| ASUS P6X58D-E Motherboard Performance |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Thursday, 17 June 2010 | |
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Page 15 of 17
Power Consumption ResultsLife is not as affordable as it used to be, and items such as fuel and electrical energy top the list of resources that have exploded in price over the past few years. Add to this the limit of non-renewable resources compared to demand and you can see that the prices are only going to get worse. Planet Earth is needs our help, and needs it badly. With forests becoming barren of vegetation and snow capped poles quickly turning brown, the technology industry has a new attitude towards suddenly becoming "green". Motherboard manufacturers, in particular, have been touting their new energy saving features. How effective these power management system are, is exactly what we intend to measure in our power consumption tests. Up to this point, Benchmark Reviews has compared each X58-Express motherboard against one-another in benchmark performance tests. For this section, only one topic is of primary concern: electrical power consumption. So then, since the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P has relegated as the reference for our benchmarks, it should be interested to see how old power-management technology compares to the new features.
To measure system power consumption, Benchmark Reviews uses the Kill-A-Watt EZ (model P4460) power meter made by P3 International. A baseline test is taken as the system is allowed to boot into Windows and rest idle at the login screen for three minutes before power consumption is recorded. Once the baseline reading has been taken, Lavalys EVEREST Ultimate Edition is loaded and the System Stability Test is run with 100% stress on the CPU and FPU for five minutes and the results recorded. Next, the CPU, FPU, Cache, and System Memory stress options are turned on for five minutes. After the CPU/Cache/RAM test results are recorded, our final loaded power consumption reading is taken with the video card running at 100% using the FurMark stress test. TEST SUMMARY: Power consumption is at it's least-controlled state before the Operating System and drivers can manage the hardware and deliver managed power efficiency. For this reason, power usage within the BIOS setup page is much higher than at idle. The Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P, which lacks additional Ethernet, USB-3.0, or SATA 6Gb/s controllers, offered the best result at 182 watts of consumption. Our featured test product, the ASUS P6X58D-E required 184 watts, which was the best of all Marvell SATA-6G motherboards. The Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R and ASUS P6X58D-Premium motherboards each used 186W, while the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 consumed 188W. At idle, the ASUS P6X58D-E again offered the lowest power consumption of all the SuperSpeed USB-3.0 and Marvell SATA-6G equipped motherboards. When the power is turned up for 100% processor utilization, all five motherboards increased power consumption by about 84 watts. When the processor, system memory, and cache subsystem were all taxed, the ASUS P6X58D-E and Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P each consumed 92W over idle, while the ASUS P6X58D-Premium required 94W more power. The Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R and GA-X58A-UD3R each used 96W more power than at idle. Keeping in mind that all of these X58-Express motherboards share nearly identical power management features and delivered similar power consumption. The level of power savings can be further improved using Intel SpeedStep and Core-i7 C-state features in conjunction with motherboard tools.
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Comments
the pcie bandwith used to support usb3 and sata 3 comes from the ICH10R southbridge, which support up to6 pcie links.
In this case x4 is used for bandwith for usb3 and sata3, and the remaining x2 are used as 2 x1 pcie connectors on the motherboard.
Meanwhile the northbridge supports 32 pcie links used for graphics.
In essence sata3 and usb 3 DOES NOT STEAL BANDWITH FROM GRAPHICS.
If the author of this article does not fix this serious lapse of knowledge in this review and the P6x58D review I WILL LOSE FAITH IN BENCHMARKREVIEWS.COM AND CEASE TO FREQUENT THIS SITE.
I agree, do not spread deceit and do not generalize. I agree with everyone that posted in response to your post. Got the facts, lay them out for us to see. As far as my 2 cents about the SATA bandwidth, I can provide links if need be or direct. Show us your hand........
I've got a solid midi tower with HDDs in internal enclosures. When running the P6X58D-E with a i7 930 I hear a high pitch whistleing noise. Similar to distortion in speakers - but none are connected. It's definitely the motherboard, I tried 3(!) P6X58D-E which had all the same noise. It's not very loud but quite annoying if you're sitting in a quiet office.
I eventually could fix it by disabeling the C1E support which means the motherboard is always in full throttle mode but that's not acceptable for me at that price! So if you want a quiet board, look somewhere else.
Cheers.
When I load up CoreTemp and CPUZ, CoreTemp will tell me what multiplier it's currently running at while it's making the noise, but CPUZ stays locked at one multiplier. I'm not sure why it doesn't fluctuate. It does for the older laptop.
As Steve said, I disabled the C1E and Speedstep and that did stop the noise, but yeah, this will drive me crazy. Needless to say if a client heard this noise. Ugh.
Thanks for posting this info gang. You helped the future!
I think some people are talking about a physical noise rather than one that comes from their speaker.
cheers,
Mark.
I tried 2 different PSUs (the Antec Earthwatts 500W I got with my Sonata III case and a Corsair TX650 I replaced it with) but it was still squealing away horrendously, even during idle.
(Tip: I made sure it was PSU by rolling up a sheet of paper into a tube, putting it in my ear and then then listening close up to the mobo, PSU and other parts. Great trick for isolating the source of such noises!)
Then I read about how somebody disabling C1E stopped squealing, and it worked for me. I like my PC to run 100% power ;)
All C states, turbo, and other bios tweaks have been done, core parking has been done, noise still present.
Thanks to anyone who offers any words of advice.
I use the EPU-6 Engine program and have to set it to 'Max Power Saving Mode' or 'Medium Power Saving Mode', otherwise I get this horrible high pitch whistleing noise and can't work peacefully any more in the same room as my pc. Jesus, what a depressing thing to discover after spending quite a lot of money on this computer.
Bios > Advanced > CPU Configuration > C1E Support
reading a few more posts, it seems the noise being talked about here is a physical noise from some component on the mobo. The noise I have been very concerned about is only audible if I plug in my speakers, and the horrid high pitched sound is there regardless of whether I use my (crappy) onboard audio or my brand new USB IO device... so there is something screwed that is giving this noise to sound output on the motherboard.
GRRRR!!!!! I just bought the USB IO to overcome this noise issue!
I found it is a little loud but it a good trade off for how multi use the system is..
I am a web designer and use lots active programs at the same time, that tends to grind my older computers but i find it very smooth. and the gaming ability is top as well
I found the cooling system to be my only issue ( I live in tropical area, very hot / humid )