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Four Intel P965 Motherboards Examined

PCI Express x16 socket LGA-775 motherboards
Chipset P965
PCI Express / PCI

Intel's Core 2 Duo architecture have propelled the semiconductor giant to the spotlight again. High performance power and thermal efficiency plus lots of overclocking headroom have made the Core 2 Duo series of processors a darling among hardware enthusiast and gamers. Even hardcore AMD supporters can not deny this fact. So its only natural to see gamers and hardware enthusiast 'jumping ship' from the Athlon 64 to Intel Core 2 Duo, and with the move comes the need to get a new motherboard.

Of several offerings available, motherboards using the Intel P965 chipset perhaps offer the best all around platform for these processors. Sure, there are other chipsets out there, like NVIDIA NForce 5xx and 6xxi series, the hard to find ATI / AMD RD580 chipset and Intel's own i975 chipset.  However, motherboards using the Intel P965 chipset are much easier to find, often cost less and are packed with just as much features as motherboards using 'enthusiast' level chipsets. Notably absent is the support for SLI, though Crossfire support have been around for quite a while and ATI have yet to allow OpenGL Crossfire support for the i965 chipset.

AMD / ATI might not like the situation, but at least they're making some money from licensing Crossfire to arch rival Intel. There's little else they can do. On the other hand, NVIDIA is quite aggresive with their Intel offerings. Though technically possible, NVIDIA chose not to license SLI to Intel and put out several chipsets such as the NForce 5 series and NForce 6 series. In addition to beefing up the features, NVIDIA is betting on SLI to drive demand. However small hiccups and problems have deterred some from using NVIDIA's newest offering, the NForce 680i chipset.

Naturally curious, we're going to look at several Intel P965 motherboards from different manufacturers - ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI. The motherboards are ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi edition, Gigabyte's P965-DQ6 and P965-DS3, and MSI P965 Platinum. 

Overview

ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP

Intel Pentium 4 / Core socket LGA-775
P965
PCI Express, PCI

Overall Score: 96 points



The full specification (taken from ASUS's website)

CPU
Intel® Quad-core CPU Ready
LGA775 socket for Intel® Core™2 Extreme / Core™2 Duo / Pentium® Extreme / Pentium® D / Pentium® 4 / Celeron® D Processors
Compatible with Intel® 05B/05A/06B processors
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology ready
* Refer to www.asus.com for Intel CPU support list
* Please update the latest BIOS to support Intel Quad-core CPU

Chipset
Intel® P965 / ICH8R with Intel® Fast Memory Access Technology
Front Side Bus 1066 / 800 / 533 MHz

Memory
4 x DIMM, max. 8GB, DDR2 800 / 667 / 533 MHz, non-ECC, un-buffered memory
Dual channel memory architecture
* Refer to www.asus.com or user manual for Memory QVL (Qualify Vendor List)

Expansion Slots
CrossFire
Supports ATI CrossFire graphics cards (blue @ x16 mode and black @ x4 mode)

Storage
Southbridge
6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
Intel Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.

JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller
LAN
Dual Gigabit LAN controllers, both featuring AI NET2
Marvell® PCI-E and PCI Gigabit LAN controllers

Wireless LAN
ASUS WiFi-AP Solo
54 Mbps IEEE 802.11g and backwards compatible with 11 Mbps IEEE 802.11b
Audio
ADI® AD1988B 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC
IEEE 1394
TI® 1394a controller supports 2 x IEEE 1394a ports (one at midboard; one at back panel)

USB
8 x USB2.0 ports (4 ports at mid-board, 4 ports at back panel)
ASUS AI Lifestyle Features

ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution:
ASUS Crystal Sound:
ASUS EZ DIY:ASUS WiFi@Home:
Other ASUS Special Features
ASUS MyLogo 2
Multi-language BIOS

Overclocking Features
Intelligent overclocking tools:
Precision Tweaker:
SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)Overclocking Protection:
Back Panel I/O Ports
Internal I/O Connectors
BIOS
8 Mb Flash ROM, AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.3, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3

Manageability
WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL by PME, WOR by PME, PXE

Accessories
Support CD
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor, 30.5cm x 24.5cm

The ASUS P5B Deluxe motherboard is one of the most sought out boards for the Core Duo platform. This time around, we received the WiFi-AP equipped version of the board. However, the non-WiFi equipped version is basically the same board, so this review also applies to that board. Like any other high-end offering from ASUS, or any other manufacturer for that matter, the ASUS P5B Deluxe is filled with a lot of features. Even ASUS's description with the board is the longest out of the four boards we tested today.

Let's start with the bundle. The ASUS P5B Deluxe comes with a plethora of cables: the standard floppy and IDE data cable, 6 SATA data cables, 3 SATA power cable with two SATA connector each and lots of other goodies. The 6 SATA cables assures that you can quickly use the 6 SATA connectors on the motherboard, if you choose to do so. ASUS also provides 1 eSATA connector in the back panel area of the board, which allows you to plug in a SATA hard drive for example to do backups without opening the case. However, you still have to provide power connections to the external drive from another source. Two other accesories - the ASUS Q-Connector and Array Microphone is especially intriguing but unfortunately we didn't have the time or necessary equipment to test their capabilities. The Q-Connector simplifies connections between the motherboard and front panel ports (USB, audio, etc) while the Array Microphone is actually a directional microphone with noise surpression capabilities. And of course, there's the WiFi add-on and AP software for the WiFi equipped version of ASUS P5B Deluxe.

As you can see, the plethora of features and accesories have some impact on the layout. The most striking is definitely the room between the first PCI-E x16 slot and the DIMM slots - you'll most likely have to remove the graphics card if you want to have clear access to any DIMM modules. We think ASUS could've done things differently, since there is enough room on the far side of the DIMM slots. There's also the vertical placement of the WiFi hardware next to the back panel, but it shouldn't interfere with the graphics card. The SATA ports placement is very good, paralel to the PCI and PCI-E slots with color coding matching the cables (well, at least 4 of them). The laid-down IDE connector should allow more creative placement of IDE cables, especially for those concerned with internal case airflow.

Silent running is all the rage today, so ASUS decided to equip the P5B Deluxe with passive cooling for the northbridge, southbridge and some additional electrical components. However, ASUS is still kind enough to provide 5 fan headers (including one for the CPU), should you choose to have active cooling instead. They even throw in an additional fan you can use to cool the heatpipe's radiator heatsink.

Expansions and Add-Ons

The ASUS P5B Deluxe offers 3 PCI slots, 1 PCI-E x1 slot and 2 PCI-E x16 slot (1 is full x16, the other is actually x4 which is the norm for all Intel i965 chipset) for all your add-on needs. The two PCI-E x16 slots are Crossfire ready, so you should be able to use any ATI Crossfire enabled cards with this board. With single slot cards, your expansion options are likely to be limited to 2 PCI slots. With dual slot cards, we don't recommend using any of the available slots for add-ons, especially if you have cards with dual slot cooling side intakes, like the Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro we're using.

Thankfully, with the exception of a good sound card, you'll likely won't find any reason to get an add-on card. The ASUS P5B Deluxe comes with two Gigabit capable LAN ports, 4 USB ports (plus another 2 ports on a bracket), 1 Firewire port (plus 1 port on a bracket), and the standard, serial (COM), PS/2 and audio ports. You'll also get coaxial SPDIF ports. The compromise: there is no printer (LPT) and optical SPDIF ports. Not that big of a deal really, since you can always connect the printer through a USB cable and use the integrated coax SPDIF. One nitpick we have is the inefficient use of brackets - why place the additional ports on two brackets instead of one? There is enough space to hold 2 USB ports and 1 Firewire port in a single bracket.

Tweaking and Overclocking Friendly

The ASUS P5B Deluxe comes with more than ehough BIOS settings to satisfy die-hard overclockers. Processor, PCI-Express slot, chipset, memory settings including clock, voltage and other setting are configurable. You can set them automatically or manually if you want. You can even save these settings into a profile - up to four profile are configurable. The many AI Features offered by the P5B Deluxe should be a boon for those new to overclocking, but many hardcore users will likely want manual settings and the ASUS P5B does not disappoint.

However, there are minor gripes we had with this board, but they are minor and if you can live with them, you have a really good board on your hands. Here they are:
Generally a good, all around board. The ASUS P5B Deluxe offers good performance with lots of features, though price may be a limiting factor for some. However, for the price ASUS is asking, we'd like ASUS to offer a better package, preferably one with a more accurate / sturdy health monitoring solution and much better audio. Though some users may be tempted to choose the non-WiFi version, the price difference is usually not that significant.

Gigabyte P965-DQ6

Intel Pentium 4 / Core socket LGA-775
P965
PCI Express, PCI

Overall Score: 92 points



The full specification (taken from Gigabyte's website)

CPU
Supports Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme/ Intel® Pentium® D processor
Supports 1066/800/533 MHz FSB

Chipset
Northbridge: Intel® P965 Express Chipset
Southbridge: Intel® ICH8R

Memory
Supports DDR2 800/667/533 memory
Dual Channel architecture support up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots

Expansion Slots
Storage
Southbridge
6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
Intel Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.

LAN
Gigabit LAN Controller (Marvell 8053)

Audio
Realtek ALC888DD 8-Channel Audio Codec

Unique Features
Back Panel I/O Ports
Internal I/O Connectors
Form Factor
ATX form factor, 30.5cm x 24.4cm

One look at Gigabyte's P965-DQ6 and you can see this is a full feature-packed board. Inside the box, you'll get most of the accesories you'll need to get the most out of this board: the standard floppy and IDE data cables, 4 SATA cables plus another 4 SATA cables for e-SATA connectors and 2 ATX to SATA molex converter cables. We wish Gigabyte had not chosen to integrate the SATA cables to the e-SATA connectors. If they had, users who bought the board will be able to use them for internal SATA hard disk as well. 4 e-SATA connectors for 4 hard drives seem a little bit too much. Old users of Gigabyte''s high-end 865P motherboard will remember back then, Gigabyte still allowed the use of ordinary SATA cables for both e-SATA ports or internal hard drives.

Just like the ASUS P5B Deluxe, the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 suffers from the same problem with all full featured motherboard. There's just not enough space for you to be able to install and remove DDR2 DIMM modules without first removing the graphics card. There's also another potential problems for those using full length PCI cards or a second graphics card in the second x16 PCI-E slot. The IDE connector and 2 SATA connector may cause problems with long, PCI or PCI-E graphics cards with long dual slot coolers. Very likely, since you probably use the IDE connector for your DVD-ROM drive. Except for this two potential problems, we didn't see anything else we don't like with this board.

Of all the features on the Gigabyte P965-DQ6, the most noticeable is the passive heatsink conected with a single heatpipe. Air flowing from your CPU fan should be able to cool the two radiator fins around the CPU socket. Though your mileage may vary, we did find installing and removing the default Core 2 Duo cooler slightly a bit tricky with this setup. However, that's just a minor incovenience and should not deter you from the many strong points this board has.

Expansions and Add-Ons

For all your expansion needs, the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 comes with just enough ports - 2 PCI. 2 x1 and 2 x16 PCI Express slots. The placement of the ports may limit you somewhat with dual slot graphics cards. If you use Gigabyte's own Radeon X1950 Pro solution, you'll quickly find there's no more room if you install two of them on this board. You can try to squeeze in one x1 PCI-E and 1 PCI card if you use the Radeon X1900 default double slot cooler, but we wouldn't recommend it. Two 12v ATX power connectors are integrated on the board - one near the PCI-E x16 slots to supply additional power for you graphics cards and one near the standard ATX connector, though in most situations you do not have to use them.

There's 4 USB ports, 1 Firewire port and 1 Gigabit LAN connections for your peripherals and communications needs plus the standard COM and printer port. For audio connections, you'll find the standard outputs, plus both a coax and optical SPDIF connectors. All of these connectors are placed on the back of your case, so users who want front panel connectors should be prepared to get additional cables. Might as well, you'll likely want to grab some additional SATA cables to use all the board's 8 SATA connectors.

Tweaking and Overclocking Friendly

Gigabyte have kindly place all important, overclocking settings In the BIOS under the menu 'MIB Intelligent Tweaker'. Various processor settings, including multiplier settings are available, in addition to other settings such as chipset, memory clock and voltages. A nice touch is the default processor voltage display inside the BIOS. You can always tell how far your voltage settings are from the default voltage just by looking at the information. Memory divider settings are in ratios, but you can always see what the current settings are and at what speed the memory will be when you change them. All these settings can be set manually or automatically, just make sure you know what you're doing and the limits of your hardware. Unfortunately, not all these settings are changeable from Gigabyte's V-Tuner software - for example, you can't change the multiplier on the fly.

As you would guess, we do have some minor gripes with this board, though nothing serious.
Overall, a good board with lots of features as you expect from a high end offering. However, you may have to spend extra money for additional cables to get the most of this board. The inclusion of DTS Connect feature does add some value for multimedia buffs though it doesn't add much value for gamers.

Gigabyte P965-DS3

Intel Pentium 4 / Core socket LGA-775
P965
PCI Express, PCI

Overall Score: 90 points
The full specification (taken from Gigabyte's website)

CPU
Supports Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme/ Intel® Pentium® D processor
Supports 1066/800/533 MHz FSB

Chipset
Northbridge: Intel® P965 Express Chipset
Southbridge: Intel® ICH8R

Memory
Supports DDR2 800/667/533 memory
Dual Channel architecture support up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots

Expansion Slots
Storage
6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports
Intel Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.
GIGABYTE SATAII controller

LAN
Marvel 8053 Gigabit LAN Controller

Audio
Realtek ALC883 8 Channel Audio Codec

Unique Features
Back Panel I/O Ports
Internal I/O Connectors
Form Factor
ATX form factor, 30.5cm x 21cm

 Unlike the other motherboards in this round up, the Gigabyte P965-DS3 is a standard board, offering standard features with great value. You don't get a second x16 PCI-E slot, but you can get this board for about half the price of Gigabyte's own P965-DQ6. The audio solution remains Realtek's High Definition Audio, though lacking DTS Connect capabilities. Understandably, because of the price, the board's bundle only the bare essentials - one floppy and one IDE data cables, in addition to 4 SATA cables. There's no SATA to ATX power cables, so you should get them if you need them.

Both the northbridge and southbridge are passively cooled with standard heatsinks. There's actually no need to put a fan on the heatsinks. If you use the standard Intel fan / heatsink, the air from the CPU fan is more than enough to cool the northbridge. The same also applies to the southbridge, particularly if you're using Gigabyte's Radeon X1950 Pro with the Zalman cooler. The southbridge and northbridge does get warm to slightly hot to the touch, so make sure you have good airflow inside the case. As far as layout is concerned, we actually like the DS3 more over its high-end sibling, the DQ6. There's more than enough room for one finger between the DIMM module and PCI-E x16 graphics card. IDE and SATA connectors placement are ideal - they sit paralel with the three PCI slots present, using the room between the slots so there should be no problem if you have full length cards installed.

Expansions and Add-Ons

This board is equipped with all the standard equipment you expect: PS/2, serial and printer ports plus 4 USB ports and a complete set of audio ports, including coax and optical SPDIF output. If you're upgrading, you might want to retain any internal USB cables you have - there are three additional USB headers in the board but Gigabyte does not bundle any cables to make use of them. However, there are no Firewire ports available, so users with Firewire hardware might want to get a Firewire add-on card. There are more than enough PCI and x1 PCI-E slots to go around - a total of 3 PCI and 3 x1 PCI-E slots are available for your peripheral needs. Because of the price point, we understand Gigabyte's decision not to pack a more complete bundle for this board. However, we still wish they would've throw in at least one Firewire port and SATA to ATX power cables - it would make life just so much easier for most users.

Tweaking and Overclocking Friendly

One area where the DS3 does not disappoint is in the tweaking and overclocking settings. There are more than enough options and settings available for most users to push this board to the limit. Settings such as the processor's FSB, multiplier, memory ratio, clock and voltage tweaks are available inside the MIB Intelligent Tweaker menu on the BIOS. One thing we'd like for Gigabyte to change is the 'OK' nomenclature for voltage rail values on all their motherboard BIOS. Wouldn't it be so much easier to provide the real values instead of OK /' Fail we now have? Applying different colors - white for OK, yellow for not so OK and red for Fail like what some manufacturers are doing would be great.

In the end, though a very good board in its own right, the Gigabyte P965-DS3 is not without some problems. Here are some we'd like Gigabyte to address: If you're looking for a simple board with great performance, the Gigabyte P965-DS3 is worth a look. It offers most overclocking options to make it a very decent overclocking board and just enough features to satisfy the average user..

MSI P965 Platinum

Intel Pentium 4 / Core socket LGA-775
P965
PCI Express, PCI

Overall Score: 92 points



The full specification (taken from MSI's website)

CPU
Supports Socket 775 for Intel® Pentium 4 3xx, 5xx, 6xx, 8xx, 9xx, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors.
Supports FSB 1066/800/533 MHz
Supports EIST technology
Supports Intel® Hyper-Threading technology.
Supports Intel® Dual Core Technology to 800 MHz and up

Chipset
Intel® P965 Chipset
Supports FSB 1066/800/533 MHz.
Supports PCI Express x 16 graphics interface.
Supports dual channel, DDR2 533/667/800

Intel® ICH8R Chipset
Hi-Speed USB (USB2.0) controller, 480Mb/sec, up to 10 ports.
6 SATAII ports with transfer rate up to 3Gb/s.
PCI Master v2.3, I/O APIC.
ACPI 2.0 compliant.
Serial ATA RAID 0, RAID 1 RAID 5 and RAID 10.
Integrated AHCI controller

Memory
Supports four unbuffered DIMM of 1.8 Volt DDR2 SDRAM
Supports up to 8GB memory size (DDR2 533/667).
Supports up to 4GB memory size (DDR2 800).
Supports dual channel DDR2 memory architecture.
Supports DDR2 533/667/800 memory interface.

Expansion Slots
Storage
On-Board IDE/SATA
One Ultra DMA 66/100/133 IDE controller integrated in JMicron® JMB361.
Supports PIO, Bus Master operation modes.
Can connect up to two Ultra ATA drives.

SATAII controller integrated in ICH8R/JMicron® JMB361
Up to 300MB/sec transfer speed.
Six SATAII ports by ICH8R.
One SATAII port by JMicron® JMB361.
Supports AHCI controller with SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 (ICH8R).

Audio
High Definition link controller integrated in Intel® ICH8R chip.
Audio codec Realtek® 883.
Compliant with Azalia 1.0 spec.
Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing.

LAN
Realtek® RTL8111B
Supports 10/100/1000 Mb/s.
PCI-Express interface.
Supports ACPI Power Management.

Back Panel I/O Ports
Internal I/O Connectors
Form Factor
ATX form factor, 30.5 x 24.5cm

We were pretty surprised when we first saw the MSI P965 Platinum. Coming from our experience with the K8N SLI Platinum, we had expected something with a little more 'oomph', but as you can see, the MSI P965 Platinum comes across as your typical mid-range motherboard. The box is very simple, like ones you usually see on value boards. Inside the box, you'll find a slightly scarce bundle in addition to the motherboard itself - 1 floppy cable, 1 IDE cable (both are rounded cables), 1 bracket with the famous MSI D-LED and 2 USB ports, 1 bracket with 2 Firewire ports and in our case, 1 SATA data and power cable. Depending on where you live, you may get 2 instead of 1 SATA data and power cable. The lack of SATA data and power cables was a disappointment, especially since the motherboard comes with 7 SATA connectors. We think 2 cables should be the bare minimum and the inclusion of only one cable is definitely a minus point with this board. After all, we expecte something more with a name like 'Platinum'.

MSI boards are some of the boards with good layouts out there and the MSI P965 Platinum does not disappoint. Everything is color coded, which makes installation easier. There is one thing we would've love with this color coding - why can't the color of cables and connectors be the same? It would make installation so much easier. There's also more than enough room between the first PCI-E x16 and the DIMM slots. We would've liked the SATA connectors to be paralel with the slots like the IDE connector, but the current placement is good enough. Though it might look like a tight squeeze, there's just enough room to remove the CMOS jumper, even with a second graphics card in the second PCI-E x16 slot. The ATX 12v and 4 pin molex additional molex connector could've been placed somewhere else to allow better airflow, but it's nothing serious.

The board provides 4 fan headers at your disposal, including one dedicated to the CPU fan. Technically, you can use a fan for the northbridge and, well, that's about it. With a second graphics card, you'll need a very thin fan/heatsink combo for the ICH8R southbridge. MSI's trademark of putting passive heatsinks on other electrical components is notably absent with this board. The passive cooling works just fine, though it did got warm to the touch after hours of continous use.

Diagnostic Tools

MSI is one of the pioneers in offering diagnostic tools with their motherboards and the MSI 965 Platinum continues that tradition. Nothing has changed, the D-LED is where it's usually is - placed in a bracket with two USB ports. With this D-LED, you can quickly troubleshoot problems regarding installation and hardware, even if the motherboard is inside a case. Those of you who deal with a lot of PC installation and troubleshooting realize the value of such a diagnostic tools that offer more beyond cryptic BIOS beeps.

Expansions and Add-Ons

The MSI P965 Platinum comes with the usual standard equipment such as PS/2 ports, serial and printer port. It also has 4 USB ports plus another 2 ports in the bracket. You'll find 1 Firewire port in the back panel area, and 2 more on a bracket. More than enough for most of us, though all of them will be on the back of the case. You'll also find the standard audio jacks (mic, speaker, line out, line in, rear, subwoofer) and both optical and coax SPDIF output connectors - no SPDIF input are available.

While the board offer 2 PCI slots, 2 x1 PCI Express slots and of course 2 x16 PCI Express slots, we doubt you can use all of them at once. If you're planning to use additional add-on cards and a second graphics card, you should be very careful about placement. Everything's ok with single slot graphics cards - you'll get 1 PCI-E x1 and 1 PCI slot free even after making room for hot air from both graphics cards. But if you're going to use two graphics cards with side air intake, like Gigabyte's Radeon X1950 Pro with their Zalman cooling solutions, we don't recommend placing other add-ons. That's always a problem with mid-sized boards, including the MSI P965 Platinum. A shame really since the onboard Realtek 883 audio is just a basic audio solution compared to Creative's Live! or Audigy sound cards - game wise.

Tweaking and Overclocking Options

The MSI P965 Platinum BIOS offer some tweaking and overclocking options, though the options available are somewhat limited and may not be enough for those who want to push the board. Settings like FSB, memory timings and voltage settings can be set automatically or manually adjusted. Disappointingly, the MSI P965 Platinum does not offer any multiplier adjustments, at least not on the BIOS we used to test the board. This option is important if you want to push your Core 2 Duo processor as far as you can go. The AMI BIOS may seem strange and unfriendly to those used to Award BIOS, but the menu and settings are not that much different (we still prefer Award BIOS if possible though).

There are some small things MSI could have done differently Here's what we think they should've done:
Overall, we are slightly disappointed with the MSI P965 Platinum board. It may well be an affordable board offering Crossfire support out of the box, but we expect a little more in bundles, especially with a motherboard with the name 'Platinum' and a much more 'well-behaved' board.

Peculiarities

During testing, we notice a rather odd quirk with some of these boards. Unfortunately, we weren't able to run comprehensive and exhaustive testing on all boards, but we didn't like some of the 'peculiarities' we saw. For example, the MSI P965 Platinume have the tendency to 'fluctuate' FSB clock settings when set to default, even when the board D.O.T feature is set to 'Off'.



An overclock of 6 to 7 MHz may not seem much, but combined with a high multiplier and you'll get quite a clock boost. This same behaviour is also present on the ASUS P5B Deluxe, though at a much lesser degree. Processor clock fluctuations only goes up as high as 3 to 4 MHz.



We did not encounter this behaviour with either the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 or the P965-DS3.



What makes this behaviour so 'interesting' is that these fluctuations only occur in high processor load situations, like for instance running benchmarks or any other high load situations. Overclocking on demand - we think so. Our stance on overclocking have always been that the decision should be up to the user, not the manufacturer. We'll have to see if these peculiarities have any and to what extent in the performance of this boards.

Performance

All these boards ran fine during  testing, but there are some notes we'd like you to know. First is the noise distortion on the ASUS P5B Deluxe. The second and by far the most annoying is the inability to enable DMA Transfer on the MSI P965 Platinum for our Liteon DVD-RW drive. These two boards also exhbit some rather interesting clock behaviours.

The settings we used for this round up are limited to just 1024 x 768, 32 bit with without AA and AF. These settings were chosen so that the graphics card performance is not a factor. Any performance difference will likely be caused by other factors, more likely related to processor and memory subsystems (clock, timing). Storrage and audio may also play a factor here.  All of these boards are tested with the default SATA controller on Intel's ICH8R southbridge. Any other variations will likely be caused by the different use of audio codecs. The ASUS P5B Deluxe relies on Analog Devices ADI1988 chip while the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 rely on Realtek ALC888DD chip and the P965-DS3 and MSI P965 Platinum used the ALC883 chip.

Our test setup
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 socket LGA-775
2 x 512 MB A-DATA 5-5-5-18 PC6400 DDR2-SDRAM
Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro 256 MB
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
LiteOn 1673S DVD-RW
Tagan TG530-U15 530 watts ATX/BTX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
ATI Catalyst 6.11 reference driver
Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 8.1.0.1006
DirectX 9.0c
all respected games used for benchmarks have been updated to their latest, final builds.

The results:

Call of Duty - Dawnville
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
103.33
256.73
616
.
102.67
255.88
601
.
103
254.3
590.67
.
103.33
257.94
586
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

For all intent and purposes, these boards offer basically the same performance. The difference between the results are well below 1 percent, which is most likely just normal variations between runs. The same applies to both average and minimum frame rates. Of course, Call of Duty is a very old game, unable to really tax the Core 2 Duo processor or even make effective use of the second core in this dual core processor.

Homeworld 2 - Vaygr Strike
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
58
181.4
526.33
.
56.67
179.81
525.67
.
56.67
179.94
520
.
57
180.58
524.67
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

Homeworld 2 have always been system limited, even with our old setup - the the single core Athlon 64 3500+. The situation here is practically the same situation as we saw earlier with Call of Duty. It's also quite an old game. Any variations present in the results are likely caused by normal variations between runs.

Nascar 2003 - Custom Replay
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
48.67
69.16
103.33
.
54
75.93
116.33
.
52.67
74.63
111.33
.
54
75.9
114.67
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

A slightly different picture and very interesting to discuss. Relatively constant from one run to the next, the results after repeated runs shows that the ASUS P5B Deluxe is definitely slower than the other boards. The main culprit seems to be sound - the ASUS P5B Deluxe uses the Analog Devices codec instead of the Realtek codec in the other three boards. The high number of voices used in this game caused slightly lower frame rates for the ASUS P5B Deluxe. Though the difference is somewhat significant, frame rates are high enough for that not to matter much.

Rome Total War - Custom Battle
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
18
25.94
32
.
22
27.31
33.67
.
19
24.38
30.33
.
20
25.93
31.58
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

A slightly more 'wilder' game to benchmark, Rome Total War results tend to fluctuare more than other benchmarks in our test suite.  The Gigabyte P965-DQ6 seems to be the faster board by a small margin, but that can come from the higher variations between runs with this game.

Full Spectrum Warrior - Custom Replay
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
92.67
124.76
163
.
95
126.8
167.67
.
95
126.4
167
.
95
126.25
166.08
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

We were quite surprised to see this old game scale this good with a second core. Again we're seeing slightly lower results from the ASUS P5B Deluxe, though nothing significant. These are averages of three runs, with little variations between runs so we're confident the different is more than just normal variations between runs. And again, the three other boards using Realtek's codec stays pretty close together.

Dungeon Siege - Greilyn Beach
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
28
73.29
178.67
.
31.33
75.22
186.33
.
30.33
73.46
179.33
.
28.67
74.68
177.67
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

The periodical hiccup from fetching data from the hard drive can be seen from the low minimum frame rates across all boards.  However small, the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 appears to be in the lead by a miniscule margin. Nothing to write home about and certainly nothing you'll likely notice during gameplay.

F1 Challenge - Custom Replay
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
36
84.94
130
.
37
86.44
133
.
37
85.78
131
.
36.67
86.12
132
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

Now we're back to the original trend - these boards offer basically the same performance across the board. So, it looks like the audio 'quirk' of the ASUS P5B Deluxe depends on how the developer code their game. Even when we push the number of voices all the way up, the results stays pretty much the same.

LockOn - F15 Demo
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
31
79.62
240.67
.
30.67
79.02
237
.
31
79.19
238
.
31
79.17
238.25
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

No surprises here.

Age of Empires III - Custom Replay
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
19.33
57.97
91
.
19.33
57.6
92.33
.
16
57.6
93
.
19
57.71
91.67
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

Well, that pretty much covers it. These four boards are practically neck to neck to each other on most of these benchmarks. There are some exceptions, but in all of them the differences are minute and you shouldn't be overly concerned. By the way things are going, we could pretty much predict what the next set of benchmarks will show - the same thing - but let's look anyway.

F.E.A.R - Performance Test
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
41.33
92.1
209.33
.
44
91.5
209.67
.
45.67
92.77
208
.
44.67
91.16
207.33
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

Nothing unusual.

Quake 4 - Data Processing Terminal
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
96
158.55
235.33
.
95.67
158.58
201.33
.
96
158.71
224
.
96
159.74
241.67
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

Same here.

Serious Sam II - Greendale
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
34.33
65.26
93
.
39.5
72.89
101.67
.
43.33
71.2
99.67
.
37.67
69.84
98.67
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

Interesting.  Looks like the sound situation rears its head again. The frame rate difference is pretty much the same here like we saw earlier on the Nascar 2003 test results. We're inclined not to believe the odd clock behaviour of the two boards - the ASUS P5B Deluxe and MSI P965 Platinum is at fault here. If it were, the MSI P965 Platinum results should be higher than all the other boards.

Oblivion - Market District
ASUS P5B Deluxe
Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3
MSI P965 Platinum
32.33
60.2
108.33
.
32.33
61.83
114.33
.
32.33
61.7
119.33
.
32.67
61.15
120.67
Minimum fps
Average fps
Maximum fps

Very little difference separates the boards in this benchmark. Frame rates are identical for all four boards.

Conclusion:

Picking a motherboard to use for your PC is never easy. There's a lot of factors to consider. Apparently, performance is not that big of factor anymore. Using the same settings, these four boards offer nearly identical performance, except for some differences due to different audio solutions. So, what other factors we can consider - features are one, support and experience are others. By far, ASUS P5B Deluxe with WiFi offers the most complete feature. Some highlights are the two Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, noise surpressed microphone and the most complete cable bundle. However, there are some things we feel ASUS could've implemented differently. Hardware monitoring, audio distortion (in addition to slower performance in some games) are the most prominent minus point we've seen from this board. Minus points that shouldn't be present on a high end offering.

Slightly different, MSI P965 Deluxe offers relatively complete set of features - lots of USB, Firewire ports, Diagnostic LED to troubleshoot problems. However, the problems we experience with the board is nothing sort of annoying - the lack of multiplier adjustments, inability to enable DMA transfer support, USB boot behaviour. The lack of cables is also another concern, after all why put 6 SATA connectors and only supply 1 or 2 SATA data cable? With its price point, the board has some intriguing potential if you look past its weak points or if / when MSI issues a newer BIOS to address the issues we saw. Plus the odd clock behaviour, we just don't 'feel' MSI has fully realized the potential of the MSI P965 Platinum.

Finally, the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 and P965-DS3. Both have their own appeal and address different users. However, over the other two boards, these two exhibited no problems or quirks during our testing and drew less objection from us. We're especially impressed with the DS3 and have been using it for some time now to conduct further test and overclocking test with our Core 2 Duo E6300 (but that's another article). Of course, of the two, the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 with dual x16 PCI-E graphics slot and DTS Connect enabled audio has the upper hand.



Gigabyte P965-DQ6
Gigabyte P965-DS3

We recommend the Gigabyte P965-DQ6 for users looking for an Intel Core 2 Duo / Crossfire motherboard with lots of storage options. For more budget restricted users, the Gigabyte P965-DS3 offer more than enough features for the average user, even those looking to overclock their Core 2 Duo processor. These two boards many not offer the most features, but they do offer a better overall experience for users.

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