Intel DP55KG and DP55SB - Two P55s Reviewed
by Rajinder Gill on April 6, 2010 7:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Performance Summary
With all boards featuring the same chipset, CPU and memory, there is little to separate them in terms of performance - the two Intel boards produce almost identical results.
Power Consumption
Our power consumption testing utilizes the same batch of components under similar circumstances in a bid to monitor variances between idle and CPU load conditions. We install the vendor supplied power saving utilities on each board and enable power saving modes that don't involve any kind of underclocking or CPU core frequency modulation in order to run an apples to apples comparison.
ATX PSU switching losses are absent from our figures because we monitor power consumption directly at the DC rails of the PSU. These figures measure only the CPU, motherboard and memory DC power draw and exclude any other peripherals such as the graphics card, fans and hard drives etc. As such, AC power consumption will be anywhere from 15~40% higher than these figures depending upon the efficiency of your power supply.
Intel’s boards look pretty good in this respect, showing well against the power-hungry, but feature-rich P55 Classified.
DPC Audio Latency
We’re often asked to include a DPC latency screenshot by audio enthusiasts; both the DP55KG and the DP55SB turn in respectable performances:
DP55KG:
DP55SB:
Overclocking
Overclocking on both boards was ok – we were able to POST and boot into the OS at 200 bclk as well. This was achieved using a low CPU multiplier as we were using the stock Intel heatsink.
Also of note was that this bclk was only achievable on the 2:6 or 2:8 memory ratios – the 2:10 ratio ran into problems and refused to boot around the 175 bclk area which equated to 875 MHz or DDR3-1750. This was despite trying up to 1.35v VTT and loosening timings to 9-9-9-27 and slacking off tRFC and tFAW. Anything higher than 175 BCLK on the 2:10 memory ratio resulted in the board shutting down during stress testing or when loading Windows. On the face of it, we're lead to believe there is some kind of over-current protection in place on the VTT rail - not good.
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Richard Pawley - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - link
Thanks PR3ACH3R, this is good feedback. We will look into this and update the review once we've carried out some more tests.Regards,
Richard
PR3ACH3R - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
Look Here for a report on the biggest DPC Issue of our time,one that is silenced by the manufacturer, & probably an excellent article subject for Anandtech.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18...
Googer - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
With out PS2 die hard Clicky Keyboard Lovers like myself will be forced to boycott intel motherboards and support manufacturers like Gigabyte and ASUS. Intel, do all of us a favor and preserve the PS2 port, USB converter solutions just don't work very well.ClagMaster - Saturday, April 10, 2010 - link
I too have issues with this latest generation of Intel Motherboards of not providing support for legacy devices.Lack of floopy and PS/2 support is not an issue because these devices are truly obsolete. Most new mice and keyboards available for the last six years with USB.
Lack of IDE support for Optical Drives is a significant issue for many users because they have high performance IDE Optical Drives they paid over $100 that they still want to use. And they are very much aware there is no significant benefit buying a SATA drive for much less.
The DP55KG is too much money for the features and performance at ($210). I would have bought the lower cost DP55WG ($140) except that it does not have IDE support for my optical drives. So the candidate worth buying for the money is the GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3P ($140)
iamkyle - Monday, April 19, 2010 - link
...at least Intel programs its own BIOS program, unlike every other mobo manufacturer that has it programmed in Taiwan, then poorly translates it.Nowhere in an Intel BIOS will you find things like "It the system power is be reset it will cause the malfunction!!!"
Redphil - Sunday, November 28, 2010 - link
I am using the DP55KG for a while in combination with a Pentium G6950 (Clarkdale).I changed my Graphic Card and discovered that I have the PCIe x1-Bug that was described in the review. I have the newest BIOS and tried a bunch of things, but wasn't able to solve the problem. Even contacted Intel via Support-Chat, but they were no help.
Have anyone here a solution for this annoying bug (besides changing Mainboard/CPU, of course)?