There's something to be said for Intel's chipset release practices.  Typically, each major revision has consisted of multiple versions: a powerful, enthusiast high-end chipset, and then a number of slimmed down versions.  Note, we say "slimmed down" instead of "stripped down", as much of the architecture and feature set remains untouched.  The result is usually a plethora of mid-range boards that are cheaper than the flagship models, that have a few limitations or exclusions in comparison to the upper-end boards that not every user will necessarily need or want.

ASUS P5B-E Motherboard

The Asus P5B-E is much more understated than the MSI P965 Platinum in both appearance and features.  The color scheme harkens back to years past, where plain green or copper colored PCBs were the norm.  The overall layout is clean with a neat assortment of slots and colored dimm slots, and the majority of the connector pins are focused alongside the edges of the board.  The CPU socket area is completely surrounded by small capacitors that won't hinder the installation of larger heatsinks, such as the Zalman CNPS7000B, which radiates outwards like a mushroom cloud.

Like the MSI P965 Platinum used in this review for comparison, the board is passively cooled with a hefty aluminum heatsink placed over the P965 North Bridge, and a much smaller profiled heatsink over the ICH8R South Bridge.  There's no special contraptions such as ASUS' own Stack Cool 2 used on the P5WD2 which removes heat to the underside of the board, nor the heatpipes found on P5WDH.  Here it's all about getting performance while keeping prices low and maintaining a "green" profile - that is, the board is environmentally friendly and uses recycleable components.

The two memory banks officially support up 8GB of DDR2-800 non-ECC, unbuffered RAM, and are color coded: yellow for the first channel and black for the second.  They are placed far from both the CPU socket and give plenty of clearance for longer graphic cards.  Seated directly at their side are two of the four fan headers, one for the CPU and the other for a system fan.  It's not really an ideal placement for a system fan header unless it is to be used with some of the active cooling kits for memory that have recently been introduced by Corsair or OCZ.  At the other end is where the Q-Connector for the front panel goes.  As you can see, the vertical writing on the bridge makes plugging in cables a no-brainer.

The slots are arranged so that there are three PCI-Express x1 slots, one to the right of the main x16 slot and two to the far left.  Only one PCI-E x16 slot is included on the P5B-E, and it's colored in black to differentiate it from the rest.  With only one large slot, there's no way to install more than one video card into the P5B-E, thus limited its appeal as an enthusiast's board.  On the other hand, there are three PCI slots for installing a number of third-party cards.  One of these would get sacrificed, however, if installing a dual-slot graphics card.

The lower left corner places just about all of the drive connectors together, consisting of the six SATA ports from the ICH8R, and the IDE port from the JMicron JMB363 Controller.  A floppy drive header is also available, turned on its side to prevent cables from getting tangled.  Oddly, there is a seventh SATA port available, but placed far in the upper left corner.  Its placement could require some tricky cabling up and around the USB, Serial, and FireWire headers that are placed on the edge of the board there. 

Asus Update was used to update the BIOS to the latest revision available.  At first, it would connect to FTP site that was listed by default, but it never actually downloaded the ROM file.  We updated the software version without any change, however, we were able to choose another URL listed in a drop down menu, completed the download, and subsequently updated the BIOS.  The ASUS AI Suite consisted of a number of separate applications that are accessed by the click of a button, all the while displaying the temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds in a spiffy looking screen.

One of those applications happens to be ASUS AI Booster, and it allows you to overclock the CPU while in Windows.  As in the BIOS, CPU, Memory, and PCI-E frequencies can be modified but the tool lacks the fine tuning that one would find elsewhere.   As such, it is only good to use for small speed bumps before the system ultimately becomes unstable.  One way to keep track of the temps and voltages, however, is to use the PC Probe utility.  It can be customized to display as much, or little, information desired.

When RAIDs go bad...

After completing all of the benchmarks and overclocked tests, in which the ASUS P5B-E was repeatedly stressed and restarted, we ran into an issue with the Intel Matrix Storage Manager where we completely lost a drive out of the RAID 0 configuration.  This occurred after a mere boot into Windows and then quick shut down, with no other issues that we noticed.  A similar issue occurred on the P965 Platinum, but we were able to recover from it.  On the Asus P5B-E, we were not as lucky and had to reformat the drive.  We then tested the drive using WD Diagnostics and found no hardware issues.  While we would like to chalk this up to an odd occurrence, the fact that it happened with both motherboards left us concerned about the possible loss of time and data when using RAID and overclocking on the ICH8R. 

ASUS P5B-E: Exploring the BIOS Overclocking Options Galore

The Asus P5B-E comes with an AMI BIOS that at first seems much more condensed then the version used on the MSI P965 Platinum.  Instead of arriving at a series of sections to choose from, this BIOS immediately displays the System Date and Time, whether or not a legacy diskette (read: floppy drive) is installed, and what drives are attached to the 6 SATA channels.  Clicking on each drive reveals more information such as Vendor and Size places the configuration settings at the bottom, most of which should be left at [Auto].  The IDE Configuration page controls the setup for the JMicron controller.  Finally, the System Information screen displays the current version of the BIOS, and some basic CPU and memory information.

Skipping over the Advanced section for the time being brought us to Power, which covers the ACPI status mode and tweaking the settings for power loss occurrences or when the system should be awakened by device activity.  Delving a bit futher into the Hardware Monitor brings us to a page that displays the current CPU and Motherboard temperatures as well as the voltages and fan speeds.  ASUS Q-Fan control may be enabled here, with automatically controls the fan speeds to find a nice balance between cooling and noise output.

Under 'Boot', the boot device priority is set from the first device preferred down to the fourth.  The boot settings determine whether or not to display a full screen image, which can be modified using ASUS MyLogo, and what messages may or may not appear depending on certain conditions.  To protect your BIOS settings, a supervisor and user password can be saved in this section as well. 'Tools' offers up two handy utilities that take the headache out of updating the BIOS and in overclocking the system.  Rather than the arcane boot from floppy method for updating the BIOS, all one needs to do with the P5B-E is enter the BIOS and access the file from a drive.  O.C. Profile lets the user save two differing overclocking configurations - perhaps one for the highest stable overclock and one for just squeezing a few extra frames without risking your components.

Of course, one still needs to go about overclocking the system to begin with, and that brings us back to the Advanced menu. This menu lists 6 different sections, the first of which is labeled 'Jumperfree Configuration'.  By default, AI Tuning and DRAM Frequency are both set to [Auto], but switch over to [Manual] and voila!  there are frequency and voltage options galore.  CPU Frequences range from 100MHz all the way up to 650MHz in 1MHz steps.  DRAM frequencies, on the other hand, are chosen from presets of 533, 667, 800, 889, and 1067MHz (although the last one is not officially supported).  PCI and PCI-Express bus speeds can also be locked down to prevent any damage to these devices while raising the bus speed.

Of course, hand in hand with raising the speeds would be the voltage settings, and there are more options here than we have seen with just about any other board.  These include the CPU VCore, FSB Termination, NB VCore, SB Vcore, and ICH Chipset voltages.  The CPU VCore voltage can be set from 1.2750V to 1.7000V in 0.0125V steps.  Memory voltage, originally limited to a few choices in the original bios and ending at 2.1V receives an upgrade here, with voltages as high as 2.45V in the latest revision.  The NB, SB, ICH, and FSB voltages have far fewer options, typically consisting of three or four choices, the highest of which are usually cautioned against as they may cause damage to the chipsets.

Outside of overclocking, the Advanced menu also contains a few tweaks for the CPU and Memory.  On the CPU Configuration screen, the BIOS automatically detects and sets each option, although these can be manually overwritten.  The same is true for the memory timings found under the North Bridge Chipset Configuration.  When left to detect the DRAM Timings by SPD, the memory will be set at the timings found in the EEPROM on each module.  Disabling this setting unlocks 10 new options from the standard timings to some more esoteric ones.  

ASUS P5B-E : Overclocking An Overclocker's dream

We took a Core 2 E6300 processor and the ASUS P5B-E and set out to see if the great number of options in the BIOS would result in a great overclock as well.  We started out by raising the front side bus in 10MHz increments, while dropping the DRAM frequency down from DDR2-800 to DDR-667, but still at 4-4-4-12 timings.  At each step, we booted into Windows, ran a few benchmarks and if everything ran stable, moved up and onward.  We continued on like this up past the 300MHz mark without having to change any other settings in the BIOS.    

We had to raise the CPU voltage at 360MHz to 1.35V, but never touched it again after that until the system began failing around 460 MHz.  We could not run any benchmarks and system unstable at this point, even with additional voltage.  The DDR Voltage was raised along the way to 2.1V at 420MHz since our RAM was now over spec, running at 840MHz, and we also relaxed the timings to 5-5-5-15 to keep things in hand.  When we started having problems running benchmarks while in the mid 400's, the NB Voltage and FSB Voltage were bumped up a notch to increase stability.

The final, stable overclock we were able to reach and maintain a stable environment at was a 454MHz FSB, which comes out to a 3.19GHz clock speed - up 1.33GHz over default speeds.  That's nearly an extra third higher than the 1.86GHz that the Core 2 Duo E6300 is expected to run at.  Our gut feeling was that the P5B-E might have been able to reach even higher, but at 454MHz the RAM was running at 908MHz, and we believe that might have held us back. We ran a few benchmarks including SANDRA and the F.E.A.R. performance test to get a feel for what we accomplished.  The SANDRA results were great and getting up to 432fps in F.E.A.R. speaks for itself.

F.E.A.R. running at an avg. of 432fps!

MSI P965 Platinum

Micro Star International (MSI), one of the more prominent motherboard manufacturers, formally launched their P965 series of motherboards based on the Intel P965 Express Chipset at Computex Taipei 2006. These motherboards are featured with all functions of the new generation Intel platform, and fully support the Core 2 Duo processor. The P965 Platinum, in particular, was one of the first P965 boards to support ATI CrossFire, which uses two discrete ATI Radeon graphic cards to optimize video performance.  The MSI P965 Platinum supports CPUs with FSB up to 1066 MHz, EIST and Intel Hyper-Threading technologies, PCI Express x 16 graphics interface and dual channel DDRII 533,667, 800 memory up to 8GB (DDR II 533,667) and 4GB (DDRII 800). The MSI P965 Platinum also supports Six (6) SATAII ports by ICH8R up to 300MB/sec transfer, 7.1 HD audio, PCI-E Gigabit LAN, IEEE 1394 and offers plenty of expansion opportunities.  In observance of environmentally friendly practices and awareness, all the components of P965 series motherboards are RoHS compliant, including the manufacturing process. The P965 series motherboards are made with high quality components only and will not cause environmental pollution after disposal.

MSI P965 Platinum Specifications Lean, mean, and green

MSI's bundle included mostly standard stuff, including four SATA2 data cables, rounded IDE and floppy cables, two SATA2 power cables, and the I/O shield.  One bracket provided in the bundle is used for both standard and mini-port FireWire connections.  In typical MSI fashion, an additional bracket with two USB ports and a set of diagnostic LEDs is also included.  A Quick Installation Guide, User's manual, registration form and driver CD round out the bundle.  The user manual is well done, providing adequate information regarding the motherboard components, BIOS settings, and installation options, including setting up RAID and using the JMicron controller.

P965 Motherboard

First off, when looking at the two boards, there is an obvious size difference.  The MSI P965 Platinum is a full size ATX motherboard at 305 x 245mm in size.  The black-colored PCB tends to set off the other components, each of which is color coded to help identify and simplify installation.  For example, SATA ports are blue, while DIMM slots are green and orange.  We believe we've mentioned this with other MSI boards, but the coloring scheme could be considered misleading or confusing, especially to a first-time builder.  Our feeling is that to promote the idea of dual channels, there should be both an orange and green set in each bank.  This way, a pair of dimms would be installed in both orange slots, denoting one channel.

The P965 uses only passive heatsinks - no active fans and none of the fancier heatpipes that one might expect on a board marked as "Platinum" (NOTE: MSI has revised the P965 Platinum to include just such a cooling solution).  The passive cooling is both a quiet option, and also a space-saver.  Their smaller stature does not conflict with larger CPU heatsinks or longer graphic cards (especially if using CrossFire).  However, passive options come with the expectation that an adequate airflow is maintained within the chassis to keep things running cool.  Pairing the P965 with a case such as the Antec Nine Hundred is a great combination, as it has fans placed strategically all around the perimeter, bringing in much needed cooler air. 

Placement of the drive and power connectors is just about perfect.  Other than the centrally placed 12V power connector, which uses either a 4-pin or 8-pin cable, all of the other components are placed nearly at the edge of the board.  This keeps cable clutter at a minimum, as we don't have to weave cable around the board.  Even the front panel pins are placed along the front side of the board, color coded to match the various cables.  The ICH8R supports the six SATA ports grouped together in the lower left corner, with an additional 7th in light blue placed further up towards the PCI slots coming from the JMicron controller.  The JMicron JMB361 controller is both a boon and a headache.  It provides the sole means necessary to install IDE based optical devices, which we're sure at least one of which will be installed in the average PC, and requires its own driver.  Our original setup, however, would always downgrade the DMA settings of these drives to PIO Mode.  We found that only be updating the BIOS to the 1.4 revision would fix this issue.

ATI's CrossFire is officially supported on this P965 board, which is why there are two physical PCI-Express x16 slots, however only the first white slot uses a full 16 PCI Express lanes.  The yellow slot uses only 4 lanes, 2 of which come from the PCI-E x1 slots, thus rendering them inoperable when two graphics cards are installed.  On the bright side, the two slots are placed far apart from each other which would allow plenty of room for air to pass between dual slot graphics cards.  Even with this preferred layout, our take on this is if you want CrossFire, upgrade to a 975X board instead.  Installing a video card for additional monitor support is a probably a better use for this extra slot.  Two PCI slots complete the lot, the last of which is colored in orange and is meant for use with special daughterboards manufactured by MSI, such as a wireless LAN and Bluetooth card.

Ten USB ports from the ICH8/R SouthBridge and two FireWire ports controlled by the VIA VT6307 chip are spread out amongst the headers on the motherboard.  The Realtek RTL8111B LAN Controller provides for a Gigabit Ethernet connection.  A High Definition link controller in the ICH8R is used in connection with Realtek's ALC883 codec for the audio output, which is a fair solution, but not as clean as the 24-bit SoundBlaster Live! controllers we've seen on the more expensive boards.  At the rear of the board, the I/O panel consists of four USB2.0 headers, five auto-sensing audio jacks, S/PDIF coaxial and optical audio outputs, 2 PS/2 ports and a FireWire port, and a RJ-45 Gigabit LAN port.

There were a few issues that we encountered almost immediately with the stock version of the motherboard.  Booting with a non-bootable CD in the drive, even when the RAID was set as the first bootable device, would always say "select proper boot device".  We were able to bypass this by hitting the spacebar, but this didn't go away completely until updating the BIOS.  Speaking of which, MSI Live Update, a user-friendly utility used to download new files, always dropped to the desktop when searching for files.

There are no advanced audio controls for HD Audio (i.e. Bass or Treble sliders) from within Windows.  MSI Controls offer various environments, but they mostly result in simple echo/reverb effect and aren't very usefull.  Pre-set equalizers are more useful for optimizing your audio experience.  Karaoke settings have a tool-tip for Voice Cancellation, but we toggled this with no effect on the audio playback.

Digicell offers various diagnostics such as network connectivity, Power on Agent, Audio Settings, and the Dual Core Center (which crashes when selected).  Once, during MP3 playback, clicking on the Audio Settings actually reset the system.  After closing down the Digicell software, running the Dual Core Center allowed us to check VGA and Motherboard temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages.  These are expressed as up-to-date information, as well as with a time-elapsed graph.

Finally, the Intel Matrix Storage Controller reported an error with one of the two Western Digital drives in our setup, stating that an "Error Ocurred (0)" with one of our drives.  We were able to boot into Windows and "repair" the RAID setup by clicking on Intel Matrix Storage Manager and marking the problematic drive as 'Normal'.  After this issue, we were able to continue on with benchmarking and eventually overclocking, without any further interruptions.

MSI P965 Platinum: Exploring the BIOS Let's start with the basics

The AMI BIOS that came with the P965 Platinum is a familiar sight for anyone who has built even a few systems in their time.  A standard list of sections are listed down the left side of the main screen, offering up options that are more or less catered to basic setup of the system.  For example, date, time and drive information is found on the Standard CMOS Features, while CPU parameters and simple Boot-up procedures get listed under the Advanced BIOS Features.

In the Advanced Chipset Features, the first thing that you'll notice are there aren't very many options available.  Even after disabling the setting for 'Configure DRAM Timing by SPD', the timing options are only limited to the "big" four: CAS Latency, RAS to CAS Delay, RAS Precharge, and RAS Activate to Prec.  There are no other fine tunings, or other means available for tweaking the system at this point.  As MSI is usually a tweaker-friendly manufacturer, this comes as a bit of a surprise.  We might have expected fewer options on a lower-end desginated board, but not on a "Platinum" model. 

Integrated Peripherals offers a slew of choices to choose from, as just about everything you could want for in the board comes standard on the P965.  Onboard LAN, FireWire, HD Audio - it's all in there.  There's also mention of the Onboard RAID controller, which is actually referring to the JMicron JMB361 controller.  It's almost a misnomer, as there is a higher probability that you will be using it for connecting IDE drives rather than using it in a RAID setup, especially since 6 of the SATA ports controlled by the ICH8R Southbridge are already able to be used for RAID configurations.

Drilling down even further into the On-Chip ATA Devices is where you'll need to go to set that RAID up, and the ICH8R supports RAID 0, 1, 10 or RAID 5 configurations.  I/O Devices contain the lost stepchild of the BIOS settings, enabling or disabling what are mostly seen as legacy devices these days.  These include parallel and serial ports, what type of parallel port mode to use, and the floppy drive support.  It's been years now that motherboard manufacturers have been on the edge about dropping support for parallel and serial ports, as they are rarely ever used, but I for one will always need my floppy drive.

It's when we get to the Cell Menu that the real fun begins.  Within this section are just about all of the settings for overclocking the P965, whether that means using one of MSI's presets, or going about it on your own. It's even possible to overclock the CPU only, the video card, or both from here as well, taking guesswork completely out of the hands of the newly indoctrined overclocker.

Assuming you are up to the challenge, moving directly to the CPU FSB Frequency is where you will get started.  The FSB can be set anywhere between 266 and 550MHz in 1MHz steps with the voltage going from the default setting as high as +0.7875V.  Not that we would ever go that high, but it's good to see that the range exists.  As voltages are raised, the new voltage level will actually be colored to match a safety level: gray for default values, white for safe, yellow for "high performance" and red meaning the setting is not recommended and may cause an issue.

DRAM frequencies allow for some creativity as it allows the user to install various kinds of DDR2 modules into the system, and also allows the speed to be lowered or raised over the actual rated frequency.  DRAM Voltage ranges from 1.85V to 2.45V, and can be used to stabilize the DDR or at least meet expected values.  For example, the Corsair DDR2 we used is only rated to hit its timings at 2.1V, which is what we set it at here in the BIOS.   Finally, it's also possible to dial in the frequency of the PCI-Express bus and adjust the NB Voltage from a min voltage of 1.26V to a maximum 1.84V.  All of these voltage options could come into play when overclocking the system.

MSI P965 Platinum : Overclocking Over the speed limit, and loving it

Overclocking the P965 proved to be a bit more of a challenge than we expected, considering all of the luck users have had with overclocking Conroes.  We were only able to move up to a 300MHz FSB before Windows would not load in at all.  At this point we lowered the DDR frequency so that it would not cause any issues (at a 300MHz FSB, the DDR was running at 900MHz - well above the specified speed of 800MHz).  We still had problems getting into Windows, however, and had to bump up the CPU Voltage.

We continued to push onwards, raising the NB voltage up to 1.51V when we reached a 320MHz FSB to once again stabilize the system.  The final tally was a 366MHz front side bus resulting in the E6300 running at 2.56GHz.  Total voltage added to the CPU was 0.175V, the NorthBridge voltage was set to 1.67V, and the memory, which was kicked back to a 533MHz setting, was running at 732MHz while at 2.1V.

How we configured our test systems: When configuring our test systems for the following set of benchmarks, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High-Performance Defaults." We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for DDR2-800 at 4-4-4-12 1T latency.  The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows XP Professional SP2 was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed the drivers necessary for our components, and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were then disabled, and we set up a 768MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems Intel Inside

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA 2007 Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2007 suite (CPU, Multimedia, and Memory) with the ASUS P5B-E and the MSI P965 Platinum, both using our Core 2 Duo E6300 processor and 1GB of DDR2-800 memory. All of the scores reported below were taken with the processor running at its default clock speed of 1.86 GHz.

MSI P965 Platinum CPU Module Core 2 Duo E6300

MSI P965 Platinum Multi-Media Module Core 2 Duo E6300

MSI P965 Platinum Memory Module Core 2 Duo E6300

The two boards compare favorably in SANDRA's suite of benchmarks, with the ever slightest edge in CPU and Multi-Media performance going to the MSI P965 Platinum.  Memory performance was exactly the same for both boards.  Compared to SANDRA's internal database, the CPU and Multi-Media modules have the E6300, running at 1.86 GHz, positioned directly behind a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor.  The latest memory bandwidth scores that were shown came from a 955X board, so there's no direct comparison, but the 965P boards are outperforming the test score by over 140 MB/s.

Futuremark 3DMark06 - CPU Test Simulated DirectX Gaming Performance

3DMark06's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded "gaming related" DirectX metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems.  This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are generated with a software renderer, which is dependant on the host CPU's performance.  This means that the calculations normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the central processor.  The number of frames generated per second in each test are used to determine the final score.

Although paired with the same CPU, we found that the MSI P965 Platinum was able to run just a hair faster than the Asus P5B-E as evidenced by the 22 point spread in 3DMark06.  Although the delta is relatively small, we found that this difference between the two boards would occur in other synthetic benchmarks as well. 

Futuremark PCMark05 More Synthetic CPU and Memory Benchmarks

For our next round of synthetic benchmarks, we ran the CPU and Memory performance modules built into Futuremark's PCMark05.  For those interested in more than just the graphs, however, we've got a couple of quotes directly from Futuremark that explain exactly what these tests do and how they work.

"The CPU test suite is a collection of tests that are run to isolate the performance of the CPU. The CPU Test Suite also includes multithreading: two of the test scenarios are run multithreaded; the other including two simultaneous tests and the other running four tests simultaneously. The remaining six tests are run single threaded. Operations include, File Compression/Decompression, Encryption/Decryption, Image Decompression, and Audio Compression" - Courtesy FutureMark Corp.

As we mentioned earlier, the MSI board outpaced the Asus P5B-E in straight-out CPU performance, and almost by the same point margin as 3DMark06.  In actuality, however, the 28 point difference only amounts to less than a one percent difference in performance, and is well within expected variances of running the benchmark.

"The Memory test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the memory subsystem. The memory subsystem consists of various devices on the PC. This includes the main memory, the CPU internal cache (known as the L1 cache) and the external cache (known as the L2 cache). As it is difficult to find applications that only stress the memory, we explicitly developed a set of tests geared for this purpose. The tests are written in C++ and assembly. They include: Reading data blocks from memory, Writing data blocks to memory performing copy operations on data blocks, random access to data items and latency testing."  - Courtesy FutureMark Corp.

Memory performance was also slightly skewed in MSI's favor, with a 55 point difference between the two boards. 

PC World's Worldbench 5.0: Office XP SP2 & Photoshop 7 Performance More Real-World Application Performance

PC World Magazine's Worldbench 5.0 is a new breed of Business and Professional application benchmark, that has replaced the aging and no-longer supported Content Creation and Business Winstone tests in our suite. Worldbench 5.0 consists of a number of performance modules that each utilize one, or a group of, popular applications to gauge performance.  Below we have the results from each module, recorded in seconds.  Lower times indicate better performance here, so the shorter the bar the better.

The previous synthetic testing had always shown the MSI P965 Platinum holding a lead, however slight, over the Asus P5B-E, but the WorldBench modules we used have the two boards just about spot-on with each other.  The Office XP SP2 module completed with an average of 287 seconds for both boards.  The Photoshop 7 module wound up with a 1 second variance - not surprisingly in MSI's favor. 

Cinebench 9.5 Performance Tests 3D Modeling & Rendering Tests

The Cinebench benchmark is an OpenGL 3D rendering performance test, based on the commercially available Cinema 4D application.  This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders a single 3D scene and tracks the length of the entire process. The time it took each test system to render the entire scene is represented in the graph below (listed in seconds). 

If there truly were any major differences between thse two boards, we would expect them to surface during our benchmark tests.  Instead, we found that one core or two, the Asus and MSI boards produced the exact same times for rendering the scene in Cinebench 9.5.

LAME MT MP3 Encoding Test Converting a Large WAV To MP3

In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a very popular scenario that many end users work with on a day-to-day basis, to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content.  In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file (a never-ending Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME MT application in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below. Once again, shorter times equate to better performance.

We also found that nothing much had changed on the encoding side either.  Using single core or multi-threaded processing, encoding a custom WAV file to MP3 took exactly the same amount of time.  That makes four benchmarks in a row that basically paint the two boards as equals.

Benchmark And Performance Summary: 

For two boards that are labeled as "mid-range", we found that their performance was anything but.  The P965 Platinum either tied or beat the Asus P5B-E in each test, whether synthetic or real-world, although the delta between the two boards was slight at best.  Where the ASUS P5B-E really shines is in overclocking.  Although we were initially satisfied with the 366MHz FSB we achieved on the P965 Platinum, the P5B-E nearly doubled the increase, maxing out at 454MHz.

ASUS P5B-E:

Although a bit short on looks and additional items, ASUS has ultimately offered a well-rounded board that performs well and overclocks even better .  Throughout our testing, the board remained stable even when reaching a front side bus speed nearly 200MHz over the default frequency for our E6300.  Not once during this time did we run into any major crashes with the system or with Windows.  When benchmarks failed to run, raising one of the many voltage options in the BIOS usually enabled us to continue onward.  For tweakers, the BIOS covers all aspects well, including a full array of DRAM timings and voltage options to play with.

The software that comes with the P5B-E covers all of the basics, from monitoring the temperatures and fan speeds without entering the BIOS or installing other third-party programs, to overclocking the system from within Windows.  The AI Booster could probably use a "boost" itself, however, offering more options to the user.  It remains to be seen whether or not the issues we had with our failing RAID setup are endemic to the new ICH8R, the Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers, or something else, but the drives worked fine before and have been working fine since.

If there's one area that the P5B-E falls short, it may well be the lack of any sort of dual-graphics support.  That might not affect a huge number of potential buyers, who can opt for the ASUS P5B Deluxe which does come with two PCI-E x16 slots for slightly more money.  For the current going price of approximately $149 it seems to be a good bargain, and getting a nice overclock will only sweeten the deal.

MSI P965 Platinum:

You can say the MSI P965 Platinum has a bit more panache than the ASUS P5B-E.  It's got better looks, performs just a tiny bit better, and comes with two full PCI-Express slots and a more robust bundle.  The downside to including two slots, however, is that using dual graphics cards disables the two x1 slots in the process.  There are still plenty of other features to talk about, however, including Gigabit LAN, 7.1 channel HD audio, and a slew of SATA and USB ports to connect your devices to.

On the software side of things, we were a bit let down by the utilities that came with the MSI P965 Platinum.  Not that the programs were actually lacking the features that we wanted, we just couldn't get them to run all of the time.  We're sure MSI will look into resolving some of these issues as time goes by, but it's disheartening to have one application close because another is running, especially when they are linked to each other.  We also encountered a few issues with the JMicron controller that did get solved with a BIOS revision.  

The P965 Platinum seems to be priced about the same as the P5B-E, maybe even a few dollars less at some retailers.  For those who want to jump right in an get going, the MSI P965 Platinum seems like a great choice especially when paired with a Core 2 Duo CPU.  Supreme tweakers might be more interested in the number of BIOS choices and overclocking results of the ASUS P5B-E, however.    

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