You're promising a new X58 roundup - Yes quite honestly your first X58 roundup was a joke. It was really like a 4 mobo roundup of the motherboards that were available at launch. Tom's Hardware had like 4 roundups or something to cover the budget end and the enthusiast end.
You also promised an in depth i7 overclocking guide. Really, there was nothing. The most you ever mentioned about overclocking was in those investigations into high vDIMM or whatever. And it's obvious most of those articles were really more like lab testing notes geared for those with systems ready to OC.... not the general reader.
Also there was never a DDR3 roundup as you promised.
So yes, let's hope you deliver on this one. I know there's been a gradual shift in the change where Anand likes smartphones and stuff, and don't we all, but there have been cell phone geeks from the beginning, and that's why there are places like Mobile Review, Howard Forums, GSM Arena, Phone Arena, etc. Let's stick to our core and get the cpu+motherboard+video card reviews down yeah?
If you’re in such a dire need of an i7 over clocking guide, you really should not be near a PC. It’s the easiest platform to overclock ever.
Anandtech’s coverage of H55/H57 was unsurpassed in honesty. The very fact you mention Tom’s here shows the line is very fuzzy for you.
Granted, things were promised in the past that did not get posted, but it looks like everything that’s been promised over the past 6 months has arrived. Maybe you should stick to cruising Tom’s instead of trolling here.
You're awfully quick to rush to AT's defense and ignore every issue the original poster said. How does "H55/H57 was unsurpassed in honesty" refute any of his points?? Almost every AT article refers to an upcoming roundup that never appears. The quality of Toms articles are not as high as AT, but give them credit for much wider coverage of available parts than AT provides.
Fully respect what you guys are saying. We've been trying hard to stick with the articles we've promised this year and so far everything we've said was coming has been delivered. I shall re-iterate, don't expect anything huge on the X58 - there are four new boards we'll be comparing (they're high-end).
In support of Raja, I don't think any of you realise how much time goes into the review of one motherboard (they're generally the worst in my experience, followed by ram reviews), let alone four or more. As a reviewer, it's sometimes hard not to fall for the abundance of products different manufacturers offer you, which in the end gets you frustrated because of lack of time and lack of progress, further leading to long waiting times for the readers or even outdated products before you even get to publish the product review. In my opinion it is a virtue to stick to the stuff you can manage within a reasonable deadline.
Outstanding review anand, some very nice features on the ASUS board, one has to ask though, if P55 is costing this much is it really worth the effort, why not just get a budget X58 and have more on tap.
I dunno maybe it's me, but we're talking near $400 for a system board? Three-hundred and fifty dollars (& ~$26 tax), that's just lunacy to even bother with. Has anyone ever done some basic, logical mathematics on cost/performance? These so-called "performance/'OC'er" mobos offer barely any noticeable advantages over a solid mid-level board vs the exuberant price people will rationalize. Paying nearly 100% more for hardly 15% performance advantage? For the same money you could buy enhanced cooling equipment for your mid-level board and soar past that waste of a PCB, dollar for dollar.
The fanaticism over these "top-end," yet financially inefficient mobos, is just laughable; even the suggestion of purchasing one is also. People are rationalizing spending MORE, for lesser performance per dollar; THIS is ILLOGICAL, and stupid? I say Anand spend more time on solid mid to lower-upper builds vs playing fantasy article on a "gold-sample" OC'er board that offers little in reality for; I dunno maybe ~90% of the readership, whom will not be purchasing boards anywhere near that price range? Articles like these waste the writers' time and the readers'. Also it's money down the drain from a budget, which could be spent on better informing majority of the readers on systems they can actually afford or save for. $349, come on lol. That's a very nice trip somewhere on a plane, buddy... Vs an "OC'ers system-board." These prices are ridiculous and you all keep feeding the (advertising) market for them. __Yep it's ALL marketing folks... they (Manu's/tech sites etc.) know most of you will never get one of these boards, it's just a dream; they are loss-leaders. They know it's great advertising for the manufacturer, who doesn't expect to make a profit from said board. It's to demonstrate to the "market" (their competitors) their current/alleged technological capabilities. All the while we're getting articles, which use up resources from more in depth guides, builds, discussions about what most people have, can afford, or will save for... Fantasy-land articles are great for the uber enthusiast, but it's boring knowing I'm never going to waste anywhere near that much for this stuff... I'll just see it a couple gens later; wow I feel like a psychic, I just knew exactly what board I'll get when the price is right... Bunk.
This is the first $200+ motherboard review we've posted in 2010. The last 13 boards reviewed were sub $200 (a lot under $150). So I don't think its a case of us getting carried away and not providing any "meat" for the readership.
There will be some high-end boards reviewed over the coming months, but also a number of budget priced ones as time progresses.
The gaming performance differences between the M3E and the Trinergy are way larger than I've come to expect of same chipset boards: Sometimes the M3E is ~10% faster than the Trinergy, sometimes it's the other way around. If I didn't know that you know what you're doing I'd think this was sloppy benchmarking... How do you explain the large differences? At second glance it looks like the Trinergy does better in multi-GPU setups, while the M3E leads in single GPU setups.
Also, I did not expect such a large difference between the 920 @4GHz and the P55 boards with the CPU @4GHz when using triple SLI, is this to be attributed to the NF200, to the on-die PCI-E controller (not enough lanes?) or even the lack of a third memory channel? Is the difference also this big on dual SLI between X58 and P55+NF200 boards? And how do non-NF200 boards fare?
The disparity you see in the M3E and Trinergy multi-card results is not down to 'sloppy benchmarking'. We saw this back when we reviewed the Trinergy board too against the P55 Classified 200. My personal take on the difference is that it’s possibly down to how the NF200 is strung onto the primary PEG lanes.
MSI supplies all 16 lanes direct to the NF200 - this gives them slightly worse single card performance. However, as nVidia have a couple of front end features within the NF200 that can be utilized for SLI, when more than one card is plugged in boards like the M3E and Classified 200 which keep eight of the primary PEG lanes native to the CPU incur a performance hit, possibly due to an additional command hop front to back on the NF200. That's about the only thing I can think that causes this. ASUS have actually added a lot of lane switches to the M3E to provide 4 card support, those little lane switches and trace routing all add extra latency too.
We don't go to press with figures that are out of whack, anything we find with a disparity is double and triple checked before we post it up.
I think you got me wrong though, I did not mean to say your benchmarking was sloppy, I meant to say that I fully trust your numbers! AT is one of the few sites that I trust to make a sanity check of their benchmark numbers before posting them^^ The numbers did not really make sense to me before because I did not know what you just explained, but now they do make sense, thanks again :)
No worries. When I first saw this it had me scratching my head (and other areas of my body). You caught me at a time where I was in an overly self-protective mood (gotta get some sleep)..lol
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22 Comments
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duploxxx - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
nice looking, nice features expensive board and really expensive knowing that the platform is dead early next year.what a waste
miburns100 - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Nice board, but way too expensive.jriofrio - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Too expencive compare with alternatives...Micki57 - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Super Nice of you to give this system to some lucky reader!Affectionate-Bed-980 - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
You're promising a new X58 roundup - Yes quite honestly your first X58 roundup was a joke. It was really like a 4 mobo roundup of the motherboards that were available at launch. Tom's Hardware had like 4 roundups or something to cover the budget end and the enthusiast end.You also promised an in depth i7 overclocking guide. Really, there was nothing. The most you ever mentioned about overclocking was in those investigations into high vDIMM or whatever. And it's obvious most of those articles were really more like lab testing notes geared for those with systems ready to OC.... not the general reader.
Also there was never a DDR3 roundup as you promised.
So yes, let's hope you deliver on this one. I know there's been a gradual shift in the change where Anand likes smartphones and stuff, and don't we all, but there have been cell phone geeks from the beginning, and that's why there are places like Mobile Review, Howard Forums, GSM Arena, Phone Arena, etc. Let's stick to our core and get the cpu+motherboard+video card reviews down yeah?
Rajinder Gill - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Hi,It'll be pleasing for you to know that this X58 'round-up' is only going to be the refresh boards only. It's four boards.
later
Raja
gasgas - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
If you’re in such a dire need of an i7 over clocking guide, you really should not be near a PC. It’s the easiest platform to overclock ever.Anandtech’s coverage of H55/H57 was unsurpassed in honesty. The very fact you mention Tom’s here shows the line is very fuzzy for you.
Granted, things were promised in the past that did not get posted, but it looks like everything that’s been promised over the past 6 months has arrived. Maybe you should stick to cruising Tom’s instead of trolling here.
Taft12 - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
You're awfully quick to rush to AT's defense and ignore every issue the original poster said. How does "H55/H57 was unsurpassed in honesty" refute any of his points?? Almost every AT article refers to an upcoming roundup that never appears. The quality of Toms articles are not as high as AT, but give them credit for much wider coverage of available parts than AT provides.Rajinder Gill - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Hi,Fully respect what you guys are saying. We've been trying hard to stick with the articles we've promised this year and so far everything we've said was coming has been delivered. I shall re-iterate, don't expect anything huge on the X58 - there are four new boards we'll be comparing (they're high-end).
later
Raja
thorgal73 - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
In support of Raja, I don't think any of you realise how much time goes into the review of one motherboard (they're generally the worst in my experience, followed by ram reviews), let alone four or more.As a reviewer, it's sometimes hard not to fall for the abundance of products different manufacturers offer you, which in the end gets you frustrated because of lack of time and lack of progress, further leading to long waiting times for the readers or even outdated products before you even get to publish the product review. In my opinion it is a virtue to stick to the stuff you can manage within a reasonable deadline.
gasgas - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Outstanding review anand, some very nice features on the ASUS board, one has to ask though, if P55 is costing this much is it really worth the effort, why not just get a budget X58 and have more on tap.Makaveli - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
Why are the screenshots so big?I felt I should have been wearing glasses or something... and I don't wear glasses!
classy - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
$350 is too much for P55. You can get a serious X58 board for that kind of moneyloghead - Monday, April 26, 2010 - link
good luck to everyonedingetje - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
wouldn't pay more than 100 bucks for it though :)v12v12 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
I dunno maybe it's me, but we're talking near $400 for a system board? Three-hundred and fifty dollars (& ~$26 tax), that's just lunacy to even bother with. Has anyone ever done some basic, logical mathematics on cost/performance? These so-called "performance/'OC'er" mobos offer barely any noticeable advantages over a solid mid-level board vs the exuberant price people will rationalize. Paying nearly 100% more for hardly 15% performance advantage? For the same money you could buy enhanced cooling equipment for your mid-level board and soar past that waste of a PCB, dollar for dollar.The fanaticism over these "top-end," yet financially inefficient mobos, is just laughable; even the suggestion of purchasing one is also. People are rationalizing spending MORE, for lesser performance per dollar; THIS is ILLOGICAL, and stupid? I say Anand spend more time on solid mid to lower-upper builds vs playing fantasy article on a "gold-sample" OC'er board that offers little in reality for; I dunno maybe ~90% of the readership, whom will not be purchasing boards anywhere near that price range? Articles like these waste the writers' time and the readers'. Also it's money down the drain from a budget, which could be spent on better informing majority of the readers on systems they can actually afford or save for. $349, come on lol. That's a very nice trip somewhere on a plane, buddy... Vs an "OC'ers system-board." These prices are ridiculous and you all keep feeding the (advertising) market for them.
__Yep it's ALL marketing folks... they (Manu's/tech sites etc.) know most of you will never get one of these boards, it's just a dream; they are loss-leaders. They know it's great advertising for the manufacturer, who doesn't expect to make a profit from said board. It's to demonstrate to the "market" (their competitors) their current/alleged technological capabilities. All the while we're getting articles, which use up resources from more in depth guides, builds, discussions about what most people have, can afford, or will save for... Fantasy-land articles are great for the uber enthusiast, but it's boring knowing I'm never going to waste anywhere near that much for this stuff... I'll just see it a couple gens later; wow I feel like a psychic, I just knew exactly what board I'll get when the price is right... Bunk.
More meat, less fat please... Thx staff.
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Hi,This is the first $200+ motherboard review we've posted in 2010. The last 13 boards reviewed were sub $200 (a lot under $150). So I don't think its a case of us getting carried away and not providing any "meat" for the readership.
There will be some high-end boards reviewed over the coming months, but also a number of budget priced ones as time progresses.
regards
Raja
Nickel020 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
The gaming performance differences between the M3E and the Trinergy are way larger than I've come to expect of same chipset boards: Sometimes the M3E is ~10% faster than the Trinergy, sometimes it's the other way around. If I didn't know that you know what you're doing I'd think this was sloppy benchmarking... How do you explain the large differences? At second glance it looks like the Trinergy does better in multi-GPU setups, while the M3E leads in single GPU setups.Also, I did not expect such a large difference between the 920 @4GHz and the P55 boards with the CPU @4GHz when using triple SLI, is this to be attributed to the NF200, to the on-die PCI-E controller (not enough lanes?) or even the lack of a third memory channel? Is the difference also this big on dual SLI between X58 and P55+NF200 boards? And how do non-NF200 boards fare?
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Hi,The disparity you see in the M3E and Trinergy multi-card results is not down to 'sloppy benchmarking'. We saw this back when we reviewed the Trinergy board too against the P55 Classified 200. My personal take on the difference is that it’s possibly down to how the NF200 is strung onto the primary PEG lanes.
MSI supplies all 16 lanes direct to the NF200 - this gives them slightly worse single card performance. However, as nVidia have a couple of front end features within the NF200 that can be utilized for SLI, when more than one card is plugged in boards like the M3E and Classified 200 which keep eight of the primary PEG lanes native to the CPU incur a performance hit, possibly due to an additional command hop front to back on the NF200. That's about the only thing I can think that causes this. ASUS have actually added a lot of lane switches to the M3E to provide 4 card support, those little lane switches and trace routing all add extra latency too.
We don't go to press with figures that are out of whack, anything we find with a disparity is double and triple checked before we post it up.
Regards
Raja
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Forgot to add, for additional results showing other P55 boards with the trinergy - check some of the results here:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2894/6
Nickel020 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Thanks for the reply Raja!I think you got me wrong though, I did not mean to say your benchmarking was sloppy, I meant to say that I fully trust your numbers! AT is one of the few sites that I trust to make a sanity check of their benchmark numbers before posting them^^
The numbers did not really make sense to me before because I did not know what you just explained, but now they do make sense, thanks again :)
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
HiNo worries. When I first saw this it had me scratching my head (and other areas of my body). You caught me at a time where I was in an overly self-protective mood (gotta get some sleep)..lol
later
Raja