With all the affordable Intel LGA1156 Processors available, content creators and especially gamers have never had it this good. I say this because when you compare any of the new Lynnfield processors to any previous comparable processor, the Lynnfield repeatedly surprises us and comes out on top. This is just one of those times that innovation and design improvements were well worth the investment.
This kind of innovation is equally deserving of platforms that can bring you that kind of performance. Thankfully, the P55 Chipset has proven itself to be worthy supporter of Lynnfield and a worthy successor to the wildly popular P45 for LGA775 CPUs. Choosing a P55 motherboard will prove to be a challenge simply because so many do so well. In the end, it’s the motherboard’s features and appearance that seem to be the decision driver. We’d like to present you with another choice. Today we take a look at the ASUS P7P55D PRO Motherboard.
What makes the P7P55 PRO all “Pro”?
If you’ve been shopping around lately and are a little confused at the redundancy of P7P55D motherboards, it’s completely normal. Many of the models are very similar with only a couple visible differences to separate them. So, let’s break down the important differences.
Unlike the P7P55 and P7P55 LE which only support ATI CrossfireX, the P7P55 EVO, Deluxe, PRO, Premium, and WS support both SLI and CrossfireX. The WS is the only model to offer Tri-SLI/CrossfireX It seems vendors are starting to agree that Triple SLI, while cool to look at, isn’t necessary for today’s most demanding games. Based on what I’ve seen at many of the last year’s gaming events, I have to agree that fewer people are using triple card configurations these days.
All of the motherboards offer some degree of overclocking thanks to ASUS TurboV EVO. The Phase VRM count ultimately decides which models offer this feature. The ASUS Pro in particular uses a 12+2 Phase VRM + T.Probe to power and monitor the system which translates into a Hybrid 16 Phase. This is created by the PEM chip working with EPU chip and the VRM and it is through this combination that the independent phase signals are timed correctly for a maximum of 16. Physically the layout is 12 phase for the CPU and 2 for memory controller. The goal is to provide an even and clean amount of power to the CPU at all times and high grades of efficiency.
A couple potentially powerful features are the native 2200 MHz DDR3 memory support and MemOK with Q-LED. If your system memory craps or encounters some sort of anomaly on the way up to 2200 MHz, the MemOK button will allow you to reset and recover the memory automatically to fail safe settings. This is indicated by the Q-LED feature which tells you for sure that it is the RAM (or something else). Now, this is a handy little feature and a real time saver!
Up till now, the P55 motherboards reviewed used an integrated Realtek ALC889 or ALC889A HD Codecs. ASUS breaks away from the pack and chose a VIA VT1828S HD Codec. While this isn’t as good as a discrete Codec solution, they have had some recent success in producing better than average audio requiring less CPU overhead during operations. This is also the same Codec dubbed VIA Vinyl which supports up to a 10 Channel interface. In either case, it supports 24-bit stereo and 192 kHz sample rates.
What’s in the box?
The board comes with minimal numbers of cabling. In fact, it comes with just enough to get the average system up and running. I’ve seen some small bundles over the years, but this one is coming in at a close second.
Included are four black SATA cables, black floppy, and black ATA cable. There’s also a PCI mountable eSATA/USB bracket that should simplify expansion options. I can appreciate the fact that they at least all match, but this board seems like it should just offer something more.
For whatever reason, an SLI/CrossfireX bridge connector wasn’t included in the bundle. (o_O) Of all the things that can be a pain to track down, it would be this PCIE bridge. And if you do find one, it’ll probably have another motherboard vendor’s name stamped on it. At least we have the manual and driver disc. That would have really been a bad thing.
The ASUS P7P55 PRO Up Close
The Pro is yet another sexy all black PCB motherboard. It’s really easy to make a system look cool inside a computer case with a window given most computer components also come in black. You’ll find black, light blue, dark blue, and one white PCIE socket in use. We get the the blue on black concept, but the light blue keeps it from looking too much like the Intel DP55KG which uses similar colored sockets and heat sinks.
It’s pretty interesting to see how these sinks have evolved over the last 5 years. You can see that engineers got a little more creative than Intel using an abstract south bridge chipset heat sink. It’s low enough it will easily miss interfering with any expansion cards. Even the PWM circuits right next to the 16 Phase VRM circuits get a pair of beefy, blue and silver 2-tone sinks that give the board a more aggressive look.
At first glance, you might only see 4 horizontal SATA ports. But, at the bottom, you can see two more standard socket SATA ports which doesn’t include the two rear eSATA (external SATA) ports handy for those who have some external storage drives. Otherwise, it’s all supported by up to 14 USB Ports with 8 back panel ports and 6 on-board ports. That should be more than enough for any desktop user.
Naturally, the Pro offers dual x16 PCI Express 2.0 lots with a third PCIE x4 slot at the bottom. Since PCIE is the mainstream, you get two x1 slots and two light blue PCI slots. Rest assured you’ll get full performance x8/x8 interface. Keep in mind that x8/x8 performance is slightly different at super high resolutions. And even then, it’s not enough to write home about.
Alas, if you look carefully at the top of the board right next to the 4 DIMM slots, you can see the MemOK button in the default position. If the memory you install fails to boot for whatever reason, or you push the memory’s frequency a little to high, simply power off the system and use the switch to get the board to auto configure in the BIOS. This feature should darn near be an industry wide requirement. This would aid countless new, unskilled users in getting their system up and running out of the box.
Moving on to Installation
A nice fresh OS image was used to produce the best possible test results. The Kingston 64GB SSDNow V+ solid state drive made quick installation of the drivers and utilities. There were no unusual bugs or issues to note during installation.
After a quick browse of the BIOS, it was easy to see the similarities between the overall layout especially in regards to overclocking. Dare I say, the BIOS is set up a little bit better than the recently tested GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD5. It’s nice when there are no duplicate settings on redundant pages. It keeps things easier to understand and stream lined.
Here are the test system specifications:
- Intel Core i7 870 “Lynnfield” Processor
- ASUS P7P55 PRO Motherboard
- MSI P55-GD65 Xtreme Motherboard
- Patriot 2 x 2GB 2000MHz Sector 5 Memory
- Zotac Geforce GTX 295 1792MB Graphics Card
- Kingston 64GB SSDNow V+ SSD
- Antec CP850 Power Supply
First, the MemOK was tested. The motherboard defaulted the memory to 1333 MHz with 9-9-9 timings which is the correct AUTO memory settings. Though these are obviously not the correct memory timings of the modules themselves, the system did boot up right away without issue. Selecting the XMP Profile in the BIOS, produces the correct results. Love it when a board and memory play well together.
Benchmark Notes
Test suite selections included SiSOFT SANDRA, Cinebench R10, PCMark Vantage, 3DMark Vantage, Crysis, and RightMark Audio. These benchmarks should cover overall system performance from the smallest to the large component. This should help point out the strongest and weakest links in any system.
The other features like ASUS TurboV EVO were put to the test when overclocking. We are more interested in how it works, whether it’s stable, and the overall user interface experience. Since ASUS plans on updating this software it’s always good to double check in case a new revision has fixed some known bugs.
SANDRA Benchmarks
I can’t begin to say how nicely the Core i7 870 operates on both test platforms. It’s not surprising to see them running neck and neck. It would probably be fully in the favor of the ASUS board if Turbo was enabled given the little extra push in CPU frequencies.
Memory Bandwidth
The extra memory bandwidth isn’t very surprising given the board just ever slightly clocks up the BClk which will produce a little extra. Don’t expect any gains in video games. You might notice a minimal gain when compiling or encoding which we should see shortly.
Cinebench R10
As mentioned above, you can see how the extra BClk increases performance. This benchmark is heavily dependent on CPU execution and its efficient use of memory bandwidth.
PCMark Vantage
PC Mark mimics overall system performance and breaks it down to the categories as shown in the chart. Ultimately, both of the equally priced platforms just about match leaning a little in favor of the ASUS P7P55D PRO.
3DMark Vantage
Despite the performance gains in Cinenbench R10, the extra frequency bump in the BClk didn’t do much for 3DMark Vantage. It seems to put the performance of both systems into perspective.
Crysis
The ASUS board pulls away in a slight lead in Crysis. It appears this platform has a little something extra to offer. Of course, we’re talking a matter of a frame and some change. Nonetheless, this is very important to die hard gamers that are chronic frame counters.
RightMark Audio
Testing has been kind of eventful as of late. It’s interesting to see how audio Codecs differ in performance. Sometimes we can blame performance faults on drivers while other times it’s the Codec itself like what we found with the recent testing of the Realtek ALC889 and ALC889A. Thus far, that single “A” has been earned as far as integrated audio is concerned.
The ASUS P7P55D PRO breaks away from the pack and integrates a VIA Vinyl HD Codec. This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to look at a VIA Vinyl audio solution. One of the benefits in favor of the Vinyl Codec is the lower CPU overhead. Neither of the Codecs tested here required or consumed more than 9% of the CPU at the most. This isn’t enough to be of concern to a quad core processor, but this could be important to dual core users.
Referreing to the screenshot above, you can see what RMAA had to say about the two rivals. These results are very similar to the recently benchmarked Realtek ALC889 found on the MSI P55-GD65 which offered noticeable lack luster audio results in both recording and playback as well as contained a bit more noise. However, only half the problem plagues the Vinyl HD Codec.
While recording is of equally low quality, regular playback and general audio experiences is noticeably richer. It doesn’t quite match the depth of the ALC889A found on the GIGABYTE GA-55-UD5, but does come close. So, in this respect, we see the Vinyl’s limits but they shouldn’t be an issue if playback performance is the only thing you are concerned about. If the motherboard offered a Vinyl Envy Codec, the story would be very different. This should give engineers something to think about in the future.
SiSoft SANDRA IO Tests
As with audio Codecs, many little things can differ on two otherwise similarly INTEL chipset equipped boards based on P55, but you have to look for them and most of the time, synthetic benchmarks don’t tell you these things. Although we notice more or less similar performance across the board, there is one strange anomaly where write speeds on SATA with both an SSD (-0.54 MB/s) and conventional platter drive (-0.8 MB/s) were lower on the ASUS board.
This didn’t manifest itself in the PCMark Vantage HDD section since results were tight, but when put under a microscope, there it is.
Power Consumption
Now that we have a good selection of boards to compare, it was time to check one more thing that may differentiate these seemingly similar boards. I blame the high consumption numbers on the GTX 295 once the system gets going full load. Using the various system’s power management software results in a little better power efficiency. It’s not earth shattering, but it’s better than nothing. Plus, it all adds up over the months and years.
After checking the results, it does appear that the MSI wins the day in the Eco-Friendly category with the GIGABYTE closing in on second. The worst of the bunch unfortunately is the ASUS.
BIOS and Turbo EVO Overclocking
TurboV isn’t a new overclocking utility, but it continuously gets little updates here and there to make sure it works well with a Windows environment. Though it’s nothing new, TurboV is still only as stable as your clean Registry. The more drivers and linked programs you install, the more limited your chance of success will be. In the end, TurboV was able to surpass the BIOS auto overclock reaching a respectable 3.75 GHz. Not too shabby at all.
However, navigating the BIOS route proved far more productive. The system was quite helpful right up to 195 MHz BClk and topped out at 200 MHz with some moderate voltages. Despite some more involved tweaking, the motherboard just wasn’t quite stable at 205 MHz and wouldn’t boot at all when going any higher. The results were easily reproducible with both the Core i7 870 and Core i5 750 processors.
If gaming is your passion, either of these processors pushing 2.7 GHz to 4 GHz will easily crush the latest game titles. At these frequencies, you can at least expect a very healthy 10 to 20 frame rate increase. Just make sure you pair up the system with a capable video card.
Final Thoughts
There are only a couple small things that bear some kind of scrutiny when looking over the ASUS P7P55D PRO Motherboard. In regards to the onboard SATA ports, I can’t help but wonder why the two individual light blue ports aren’t doubled up next to the four horizontal headers. The single black eSATA port would’ve been just fine down there by itself. Or, perhaps a power button would’ve done nicely. The equally affordable MSI P55-GD65 has all of that and then some.
The only other SATA related issue was the downward performance trend between the MSI and the ASUS in the Sandra IO tests. It’s a small drop but it is there.
In the PRO’s defense, it does offer an automated MemOK! memory tester and configurator. We’ve all run in to memory issues where it would’ve been nice to have a quick hand getting the system up and running. On the other hand, it doesn’t happen very often. It would seem that overclockers will benefit the most from this feature as they get their B-Clock on.
Still, the ASUS P7P55D PRO is a solid, stable performer. The recent multiple BIOS updates are a testament to ASUS’ resolve and commitment to end users. While early boards and testing encountered some overvolting issues, the new 0711 BIOS looks to have fixed this. We couldn’t have our 1.65 Volt DDR3 memory reaching 1.7+ volts for an unnecessary reason at stock frequencies. Again, the new 0711 BIOS updates make it well worth the fuss. However, as tested, it definitely isn’t the greenest board in the pack when it comes to power consumption.
The ASUS P7P55D PRO currently only costs a near petty $159.99 at many different retailers. This places it within $10 with quite a few other solutions out there making it a very tempting choice. A 3 year plus first year advanced RMA warranty adds peace of mind. No doubt, this will entice many a ASUS fan out there and you’ll get solid performance for your dollar.
Pros
- 200 MHz Bus Clock overclocking
- New, dark extreme theme
- Quick, responsive BIOS updates
- Simple software and bundle utilities
- Plenty of expansion
- Good Audio Playback Performance
- MemTest OK! allows boot from suspect RAM
Cons
- Minimal motherboard bundle
- SATA ports separated for no reason
- Can we get a power button?
- No PCIE Bridge Connector
- SATA write performance slightly lower than the rest of the pack
- Slightly more power hungry than the rest of the pack
Overall Rating: 8.5 / 10.0
Love This Review? Hate This Review? Tell Us In The Forums!
ASUS P7P55D PRO LGA1156 ATX Motherboard – Photo Gallery
