[ChaosMinionX]

Would anyone be interested in side by side comparisons of these boards?

The P5K Premium is P35, and the Maximus SE is X38.

I have both of them, the maximus is here on Friday, so if you guys can think of anything specifically you want to see lemme know.

I will be posting a few results/findings/impressions on both boards.

[procupine14]

actually i may be switching to intel soon so yes I would definitely like to see some good and bad points on how user friendly they are and basically how their specs stack up

[Mousey]

Originally Posted by procupine14

actually i may be switching to intel soon so yes I would definitely like to see some good and bad points on how user friendly they are and basically how their specs stack up

Dude there's no "i may" about it, Intel is the current market Dominator, unless AMD's Socket F takes off, which i severly doubt it will atm
I do really really hope it does though, then Intel will keep it's prices down

[ChaosMinionX]

You guys want 3Dmark05/06 with PCmark05 as well as some Pi calcs, and Everest bandwidth testing?

[mike2h]

is that x38 board ddr3? if so i would be really interested in a mem comparison, especially oc'd.
either way, i would appreciate antything you offer up

[ChaosMinionX]

Originally Posted by mike2h

is that x38 board ddr3? if so i would be really interested in a mem comparison, especially oc'd.
either way, i would appreciate antything you offer up

Its DDR2 I wont go DDR3 till I see Dominator XMS3 DDR3 2000+ 7-7-7-14

Until then its DDR2 haha.

Test is looking to be-

Q6600 G0 Quadcore
Asus P5K Premium (P35)
Asus ROG Maximus Formula (X38)
Corsair Dominator 6400C3DF x 4GB
HD2900XT 1GB @ 875/1100
And a single WD Raptor 150gb 16mb cache

Vista x64 will be the OS of choice w/ readyboost on with Corsair Voyager GT 8GB.

=================
I will be doing clock/clock comparisons between them at following speeds.

Unless there is a need for stock comparisons? I wont be doing them.

400x9 - 3.6ghz DDR2 800 3-3-3-6/4-4-4-10
400x9 - 3.6ghz DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10
450x8 - 3.6ghz DDR2 900 3-3-3-6/4-4-4-10
450x9 - 4.0ghz DDR2 900 4-4-4-10
500x7 - 3.5ghz DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10
And max testable FSB? If it matters.

Using 3dMark05/06 and PCmark05 at 4ghz most likely DDR2 1000

Everest Engineer Edition with full benchmark suite, with comparisons between CAS3 and CAS4 (for those that can use that) I will also do 5-5-5-15 if there is a call for it.

Lemme know if I missed something.

[procupine14]

nope I think thats pretty much covering everthing i want to see

[ChaosMinionX]

Originally Posted by ChaosMinionX

=================
I will be doing clock/clock comparisons between them at following speeds.

Unless there is a need for stock comparisons? I wont be doing them.

400x9 - 3.6ghz DDR2 800 3-3-3-6/4-4-4-10
400x9 - 3.6ghz DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10
450x8 - 3.6ghz DDR2 900 3-3-3-6/4-4-4-10
450x9 - 4.0ghz DDR2 900 4-4-4-10
500x7 - 3.5ghz DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10
And max testable FSB? If it matters.

Using 3dMark05/06 and PCmark05 at 4ghz most likely DDR2 1000

Everest Engineer Edition with full benchmark suite, with comparisons between CAS3 and CAS4 (for those that can use that) I will also do 5-5-5-15 if there is a call for it.

Lemme know if I missed something.

Reevaluated the scope of this review to be more practical for this type of review.


Will now be doing.....

400x9 DDR2 800 3-3-3-6 and 4-4-4-10
400x9 DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10
450x8 DDR2 900 4-4-4-10
450x8 DDR2 1080 4-4-4-10

PCmark05, 3D05, 3D06 with 4ghz DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10 (very tight subtimings)

reworked to viable 24/7 layouts of board testing, as well as a max performance with pcmark, 3dmark and everest bench suite. Just rethank since I am only doing 2 boards, and not mutliples

[mike2h]

lol.

[ChaosMinionX]

Originally Posted by mike2h

lol.

Still works ey?

[PangingJr]

Originally Posted by ChaosMinionX

4ghz DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10 (very tight subtimings)

since you will be testing a 4GHz DDR2-1000 4-4-4-10, i presume the FSB : DRAM will be 1:1,

i appreciate if you could... i like very much to see the below test results with the boards and 2GHz of RAM and the Q6600.

mine is with CAS4 (and with loose timings - CAS4-4-4-12 RRD=11 RFC=46)

[ChaosMinionX]

Starting tonight

[ChaosMinionX]

Hey pang, TRFC of 46 is pretty loose, I generally run 20-25TRFC and all other subtimings on Asus boards at 3-4. I will see what I can do though, perhaps you can give me your BIOS settings instead of the memset image, sometimes it reads them wrong.

[kris23]

you are a sick, sick man......

[PangingJr]

the Memset will only report the values that have already been calculated by the Intel chipsets, it is kinda normal that Memset reports higher values (in Windows) than the BIOS settings.

and no, you don’t have to waste your time going to match my DRAM settings, my Gigabyte board has different and less DRAM settings than the Asus's.
please run the timings the way you use to, and then run the everest, super_pi, etc. i just like to see the memory performance and the number difference from one board to the other.

and if you could, test the 5:6 and 4:5 as well.

[Just Learnin']

Subscribed and anxious!

[ChaosMinionX]

Initial thoughts:


P35 and X38 DO NOT like CAS3 (3-3-3-6), infact the performance of CAS3 is absolutely terrible in comparison to 4-4-4-10. Will be posting that up shortly, PCMark and stuff is on standby I am waiting for some new hardware

[kris23]

lord jesus....

[Just Learnin']

What he said!!!

[PangingJr]

i used to see the P5B Deluxe can handle 4 GHz (4x 1Ghz) of DDR2-1200 before, the Asus maximus formula SE is such a good motherboard i would want to run some good high speed memory modules with it.
run the memory at 400-450MHz clock speed in order to get a very low latencies is just not fun for me. lol.

[ChaosMinionX]

Lovin the Maximus so far

EDIT: Might take me a bit to get the hang of X38 and what it likes, so testing might take a little longer. Im finding different options increase performance more than the other, and some in combination.

[ChaosMinionX]

Hosed my Vista x64 install... WU doesnt work anymore, I get errors from hardware ID changing... and lots of stuff went amiss in vista with a complete board swap haha

[kris23]

aww man....

[ChaosMinionX]

I can post some screens from the P35 testing if youd like.

[kris23]

that would be good. in terms of overclocking and stability, is the X38 a huge step up in performance?

[ChaosMinionX]

Originally Posted by kris23

that would be good. in terms of overclocking and stability, is the X38 a huge step up in performance?

BIOS options yes...... overclockability and stability? I couldnt say at this point, needs more testing.

[Just Learnin']

Your just being a tease Chaos... you probably have them all overclocked and the screenies ready to go!

[ChaosMinionX]

Originally Posted by Just Learnin'

Your just being a tease Chaos... you probably have them all overclocked and the screenies ready to go!

[kris23]

Originally Posted by ChaosMinionX

BIOS options yes...... overclockability and stability? I couldnt say at this point, needs more testing.

maan.... this guy...

id think you could overclock your quad core to beyond 4GHz if you felt like it....

when you gonna get ur second 2900?

oh yea, does the Maximus Formula REQUIRE water cooling? or are the heatsinks sufficient?

[ChaosMinionX]

Originally Posted by kris23

maan.... this guy...

id think you could overclock your quad core to beyond 4GHz if you felt like it....

when you gonna get ur second 2900?

oh yea, does the Maximus Formula REQUIRE water cooling? or are the heatsinks sufficient?

Well.....

Not second 2900 for permanent Something else..... And its out in January or so they say.

And the Fuzion waterblock by asus, works perfectly well passively as it does air cooled. Thats why they call it fuzion because it has barbs for watercooling, and can cool passively with fans and be perfectly fine.

The hardest part of the Maximus is the RAM subtimings, as well as the different voltage options. But the RAM subtimings are definitely the hardest part, especially when maxing performance with the use of Transaction Booster, or DRAM Static Read, I have yet to come to a conclusion of which is faster.

Although I am going to say, dont expect the Maximus with current BIOS to be beating the P5K Premium in terms of Memory bandwidth, or some CPU tests. But the latencies are much better thus far, It needs a few BIOS revisions to really take the lead, hopefully thats what we will be seeing.

So far I have gotten her into windows 4ghz+ nothing benchable at all, will see if I can get her to do a bench or to of Futuremark stuff.

Taking longer than I expected, the Vdroop on this board seems to be iffy atm, no DMM to test but I can definately tell its taking more voltage CPU wise to get stable, then again could be I have other Voltages set wrong will be checking that out.

_More to come

EDIT: Also taking a bit longer, because I want to organize the information so that its very easy to read, and understand. My usual posting of benchmarks are usually disheveled and hard to understand, but once you see it they are in order and it all works out haha.

EDIT: Heres some of the P5K Premium Work....

The following are 400x9 = 3.6ghz at various ram speeds and timings.

DDR2 800 3-3-3-6


DDR2 800 4-4-4-10


DDR2 1000 4-4-4-10


Now 450x8 = 3.6ghz

DDR2 900 4-4-4-10


Decided not to do 8x450 DDR2 1080 4-4-4-10 as nobody can really use that for any sort of 24/7 clock.

And Maximus soon as I get down the various settings, should be ripping P35 a new one.

EDIT 2: Dont pay attention to the blue boxes latencies, I dont trust it since other programs including normal Everest benchmark gives a big difference from that little benchmark.

If anyone spots something wrong with it, lemme know or if you wanna see something different.