Advertisment

Six Core 2 Series Motherboards

author-image
PCQ Bureau
New Update

Core 2 is the next line of processors from Intel, based on a new

microarchitecture. This new series is important because it also marks the end of

Intel's Pentium brand of processors. This series currently has two types of

processors under its belt, the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme. Last month we

looked at how well does this new processor perform. This month, we're back

with a whole range of motherboards that support this processor. Our idea was to

look at the variety of Core 2 ready boards available in the market, and not any

particular sub-category. That's why you'll find boards whose cost ranges

from around Rs. 4.5 K to 22K.

Advertisment

These boards are backward compatible with Intel's previous generation

processors like P4 and Pentium D on socket 775. The key reason for upgrading or

buying these new motherboards is the overall performance boost they provide over

the previous generation boards. Moreover, these boards are ready for the

upcoming Microsoft Vista, which is far more resource hungry. These boards also

support Direct X 9c.

How we tested



To judge the true potential of these boards, we tested them using a Core 2
Extreme Edition X6800 processor, 1 GB DDR2 1066 MHz Corsair RAM, an nVidia

7800GTX graphic card with 512 MB video memory. We also used a 600W power supply.

We ran PCMark 2005, 3DMark 2005, CineBench 9.5, and MP3 and DivX encoding on all

the boards. We used the System Test Suite from PCMark'05, which covers the

overall system performance by utilizing physics, 3D, web page rendering, file

decryption, multithreaded applications, etc.

3Dmark05 and CineBench9.5 were mainly used for stressing the hardware

graphics. 3Dmark was used to judge gaming and CPU performance, while CineBench

9.5 was used to test the dual core performance by running image rendering with

one and then both cores of the processor. It used an OpenGL hardware lightening

test and 4D shading. For the MP3 and DivX encoding test, we used 700 MB of audio

and video files andran MP3 and DivX encoding in parallel for load synthesis.

Lastly, we also checked how overclockable were the motherboards. For this, all

the components that we used, like the graphics card, RAM, and CPU, were all

overclockable. We checked what was the maximum limit that we could stretch these

boards to before they became unstable. Before we proceed, please note that when

you do overclocking, you're doing it at your own risk. Also, if your other

components like RAM, graphics card, CPU are not overclockable, then the

overclocking limit is even lower. Do keep a close tab on the CPU and motherboard

temperature when overclocking. You should also get a more poweful fan and heat

sink to keep the heat under control. You would also need a more powerful power

supply as overclocking draws more power. We were able to overclock the

motherboards by 15% with our configuration. Lastly, if you do overclocking, then

do it in gradual steps and check for system stability. Besides performance, we

also checked the motherboards for features supported. In this, we checked for

the number of ports, type of audio supported, number of PCI slots, support for

RAID, and BIOS level support for overclocking.

Advertisment
Quick Specs
Price: Rs 9,300 (3 yr warranty)



Pros: Best performer, good graphics, CPU and overclocking power


Cons: Failed overclocking application


Key Specs: 965 chipset, Dual PCIe slots


Contact: Cyberstar India, Bangalore


Tel: 51266808


E-mail: ripunjay@cyberstarindia.com 




ECS PX1Extreme



This was the best performer of the lot, and is also one of the most

feature rich boards. It has 4 DIMM slots that can take up to 8 GB DDR2 800MHz

RAM. It has 6 SATA ports that can be configured with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5. Plus

there is one external and an internal SATA port that are on a different

controller. These can be configured for RAID 0, 1 and JBOD. Plus, the board has

dual Gigabit Ethernet support, 10 USB ports, 8 channel audio and two FireWire

ports.

The PX1 gave the best overall performance of the lot. Most of its scores with

regular and overclocked frequencies were the highest of the lot. To be more

precise, it gave the best performance in PCMark05, second best in CPU mark under

3Dmark05, highest CineBench scores in each sub category to make it good for

multimedia work.

Advertisment

It took the least amount of time for mp3 and DivX conversion. The only test

in which it stood average was Doom3. 

The maximum stable frequency till which we could overclock this board was

3.35 GHz. Even Gigabyte's GA-965-DS3 board was clocked till this frequency,

but it delivered lower performance. The PX1 has an application called “ECSonic2”

that let's you do hardware monitoring, BIOS updates and change the start logo.

It's also supposed to let you overclock the board, but somehow this didn't

work. So we had to overclock the board from the BIOS.

Bottom Line: Given its performance and price, it's a great buy.

Advertisment
Quick Specs
Price: Rs 16,800 (3 yr warranty)



Pros: Feature rich, highest CPU score


Cons: Overall average overclocking capability.Key 


Specs:
967P chipset, Digital Live and DTS support, dual PCIe slot



Contact: Gigabyte Technology, Mumbai 


Tel: 26526696E-mail: sales@gigabyte.in 

Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6



Overclockers will love this board, despite the high price tag. While this board
gave average performance in most benchmarks, it did brilliantly after we

overclocked it to 3.3GHz. It gave the highest CPU score among all boards

reviewed in this story. It has an overclocking application that lets you easily

modify the settings, but the over clocked values are not shown in the BIOS.

The board claims to be ready for Quad core processors, but we can't check

that until the quad core is released. Those looking for a feature rich board

will also find this a good buy. It has two PCI-E slots and an 8 channel audio

controller that supports Dolby Digital Live and DTS. This eliminates the need

for a separate sound card. The board has three FireWire 400 ports, and houses 2

different SATA controllers that enable you to configure different RAID levels on

it. One controller controls 6 SATA ports and provides RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 10

support. The second controls 2 SATA ports and offers RAID 0,1 and JBOD. This

allows you to configure two different RAID levels on the board at the same time.

The board is based on the Intel 965P chipset. It has a single Gigabit Ethernet

port, though we wished that at this price, it had two. The board supports a

feature called Quad BIOS, wherein you have BIOS info backed up in three

different places. So if your BIOS crashes, you have its backup in three

different locations to recover from.

Advertisment

Bottom Line: Good performance and features at this price.

Quick Specs
Price: Rs 12,990 (3 yr warranty)



Pros: Above average performance in some benchmarks 


Cons: Overclocked performance is average


Key Specs: 956P chipset, single PCIe slot Contact: Gigabyte Technology,
Mumbai 



Tel: 26526696E-mail: sales@gigabyte.in 


Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3



Unlike other boards in its class, this one only has a single 16X PCI-E

slot, which means you can't have the benefit of two graphics cards. The board

has six SATA ports, which are split across two different controllers. One

controller handles four of them. The other supports two that can be configured

in RAID 0, 1 and JBOD configurations.

Advertisment

The motherboard gave good overall performance with regular clock speed,

giving the highest CPU score amongst all boards at 10263, and highest frame rate

in Doom 3. Plus, it gave the best DivX encoding time at 6 min 22 secs. The good

thing was that we managed to overclock it up to 3.35 GHz, which was the highest

and the same as the best performing board in this story,

the ECS PX1. However, this didn't give the expected performance boost. In

fact, its cousin the P965-DQ6 gave better performance at a lower overclocked

frequency of 3.3 GHz. The only place where it beat the DQ6 was in PCMark'05

where it scored 7724 compared to 7289 of the DQ6. The board did clock the

highest score in Doom3 at 125 fps at the overclocked speed, amongst all boards

reviewed in this story.

It also comes with the same overclocking application as the DQ6, and again we

wished that the overclocked changes are also reflected in the system BIOS and

vice versa.

Advertisment

Bottom Line: Good buy, but could've done better in overclocking.

Quick Specs
Price: Rs 4,450 (2 yr warranty)



Pros: Onboard graphic, low price, decent performance


Cons: None


Key Specs: 945 chipset, DVI output card Contact: Abacus Peripherals,
Mumbai 



Tel: 66923941E-mail: enquiry@abacusperipherals.com


 

ASRock Conroe945G-DVI



This was the cheapest motherboard that we received, meant for the

budget conscious buyer. Based on the 945 chipset, this was the only board to

come with onboard graphics. Therefore, we couldn't really compare its

performance with onboard graphics against any other board in this story. But you

can also add a separate PCI-E 16x based graphics card to it as well. 

The board supports up to 4 GB of DDR 2 667 MHz RAM. It also comes with an

additional PCI-E based Digital Video Input (DVI) card that can be used to

connect to monitors that support it. The benefit of having this is that you can

connect two monitors to the motherboard at the same time. Besides this, the

board has four SATA ports and onboard Gbe port. We wished it also had onboard

RAID support as well though. Plus, it has the regular onboard audio and two PCI

slots.

Coming to its performance, the board managed to give better scores than some

of the 965 based boards in the shootout, which is impressive. So amongst 945

series, this one is definitely one of the better boards. We could overclock it

up to 3.13 GHz, which was second lowest in this category.

Despite this, the board managed to give the highest score in 3DMark05, which

is quite remarkable. It did give the lowest CPU score though and took the

longest time in the MP3 encoding test, taking a minute and 37 seconds to

complete the same.

Bottom Line: A good buy for the budget conscious.

Quick Specs
Price: Rs 5,450 (2 yr warranty)



Pros: Good price for its features


Cons: Overclocking performance is average


Key Specs: 945P chipset, eSATA support Contact: Abacus Peripherals,
Mumbai 



Tel: 66923941E-mail: enquiry@abacusperipherals.com


 

ASRock ConroeXFire-eSATA2



ASRock ConroeXFire-eSATA2 is similar to other ASRock 945G-DVI board but with
lower graphics performance. It has 4 SATA pots that provide RAID 0, 1, 10 and 5

support, and two additional SATA ports for regular disk attachment. It has 4

DIMM slots that can take up to 4GB DDR2 667MHz RAM. This is the second lowest

priced motherboard in this category, but comes with some good features at this

price. For one, it has support for ATi's CrossFire technology on dual 16x PCIe

slots. It has two eSATA ports to connect external SATA hard drives. The board

has three PCI slots, and onboard Gbe port with

Wake On LAN support. Compared to other motherboard, it had slightly above

average performance both in graphics and CPU intensive benchmarks. The maximum

that we were able to overclock this board was till 3.1 GHz, which is the lowest

of all boards in this story. Its score in OpenGL hardware and software

lightening was well above average but the time to do mp3 and DivX encoding was

the highest. Its Doom3 scores weren't very impressive either at 102.3, which

was second lowest of all boars reviewed this time. The board did well in CPU

rendering test, which was nearly equal to the highest scored in this story.

Initially, the overclockin didn't result in any performance improvements. Only

we upgraded the BIOS firmware did we see any difference.

Bottom Line: An average board overall for regular productivity use.

Quick Specs
Price: Rs 22,000 (3 yr warranty)



Pros: Onboard WiFi, remote controlled applications, Dolby support


Cons: Price


Key Specs: 975 chipset, Dual gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, Dolby Digital Live


Contact: ASUSTeK Computer, Mumbai 


Tel: 40058928E-mail: altaf_ansari@asus.com 



ASUS P5W DH Deluxe



The Asus P5W DH Deluxe was the most expensive motherboard in this

story, largely because it has all the features you'd ever want in your

motherboard. The board supports a maximum FSB of 1066MHz, has 4 DIMM slots that

can take up to 8GB DDR2 800MHz RAM. It has two PCIe X16 slots for dual graphics

system. It has 6 SATA ports on 3 different controllers, whereas regular boards

come with either one or two. Out of these, there were three SATA II ports on

Intel controller with support for RAID 0, 1 and 5. There was one external SATA

port for connecting external SATA drives and the remaining two SATA ports had

RAID 0 and 1(default) support. Besides this, the board also supports RAID 10 by

using two different controllers. It has two Gigabit Ethernet ports as well as

onboard WiFi. It has 8 channel audio with Dolby ProLogic II X and Dolby Digital

Live features. It also has a good feature called MP3-In to let you connect your

Digital MP3 player directly to your speakers and enjoy music even when the

workstation is shutdown.

The board's overall performance was average in all the benchmarks. It has a

good windows overclocking application for easy overclocking. 3.31 GHz was the

maximum stable frequency that we could over clock it to, but at this frequency,

it didn't give any major performance improvements as compared to some other

boards. We even took it to 3.48 GHz, but at that frequency, it could only run

MP3 and DivX encoding. The other benchmarks kept crashing at this frequency.

Bottom Line: Go for this board only if you want so many features.

Motherboard  Asus P5W



DH Deluxe 
Gigabyte



GA-965P-DQ6
Gigabyte



GA-965P-DS3
ASRock 



Conroe945G-DVI
ASRock Conroe



XFire-eSATA2
ECS PX1 



Extreme
Core Speed

(GHz)  
2.93   3.31   2.93   3.3   2.93   3.35   2.93/



 onboard


graphics  
2.93/



external


graphics
3.13   2.93   3.1   2.93   3.35
PCMark05 (PCMark

score)
7638   7745   6516   7289   7519   7724   4822   7535   7876   7422   7912   7558   8209
3DMark05) 3DMark score   8221   8304   8174   8291   8166   8285   654   8379   8634   8271   8346   8278   8416
CPU score   9879   9925   9889   12025   10263   11051   5014   8925   9608   9123   9627   10264   11069
Cine Bench9.5 Rendering CPU   478   512   487   545   491   531   489   492   520   490   526   488   552
XCPU   884   947   898   1006   909   980   906   905   964   908   965   907   1022
C4D Shading   564   588   575   644   578   627   573   574   610   566   615   578   651
OGL-HWL   4673   4825   4726   4927   4780   4877   2026   4740   4878   4780   4843   4807   5110
Mp3 encoding (mins:secs) 1:37   1:28   1:34   1:25   1:36   1:25   1:37   1:37   1:3   1:35   1:32   1:36   1:25
DivX encoding (mins:secs) 6:25   6:18   6:23   6:13   6:22   6:16   6:44   6:45   6:2   6:47   6:29   6:28   5:44
Doom3

(fps)  
98.7   109.3   116.7   122.5   120.3   125.3   8.1   117.1   118.3   102.3   112.9   110.7   115.2
Advertisment