. Our power consumption results later will shed some light on the power draw during idle and peak performance.

Another ASUS technology is MemOK!, which from the marketing blurb, appears to help reduce memory compatibility issues by first checking and running through various failsafe settings before determining the proper settings for the installed memory module. While it's useful for certain users, we feel experienced enthusiasts have no need for it, especially when Intel's Extreme Memory Profile is supported on this board and enthusiast memory kits will almost definitely have XMP support.

Adding to this, ASUS has introduced a memory cooling fan solution on this board. Designed to cool the memory modules, it is basically an allowance on the board for mounting a fan frame to hold a 40 or 50mm fan. The fan however is not included so users have to get their own. Again, we aren't too optimistic that this feature will be popular since most enthusiast memory modules have their own heat spreaders that work rather well. Adding another fan here just potentially adds to the vibration and noise level without too much benefit.

If you're really into pushing your memory, this switch is something that must be enabled, as it will allow users to set their memory voltage to a maximum of 2.5V, up from the 2.0V ceiling without enabling the switch. We must however recommend caution since such high voltages are quite likely to severely affect the stability of the system, along with the lifespan of your memory modules and possibly even your CPU since it is connected directly to the memory. Also, while it's dangerous to the novice, we really don't feel that it needs to be a hardware switch. One can probably do the same 'lock/unlock' on the voltage settings entirely through the BIOS.

Besides the standard six SATA ports that's found on all P55 motherboards, ASUS' Drive Xpert feature is RAID made easy through a GUI. The caveat is that you have to use the orange and white SATA ports here and the two drives must be data drives, not a drive that contains your OS. The software utility, found in the ASUS DVD, has two modes available, EZ Backup, which mirrors the two hard drives (RAID 1) or Super Speed, which improves drive speed access (RAID 0). This feature is available thanks to an onboard JMicron controller and the GUI definitely makes it more convenient for users.

That just about summarizes the main ASUS features on the SABERTOOTH, not all of which are necessarily new to this board. As for its more mundane features, the SABERTOOTH is quite typical for a P55 motherboard, with the usual SATA, Gigabit LAN, HD audio configuration that's standard for this chipset.

For those who haven't seen too many ASUS boards, there are some nice touches, like the latch mechanism for the graphics card slots and the DIMM slots that make it easier for the components to be removed. We also had no issues with the layout, with ample allowance between the graphics card slots if CrossFireX or SLI is your thing. Floppy drive support has been removed, though surprisingly, we found a COM port present still. The VIA VT2020 HD audio CODEC also appears to be relatively new. With a 10-channel audio configuration consisting of 8 primary and dual secondary streaming channels, this new CODEC looks like to one-up the competition from the Realtek chips in features.

BIOS Settings

It's the familiar ASUS BIOS that we have already seen on the Maximus III Formula. One of the main differences we noticed about ASUS' P55 motherboards so far is that the CPU Ratio setting available ranges from 9x to 24x, when other brands (and the reference chipset) go up to 22x for our Core i7-870 processor. The other settings are as follows:

• Base Clock: 80 - 500MHz
• CPU Ratio: 9 - 24x
• Memory Ratio: Auto, 800, 1066, 1333, 1600
• CPU Voltage: 0.85 - 1.7V (in 0.00625V steps)
• Memory Voltage: 1.2 - 2.5V (in 0.0125V steps)
• IMC Voltage: 1.1 - 1.7V (in 0.00625V steps)
• PCH Voltage: 1.05 - 1.15V (in 0.10V steps)

When it came to overclocking, the SABERTOOTH 55i was on par with the top P55 motherboards we tested recently, reaching a maximum of 210MHz after pushing up the relevant voltages. Unlike ASUS' Maximus III Formula, there are no excessive onboard features that are geared for overclocking but the SABERTOOTH does decently here without any of that.

Test Setup

With our recent mainstream P55 motherboard shootout, we went with Windows 7 as the operating system. Similarly, this OS was used for the SABERTOOTH 55i testing. Naturally, we used our previous results for comparison. The configuration used:

• 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

The following benchmarks were used to determine the performance of the P55 motherboards. Note that we ran into issues while using the Vantage edition of benchmarks and thus we're using older equivalents here for the time being until we've sorted the issue with Futuremark:

• BAPco SYSmark 2007 (with Patch 3)
• Futuremark PCMark05 (ver 120)
• SPECviewperf 9.0
• Futuremark 3DMark06 (ver 110)
• AquaMark3
• Far Cry 2

Results - SYSmark 2007 Preview

The ASUS SABERTOOTH 55i started off in SYSmark 2007 with a top score of 214, slightly ahead of the Maximus III Formula. To be fair, all the P55 motherboards fared similarly, with the differences only revealed in the breakdown. Here, we saw that the SABERTOOTH was strong in the Productivity and 3D segments.

Results - Futuremark PCMark05 Pro

In PCMark05, the SABERTOOTH 55i performed quite similarly to the Maximus III Formula, with slight improvements in the hard drive performance segment. However, the board was still behind the ECS and the Gigabyte here. CPU and memory performance though were marginally better than its competitors.

Results - SPECviewperf 9.0

Performance from this ASUS board appeared to be more than equal to most of its competitors, with the ECS and ASUS Maximus III Formula the major contenders.

Gaming Benchmarks

When we came to the gaming benchmarks, there had been negligible differences between our P55 motherboards. Not surprisingly, that remained the case for the SABERTOOTH, which was practically level with the other boards in these results.

Temperature

The question on everyone's lips: does the CeraM!X heatsink coating work as intended? Well, if you're comparing it against the ASUS Maximus III Formula, then the SABERTOOTH showed an improvement. However, against its main competitors, the SABERTOOTH recorded similar temperatures in this test. In effect, it was a tie between the new ASUS board, the MSI and the Gigabyte boards.

Power Consumption

Power consumption figures also showed a slight improvement over the Maximus III Formula, which like the temperature issue, brought the SABERTOOTH in line with two of its major competitors.

Conclusion

With integrated memory controllers and now integrated PCIe graphics controllers for the Intel P55 Express chipset, there are fewer areas with each passing generation where vendors can differentiate their products. After all, there's only so much one can do to optimize the performance when it's become so dependent on the processor. It then becomes a matter of having a good layout and enhancing the feature set. Appealing to the hardcore enthusiast segment with overclocking friendly features remains a popular tactic but the stability card is another that vendors are likely to play nowadays, with power efficiency and heat output another tack.

ASUS' new TUF series is precisely that, one that takes a different angle from its Republic of Gamer (ROG) series that focused on the hardcore crowd. As with ASUS' motherboards, the first TUF board, the SABERTOOTH 55i takes it to the extreme; the emphasis this time is on stability and reliability rather than overclocking and so the choice of military grade components to bolster this claim.

Power efficiency and heat output are related issues for stability and these are addressed on the SABERTOOTH. Having its ceramic-based heatsink coating looks to have improved the heat dissipation slightly in our testing, which contributed to the overall stability while the power consumption figures too showed some improvement, credit no doubt going to the Efficient Switching Power design and the T.Probe technology that load balances the power phases with temperatures.

Besides the ASUS' proprietary features, the SABERTOOTH is actually a rather typical P55 motherboard. True, not everyone will find things like MemOK! or the memory cooling fan useful but those features do not detract from the fact that the layout for this board is impeccable or that we liked having the easy-to-remove graphics/DIMM slot retention clip design. If anything, our complaint is that true to its premium billing, it is a bit of an overkill for some of these 'features' and one gets the feeling that it's more bloat than giving users true value.

Which brings us to the price for this board. At around US$210, it's about as costly as MSI's top P55 motherboard. ASUS' own Maximus III Formula remains more expensive at US$250. In comparison, we would take the SABERTOOTH personally over the Formula for the sole reason that we don't need the overclocking fluff on the Formula and the SABERTOOTH is cheaper. But there's no doubt that the SABERTOOTH is a very good board with few flaws and with some rather unique features that will stand out even among the premium crowd.

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