| ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 TUF Motherboard |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |
| Written by Hank Tolman | |
| Monday, 02 May 2011 | |
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Page 9 of 16
AIDA64 Extreme Edition v1.1 Benchmark TestsIn November, 2010, FinalWire acquired and discontinued Lavalys EVEREST, updated it, and released it as AIDA64. AIDA64 is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes AIDA64 a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC. All of the benchmarks used in our test bed rely on basic x86 instructions and consume very low system memory while also being aware of HyperThreading, multi-processors, and multi-core processors. While the AIDA64 CPU tests really only compare the processor performance more than it measures platforms, it still offers a glimpse into what kind of power each platform possesses. Queen and Photoworxx tests are synthetic benchmarks that operate the function many times and over-exaggerate by several magnitudes what the real-world performance would be like. The Queen benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and misprediction penalties of the CPU. It does this by finding possible solutions to the classic queen problem on a chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores.
Like the Queen benchmark, the Photoworxx tests for penalties against pipeline architecture. The synthetic Photoworxx benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than two processing threads are used. The AIDA64 Photoworxx benchmark performs the following tasks on a very large RGB image:
The Zip Library test measures combined CPU and memory subsystem performance through the public ZLib compression library. ZLib is designed as a free lossless data compression library for use on virtually any computer hardware and operating system. The ZLib data format is itself portable across platforms and has a footprint independent of input data that can be reduced at some cost in compression.
The AES integer benchmark measures CPU performance using AES data encryption. It utilizes Vincent Rijmen, Antoon Bosselaers and Paulo Barreto's public domain C code in ECB mode and consumes 48 MB of memory.
In our next section we take a look at the results of the Passmark Performance Test.
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Comments
It seems like they could have easily saved a good bit of money not adding it to the motherboard. Additionally, I agree with ChrisH, that the "plastic divider" will act more as a thermal insulator, and drive component temps up. Luckily Sandy Bridge has a low thermal load.
The one thing that I do like about TUF armor, is that it might serve to protect the motherboard against small objects that could accidentally fall on it.
The in-depth review was greatly appreciated.
As far as the Military Grade components, the reason they are limited to a few boards, I believe, is due to the cost inherent in using those components. ASUS still has to offer low-end motherboards and even higher-end motherboards at competitive prices. If they maintained all the features of those boards and used the higher grade components, the costs would be quite a bit higher.
Besides, even with the 25% better quality and longer life-span, nearly any motherboard made by the major manufacturers will long outlast it's usefulness to you.
-Hank
However, before I can go playing with all the latest & greatest features, I am stuck with my Sabertooth's waking up from sleep problem. Which is a common problem among many users and there is an extensive discussion on the matter at vip asus forum. Even inconclusive, the current Sabertooth board has compatibility issue with many models of power supply. Thus after into sleep mode, the system can no longer wake up.
I just wonder that if you have the time and resources to try Sabertooth + i7-2600k with different PSUs to see if the bug exists on your board. FYI, I have 10 fans in total, 5 case fans, 2 cpu fans, 2 vga fans, and 1 assistant fan. If I move the power source of all five case fans and one cpu fan to a seperate power supply, the wakeup works, but not stable. If pc sleeps too long (few hours), it won't wakeup.
I've heard those options prevent system from recovering after sleep.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or PSUs to try the different combinations. Also, I don't use the sleep function. Ever. So I haven't experienced this problem. That being said, I will certainly look into the issue and even try it out. If I find out anything that helps I will post back here.
Thanks!
Hank
It's too bad that Asus doesn't provide the needed fan and instructions. In another forum they indicated that they don't include the fan since they they can't warrant electromechanical stuff for as long as the mobo itself. But without the fan exhausting air, the armor makes no sense.
I also fault Asus support for not knowing or explaining how the armor is designed to be used. Blowing hot air down into it would clearly be ridiculous. I'm sure that whoever championed the armor idea back in the design groups is chagrined at how it has worked out when finally named, logo'd, stickered, sold, and supported.
Multi-GPU Support: Supports NVIDIAŽ Quad-GPU SLI? Technology
##asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/SABERTOOTH_P67/#specifications
on the Assist fan, its location is poor, it tends to block the top pci-e slot. Asus recomends a 50mmx50mmx10mm fan for this assist slot, a fan of that size is nearly useless, and is very noisy, if you get a 15mm thick fan or a 20mm thick fan it will be much better and quieter. the problem is this, the screws are two short for the 20mm fan, so you will need longer screws, Asus does not identify the thread pitch so you don't know what size screws to buy, The ability to control the assist fan speed is limited, and not mentioned in the manual at all.
The manual sucks big time, the pictures and line drawings are so small you can not even read it without a powerful magnafier. It leaves out critical info.The fan connector picture identify the pins with different anacronyms and does not explain what those mean. The 3 pin fan is id as gnd, 12v, and rotation, (define rotation), the 4 pin fan headers are id as gnd, cpu fan pwr, cpu fan in, cpu fan pwm, (define, fan pwr, and cpu fan in) well as I said the manual sucks.
There is a Green 20 pin connector thats supposed to provided for the front usb 3.0 ports, this cable is not provided, and I have no Idea where to get it, Asus doesn't seem to know. The Asus user forum is not monitored relying on mystified users to supply all help to users. Scan this forum to see a real review of this product. Severe Bios issues, Severe temp issues, Wake on lan issues, RMA issues. BBB has given Asus an F rating for failure to respond to complaints. I own one, I would not recommend this company or product. When the forum is filled with questions about overclocking, things are good, when its filled by complaints of RMA and feature that don't work, things are bad, don't accept my word for it, read the forums for yourself