P67 Motherboard Round-up: Asus, Fatal1ty, GB, MSI

Name: P67 Motherboard Round-up: Asus, Fatal1ty, GB, MSI - Page 12
Brand: P67

by Mathew Miranda — Friday, June 17, 2011, 12:00 PM EDT

Performance Summary and Conclusion

Page 12: Performance Summary and Conclusion

Performance Summary: Experience tells us that motherboards that use identical chipsets tend to perform similarly throughout testing. After all, running the same processor at 3.3GHz on one board should offer nearly identical performance when installed on a different board (within a few percentage points either way), all other things being equal. And for the most part, our benchmarks correlate with that logic. With that said, there wasn't really any one board that truly stood out during our test runs in terms of performance alone. However, the Asus P8P67 WS Revolution recorded the highest score in 4 of the 10 benchmarks we ran, but again, the deltas separating it from the others were quite small.

ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional: Out of all the boards in this round up, we thought this one looked the most interesting. Of course, everyone has different tastes, but we have to give props to ASRock for designing this beauty and slapping an affordable price tag on it. It looks a lot more like a $400 board than a $200 board. Besides the aesthetics, the P67 Professional came out on top in several benchmarks, including SANDRA's physical disk benchmarks and STALKER. And it did so while consuming the least amount of power during full load. Overall, the Fatal1ty P67 Professional has the looks and performance required to be an excellent board for the money.

Asus P8P67 Pro: Looking at the benchmark scores, the P8P67 Pro usually fell in the middle of the pack. Although it did not grab the performance crown in any of the benchmarks, it recorded the lowest idle power consumption. The biggest advantage the Pro has over the competition is affordability, making it increasingly attractive for those who want to maximize their investment.

Gigabyte P67A-UD5: We like the new look of Gigabyte's 6-series boards, with their black PCB and slick design. But on the performance front, the UD5 didn't differentiate itself. On the other hand, it generally hit par for the course with competitive scores, which was to be expected. Gigabyte boards have a long history of being rock solid, and we expect the same from their new line of products.

MSI P67A-GD80: We would rate the design of the GD80 a close second, behind the Fatal1ty board in terms of looks. Its black and blue color motif is classic, and the heat sink designs are done just right. We also witnessed a couple of performance wins for MSI during our testing. In Cinebench 11.5, the board hit 53.09 FPS with and had the highest read test in CrystalDiskMark at 130 MB/s. Otherwise, the GD80 hung tight with the rest of the group, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Asus P8P67 WS Revolution Motherboard

Asus P8P67 WS Revolution: This board specifically targets professional users and offers a built in NF200 controller to increase the number of PCI Express lanes available in its four full length PCI Express slots. The fact that you can pile on four graphics cards makes the this an obvious choice for users than have heavy rendering workloads or hardcore gamers. But on the flip side, this capability comes in the form of extra power consumption, noticeably higher than the other boards we tested. But we also saw the WS Revolution turn in the top score in several of our benchmarks, and the fastest write speed in CrystalDiskMark. We think it's a fantastic board to use for the foundation of a professional workstation, rendering machine, or gaming system. With that said, we pick the Asus WS Revolution as the editor's choice. It's a bit pricey but it offers the kind of versatility and features that make it well worth its price tag and highly recommend it to anyone in the market for a new P67-based motherboard.