Welcome to Sandy Bridge, with the ASRock P67 Extreme4
by Ian Cutress on January 3, 2011 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
Dirt 2
Dirt 2 came to the PC in December 2009, developed by Codemasters with the EGO Engine. Resulting in favorable reviews, we use Dirt 2’s built-in benchmark under DirectX 11 to test the hardware. We test two different resolutions at two different quality settings, in single and dual GPU setups.
Metro 2033
Metro 2033 is the Crysis of the DirectX 11 world (at least until Crysis 2 is released), challenging every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the built-in DirectX 11 benchmark to test the hardware.
Overview
Across the range of 3D benchmarks, there's not much to separate all of the boards, and even the Core i7-920 results. With so much processing power at hand, not much is needed in DirectX games without PhysX, even at 1920x1080 resolutions at very high quality. However, in single GPU mode, the ASRock board does score the best or near the best in all the benchmarks.
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Wander7 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Still using "ATI" on the motherboard.. I guess they don't want to use "AMD" or didn't get the memo.anandskent - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Why are there no results for the overclocked system in the benchmarks for either the SNB CPU article or this mobo article?Also, isnt that a fan header by the 8pin cpu power? it would make the board have 6 total then
IanCutress - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
The 3D Movement multithreaded benchmark was tested at the 4.6 GHz overclock. This is mentioned in the text, and in the graph for that benchmark.And yes indeed, that is a 6th fan header. It has no fan control in the UEFI or OS.
Ian
justaviking - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
"the H series taking advantage of the graphics on the processor die"Sorry if I missed this, but I wanted to be sure on something obvious.
P-series = No onboard graphics, discrete only. That's clear.
H-series = Onboard graphics... but can it ALSO USE DISCRETE GRAPHICS???
Maybe it's so boneheaded it wasn't worth pointing out. Maybe I should have a second cup of coffee.
sviola - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
From what I understood, none have on-board graphics, and the H series is designed to use the on-chip (CPU) graphics, while the P series is designed for discrete graphics (altough you can use the on-chip graphics as well).justaviking - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Thanks. That is what I assumed, but I didn't see it explicitly spelled out.P.S.
Sorry about the sloppy terminology. I mean "on-chip" when I wrote "on-board". I understand the difference. Thanks being gentle with me.
evilspoons - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Not quite. If you Anand's article from today about Sandy Bridge, I got the opposite impression.P can not use the on-CPU graphics at all but supports full overclocking of CPU and memory. H can use on-CPU or discrete graphics (or both simultaneously, it would seem), but only supports memory overclocking. Z is meant to fix that by allowing full overclocking and including the "FDI" (flexible display interface) needed to access the on-CPU graphics processor.
bah12 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
What I'm confused about is this. The K series gives us the faster GPU, and the ability to fully overclock the cpu. However you cant use the GPU since the whole reason for getting the K sku is the overclock, thus the P series board and no GPU.Where does this leave QuickSync (arguably the top selling point)? From what I understand we cannot have a fully overclocked QuickSync CPU right?
ericore - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Overclock option is only for CPU + Discreet GPU (limitation of a current motherboards; a stupid one at that; cheap Intel bast****)QuickSync comes with i5 and greater regardless of the motherboard (it is an instruction set; all of which are built-in to CPU)
I want want AMD Bulldozer to kill your royal heighness, and bring hardware market back to democracy.
vol7ron - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
You forgot to mention that P allows for SLI/x-Fire, whereas H does not (since it only supports one discrete gpu).