Conroe Buying Guide: Feeding the Monster
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on July 19, 2006 6:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Standard Gaming Performance
We tested with a small group of games due to time constraints, but we picked games based on a variety of game engines to give a quick indication of the boards' performance. Additional testing will be done in our full board reviews but for this roundup we are using Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2. All boards were tested with the EVGA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.31 WHQL drivers. The Intel 975X boards were also tested with a single ATI X1900XTX card with the Catalyst 6.6 driver.
The two most performance oriented boards in our roundup are the ASUS P5W-DH and Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 boards, and they complete our gaming benchmarks with scores at or near the top of each game category. The most consistent board in the roundup is the Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe that stayed the course throughout testing by remaining in the middle sector of the group. Although the Biostar board did not finish first, it also did not have swings where it was at the top of one benchmark and near the bottom on another one. The ASRock board finished last among the 7900GTX boards four times and second to last on the Quake 4 test where it had its best showing. Overall, the scores generated by this group of boards are so close that you would be hard pressed to actually see or feel the difference in real game play.
The ATI X1900XTX cards finished significantly behind the NVIDIA cards in Half Life 2: Lost Coast where they generally score even or ahead of NVIDIA depending upon game settings. While their performance in the DOOM 3 engine games are normally several percentage points behind the NVIDIA based cards until recently, the difference in our Quake 4 test is also perplexing with the current 6.6 driver release. We ran our ATI X1900XTX in the ASUS P5N32-SLI board and the percentage differences between the GPUs were the same that we see on the AMD S939 or AM2 platforms. It appears to us at this time there is an ATI driver bug with the current Intel chipsets and Core 2 Duo, or perhaps a lack of optimization.
We tested with a small group of games due to time constraints, but we picked games based on a variety of game engines to give a quick indication of the boards' performance. Additional testing will be done in our full board reviews but for this roundup we are using Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2. All boards were tested with the EVGA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.31 WHQL drivers. The Intel 975X boards were also tested with a single ATI X1900XTX card with the Catalyst 6.6 driver.
The two most performance oriented boards in our roundup are the ASUS P5W-DH and Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 boards, and they complete our gaming benchmarks with scores at or near the top of each game category. The most consistent board in the roundup is the Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe that stayed the course throughout testing by remaining in the middle sector of the group. Although the Biostar board did not finish first, it also did not have swings where it was at the top of one benchmark and near the bottom on another one. The ASRock board finished last among the 7900GTX boards four times and second to last on the Quake 4 test where it had its best showing. Overall, the scores generated by this group of boards are so close that you would be hard pressed to actually see or feel the difference in real game play.
The ATI X1900XTX cards finished significantly behind the NVIDIA cards in Half Life 2: Lost Coast where they generally score even or ahead of NVIDIA depending upon game settings. While their performance in the DOOM 3 engine games are normally several percentage points behind the NVIDIA based cards until recently, the difference in our Quake 4 test is also perplexing with the current 6.6 driver release. We ran our ATI X1900XTX in the ASUS P5N32-SLI board and the percentage differences between the GPUs were the same that we see on the AMD S939 or AM2 platforms. It appears to us at this time there is an ATI driver bug with the current Intel chipsets and Core 2 Duo, or perhaps a lack of optimization.
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WynX - Monday, August 21, 2006 - link
Great article!!!Really waiting for the nforce 5 series (to be mature too).
wheelconnector - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
Heyon the review here it says that the 975xbx can support ddr2 800MHz memory speeds, but anywhere else that I've checked, claims that the board only supports speeds upto 667MHz. Can the board take 800MHz out of the box? or will I have to mess around with it to accept the RAM?
thanks a lot
LeeKay - Wednesday, August 9, 2006 - link
I hope u still have your mushkin XP2-8000 (redline) and never sent it back.Here is my hardware.
--------------------
P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe / P5B Deluxe.
Asus Silent tower CPU cooler.
E6600 Processor.
2x1GB Mushkin Redline DDR2 1000Mhz / 2x1GB OCZ Platnium 800MHZ
2x 150GB Raptors,
1x Seagate 300GB Drive,
Powerstream 600Watt PSU
2x EVGA 7950GX2
Coolermaster Stacker.
Plexter SATA 755 Drive
Liteon IDE drive
Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Creative Labs X-Fi Extreme gamer.
Here is my problem..
P5N32 SLI SE DELUXE
I put 2 sticks of ram in the system with the video card will not post. I have to remove one stick of ram and leave one stick in B1 or B2. It will not boot from a cleared bios with a stick in A1 or A2. I then have to go in the bios and set the memory below or at 800Mhz for it to post with 2 sticks of ram in it. Even then when I put the two sticks in and go to the bios it shows only 1024MB or system ram. But the post screen clearly shows 2048. There is nothing wrong with this memory. It ran fine with the P5B motherboard.
When using the OCZ it posts no problem but again shows 2048MB at post and in bios and the OS only shows 1024MB Avalible.
Asus Tech support is the worst in the world. They instantly tell you its a faulty board this and that. But its not its the bios I am 100% sure it is.
Could you Anandtech please setup a test bed with the 0121 bios and try it. If it has no issue could you please try 0204 revision and then tell me. I have the same motherboard revision as you show in the picture.
Thanks in advance.
Bugs66 - Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - link
I see more and more older boards with Core 2 Duo support. Such as the Asus P5PE-VM which is 865G, AGP, and DDR400. I am very curious how performance is hit using the older chipset. These boards are great for folks who do not want to toss their RAM, video card, etc unless there is a huge difference.Thanks for the great writeup.
trajan - Saturday, July 29, 2006 - link
The article mentions these will be coming out soon for socket 775/Conroe. Anyone know when? I've been surfing around for hours trying to find info on it. I know NVidia has made the NForce 500s for Intel but none of the board manufacturers lists any info at all.Just trying to decide if I should go ahead and get the ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe (I want to run SLI) or if it's only a short wait for something better.. !
Thanks
rallyhard - Monday, July 24, 2006 - link
Thanks for the great review.I was going back and referencing some information from it today and noticed that in the P5W-DH Deluxe Basic Features table, you have the number of IDE ports listed incorrectly as one. There are actually two ports, one provided by the JMicron JMB363, and the other from the ICH7R southbridge. I got that info from the Asus website.
Is that the other IDE port over below the last PCI port?! If so, that's rediculous.
But this is one of very few Core 2 Duo supporting motherboards that I've seen that have 2 IDE ports, so I might just have to get it.
Gary, I look forward to the upcoming review you mentioned earlier in these comments of the Biostar motherboard with the VIA VT6410 controller. IDE performance continues to be important to me, and will for quite some time with the investment I've already made in hard drives. NEVER AGAIN will I get burned by an under-reviewed, underperfoming chip like the IT8212F!
Thanks again for your quality reviews.
thedjvan - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
I am very impressed with this guide, looks like a lot of hard work went into it!I have a question though. I am using the release of Conroe as an excuse to build a whole new system. After reading your guide in addition to others, I've decided on the E6700 and the DFI board (as I don't plan on OCing much, if at all).
However, the video card I had chosen is a X1900XTX, as I have read many bad reviews on the 7900 series having assorted problems with heat and other issues.
Now, having read this, I see that Conroe isn't playing nice with my chosen vid card, possibly due to driver issues. My question: Have you guys received any word from ATI, or has a new driver been pushed out yet that brings its performance up to par where it should be? There's absolutely no reason the Nvidia card should be blowing it away, especially on HL2 and other typically ATI friendly games.
If not, should I forget the ATI card and take a chance on one of the Nvidia cards, or simply go with the ATI card and hope they push out new drivers soon? The AMD/ATI aquisition further complicates the situation... I somehow doubt they'd do any favors for intel based systems.
thedjvan - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
No edit button :(I meant a X1900XT, not the XTX version. I'll keep my $100, thanks :)
thedjvan - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
Sorry, one more quick question. Is the Zalman CNPS9500 compatible with the Conroe?Gary Key - Sunday, July 23, 2006 - link
Yes...works very well by the way. ;-)