Review: ASUS P5GD2 i915P & P5AD2 i925X Premium

System setup and notes

• Intel Pentium 4 560 CPU (3.6GHz Prescott, LGA775)
• AMD Athlon 64 Model 3800+ CPU (2.4GHz)
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB, AGP
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB, PCI Express
• 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2, run at 2-3-2-6 for AMD
• 2 x 256MB Crucial PC4300 DDR-II, run at 4-4-4-10 for Intel
• Pioneer 105 DVD-RW
• Western Digital 160GB (WD1600) 8MB cache hard drive
• 2 x Western Digital 74GB Raptor SATA hard drives
• Dell P991 19" monitor

• Windows XP Professional SP1
• DirectX 9.0b runtime
• Intel 6.0.1.1006 chipset drivers
• Intel Application Accelerator for ICH6
• VIA Hyperion 4.51 driver set
• NVIDIA ForceWare 61.76 driver set
• Pifast v4.1 to 10m places
• Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (611MB)
• HEXUS XviD encoding test
• KribiBench 1.19
• ScienceMark 2.0
• Realstorm Raytracing benchmark 320x180x32
• 3DMark 2001SE v330
• UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
• Comanche 4 benchmark
• Quake 3 v1.30 HQ

Notes

ASUS implements a technology called Hyper Path 2 for both motherboards. Essentially, it attempts to mimic and better Intel's Performance Acceleration Technology feature that's only supposed to exist within the MCH (Memory Controller Hub) of i925X chipsets. ASUS has done this before, most recently with its P4P800 i865-based motherboards. The results in that case showed ASUS' implementation was actually a touch better than Intel's. Hyper Path 2 or PAT reduces the latency that exists between processor requests and memory accesses. With that in mind and both boards benefitting equally from this performance enhancement, we expect to see little or no benchmark deviation.

Both boards ran the Pentium 4 560 processor at 3640.3MHz, or 202.24MHz FSB, and memory was set to 533MHz FSB. Both were extremely stable when flashed to the latest BIOS. We'll be comparing their performance with an AMD Athlon 64 Model 3800+ / VIA K8T800 Pro combination. AMD's still resolutely sticking with DDR-I memory, so we were able to run much tighter latencies.

3640.3MHz - Intel Pentium 4 560 / ASUS P5GD2 Premium (Intel i915P - 4-4-4-10 @ 533MHz)

3640.3MHz - Intel Pentium 4 560 / ASUS P5AD2 Premium (Intel i925X - 4-4-4-10 @ 533MHz)

2400.9MHz - AMD Athlon 64 Model 3800+ /ASUS A8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800 Pro - 2-3-2-6 @ 400MHz)



Both boards are storage, audio and networking monsters.

Overclocking

By specifically stating PCI Express frequencies, the BIOS appears to offer a bus-locking feature. However, during testing with PCI Express GeForce 6800 GT, I found that video would simply switch off at anything above 240MHz FSB. Indeed, both boards POSTed comfortably at 250MHz FSB, but would then lock almost immediately afterwards. The evidence suggest an out-of-spec PCI Express bus. We hope later BIOS revisions may alleviate this unfortunate problem.