| ASUS P6X58D-Premium SATA6G Motherboard |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Thursday, 18 February 2010 | |
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Page 6 of 17
First Look: P6X58D-PremiumIntel originally launched the X58-Express platform on 3 November 2008 and despite some incremental improvements here and there, very little has changed with the otherwise ideal core design. While not their most expensive mainboard solution, the ASUS P6X58D-Premium motherboard is designed for the enthusiast through-and-through. A black (dark brown, really) printed circuit board (PCB) is paired with other black and blue hardware components to create an attitude that says "I'm built to work hard, and play even harder". Benchmark Reviews has tested more than a few motherboards in our time, and ASUS has repeatedly proven itself as the premier name in new technology and hardware stability. While our benchmark tests will prove this point later in this article, this section will cover basic motherboard features and component details.
Based on Intel's X58-Express chipset, the ASUS P6X58D-Premium comes with the requisite two 16x PCI-Express 2.0 lanes, and single 8x PCI-Express 2.0 lane. NVIDIA Triple-SLI or ATI CrossFireX video card sets perform their best with X58-Express platforms, which allow extreme-bandwidth graphics processing hardware to take advantage of the 32 reserved link lanes. A single-lane PCI-Express slot and two standard PCI slots also offer additional expansion capabilities, if you should need them. ASUS offers a single heat-pipe rod on the P6X58D-Premium motherboard, which spans from the covered Intel ICH10R Southbridge chip, over and past the X58-Express Northbridge chip's heatsink, and continues on to cover two rows of power-management components cooled by thin aluminum fin-sinks.
At first glance it might not seem like the ASUS P6X58D-Premium offers anything new that the nine other ASUS P6T-series motherboards or both Rampage-II products don't already offer, but the devil is in the details as they say. At the time of this writing, the P6X58D-Premium is the only motherboard in the ASUS X58 product line to offer SuperSpeed USB-3.0 or Revision 3.x SATA 6.0-Gbps (aka SATA-III) controllers. Surrounding the LGA1366 processor socket are several high-quality CPU power modules that utilize ferrite core chokes to minimize electromagnetic (and radio) interference signal noise and create a cleaner electrical circuit and comprise the finer points ASUS' EPU and 16+2 Phase Power Design. A lower Resistance from Drain to Source rDS (ON) MOSFET array allows for transitional power steps. Japanese manufactured SMD solid state capacitors, which contain a solid organic polymer and lower equivalent series resistance (ESR), are implemented throughout this board and will likely outlast the useful life of the ASUS P6X58D-Premium motherboard.
Previous generation LGA775 cooling products are not compatible with the LGA1366 socket. The X58-Express LGA1366 socket increased the distance between CPU cooler mounting holes to 80mm, which is significantly more footprint area than the 72mm used by the LGA775 socket. This has opened the door for several new aftermarket cooling solution, since the Intel Core-i7 desktop processor series is by definition an enthusiast product line made to endure overclocking. Many CPU cooler manufacturers have designed adapters to fit existing LGA775 coolers onto the LGA1366 socket, which isn't safe because of the enlarged processor surface area. For systems not receiving an overclock, this may not be such a problem. But if you're going to re-use your Core 2 cooler on any enthusiast-grade Nehalem LGA1366 Core-i7 processor, it had better be listed near the top of our Best CPU Cooler Performance list. I'll explain why in my final thoughts section, which should be helpful information for hardware enthusiasts.
The backside of the ASUS P6X58D-Premium PCB illustrates how much design effort went into making all of the new components fit. Notice that there are anodized-aluminum plate heatsinks covering the power VRM undersides, and an EPU-ASP0800 power phase IC chip is positioned nearby. There's more detail on the power phase enhancements in the next section, so please continue on...
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Comments
Why is this a con when this is not the fault of the motherboard but of the OS?
It's a con.
I don't see how it is different to have 4GB RAM + 1GB GPU or 3GB RAM + 1GB GPU. In the end your CPU will only address 4GB memory so in the dual channel config you are wasting 1GB. Assuming a 2GB GPU in dual channel configs you will get 4GB RAM + 2GB GPU= 2GB RAM + 2GB GPU which means you will waste 2Gb of RAM (assuming the OS will keep favouring GPU memory over RAM). In triple channel you would get 3GB RAM + 2GB GPU = 2GB RAM + 2GB GPU.
If the OS decides to cut off the extra 1GB from the GPU then you still end up with 3GB RAM and 1GB GPU in both configs.
Not a con.
My rating is subjective, and it is my own. As I say at the beginning of the Conclusion page: Please do not base your purchases solely on our conclusion.
You stated that 6 of 32 PCIe lanes are borrowed from graphics for USB 3.0/SATA-6G support. However, Intel?s X58 IOH supports 36 PCIe lanes, of which 32 are required for 16x/8x/8x triple-SLI/CFX. I?m not sure why the motherboard would reserve six lanes, since only four are used by the ASUS U3S6 PCI-E 4x expansion card. It appears that the graphics performance of this motherboard may not be crippled after all. Although I?m still not sure what happens in the 16x/16x/1x configuration, since an extra lane is required.
If it is an enthusiast board as you say, you'd expect rookies to buy a simpler solution, no? Complication not really a con here!
The X58 IOH has: 36 PCIe lanes, 4 PCIe lanes linking to the ICH10 southbridge, and a QPI link to the CPU. Unless ASUS are insane, the SATA3 and USB3 controllers would use 4 PCIe lanes from the IOH, leaving a full 32 PCIe lanes for graphics (16 + 16, or 16 + 8 + 8). The PCIe 1X slot, the 1X lane for 16 + 16 + 1 mode, and PCIe lanes for the gigabit LAN would be provided by the ICH10.
#2. Windows client(Non server variants), use to support PAE for memory reasons, but drivers ALSO need to correctly support the feature otherwise memory/data corruption can happen. MS decided too many companies couldn't make decent drivers and disabled extended memory for non-server versions.
#3. Who uses 32bit OS's anymore? That's like using dial up when you have access to FIOS.
(2) Am I correct to assume that the ASUS motherboard will not support SATA-III Raid 0 ?
(3) Which gives the most bang-for-the-buck: the Crucial RealSSD-C300 with a SATA-III controller (the Marvell SE128 on the Gigabyte motherboard), or the Intel SSD 80GB with a SATA-II controller (the Marvell SE123 on the ASUS motherboard) ?
(4) And finally, if I go with the Gigabyte board, I am thinking about going with the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 as opposed to the ?UD7... as I am an architect using CAD and GIS and not a gamer and thus don?t see the need for advanced cooling. Any problems with this decision ?
2) You are correct.
3) Crucial is faster for sure, but I think the OCZ Agility or Corsair Nova are the best bang for the buck.
4) I would use P55 and not X58. My company has built many CAD/CAM systems, and you want to spend your money on a very fast HDD or SSD, decent video card, and plenty of RAM. P55 does a better job with memory and CPU performance than X58... clock for clock.