ASUS’s P5K range of motherboards based on the new Intel P35 chipset comes in a range of flavours, from the very basic to the super-loaded, today we take a look at
the P5KR, which seems to offer a good number of features for not a lot of money.
Currently there are at least 10 different variants of the P5K series of motherboards available on the Australian market which are based on the P35 chipset (even more which are based on the G31 and G33 chipset with integrated graphics) and they range in price from AU$180 for the P5K-SE up to nearly AU$400 for the P5K Premium. The P5KR we’re looking at today is closer to the bottom end of the range, sells for around AU$210 and comes with the following specifications:
- LGA775 CPU Platform (Support for Core 2 Duo/Quad/Extreme, Pentium D, Pentium 4 CPUs)
- 800/1066/1333MHz CPU Front Side Bus Support
- Intel P35 Northbridge/iCH9R Southbridge Chipset
- DDR2 667/800/1066MHz Dual Channel Memory – 4 x Slots, 8GB Max Total
- 6 x SATA-II Ports (1 x External/eSATA)
- 12 x USB2.0 Ports (6 on Back Panel, 6 by header on motherboard)
- 2 x PCI-Express x16 Slots (One Supports x16, other supports x4 or x1 modes) – Crossfire Compatible
- 1 x PCI-Express x1 Slot, 3 x PCI Slots
- 2 x Firewire400 Ports (1 x Rear Panel, 1 x Motherboard header)
- 8-Channel Audio w. S/PDIF output.
- 1 x GigLAN Port
- 1 x ATA-133 Connector, 1 x FDD Connector, 1 x Serial Port Header, 3 x Aux Fan Connectors
- 12” x 9.6” ATX Form Factor
So that’s the basic specs of the P5KR, and considering its price it’s not doing too bad compared to some of its competition, but being an ASUS product, it’s unlikely it’ll ever be the cheapest on the market.
Compared to the normal P5K, the ‘R’ version has a much better RAID capability. While the normal P5K will support RAID 0 and 1 on the IDE port and the SATA ports which aren’t controlled by the Southbridge (IDE and 2 x SATA ports are controlled by a separate controller), the R version has support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 for the 4 SATA ports connected to the RAID capable ICH9R Southbridge chip. This is the only difference between the two boards and as such you pay a $20 premium for the R version, so you’d want to make use of the RAID capability if you chose the P5KR over the normal P5K.
As you can see from the specs that have been listed, the P5KR isn’t short on connectivity, there’s heaps of USB ports, Firewire, Gigabit LAN and even an eSATA connector built into the rear I/O panel. There is no PS/2 mouse port on the P5K range, and seeing as no-one has made PS/2 mice for years it’s about time, there is however still a PS/2 keyboard port and I still prefer a PS/2 keyboard over a USB one with our current range of operating systems, they just work better, so this is fine by me. Underneath the keyboard port and in place of the PS/2 mouse port there are 2 USB ports, giving a total of 6 USB ports on the rear I/O panel. 6 more USB ports are provided via headers on the motherboard that you can either send to the front or back of your case, so it’s unlikely you’ll run out of ports with this board, though if they wanted to get with the times a bit more they could include a Firewire800 port alongside the aging Firewire400 port, perhaps I’m just being narky though.
There’s reasonable support on the board for some older connectivity types, for instance a floppy controller is still included, as well as a header for a 9-Pin serial port, but thankfully they haven’t wasted time with a parallel port, have the draw the line somewhere I guess.
As is becoming standard with many motherboards, particularly from ASUS, there is no Northbridge cooling fan (one less thing to go wrong) instead there is a heatpipe running between the Northbridge and power regulators next to CPU, each with their own heatsink, and they rely on the air from the CPU fan to keep them cool. This really is an excellent solution for standard systems, but for the modder’s and tweaker’s out there, you’d have to change this if you went to water cooling for the CPU, or if you use a CPU heatsink/fan that doesn’t direct air over these areas.
The P5KR has 2 x PCI-Express x16 slots for video cards and is compatible with ATI’s crossfire system, however the second slot can only be used in x4 or x1 mode, only the top slot can be used in full x16 mode. There is also only one PCI-Express x1 slot for add-on cards (though an un-used x16 slot will work as well), and 3 old style PCI slots. This should be enough slots for most people, as just about everything you need is already built in to board, even the built in soundcard is quite decent. It may be ‘only’ a Realtek chipset, but it gives 8-Channel sound with High Definition audio and even a digital output (S/PDIF) as standard, not too shabby, and if you want better it can always be disabled when you put another soundcard in.
CPU and memory support with the P5KR is as good as you can get, as you’d expect when using the latest Intel Chipset, so support for all the current Intel LGA775 CPUs is there, including support for the new 1333Mhz FSB models, and even supports the new 45nm Intel CPUs (with a BIOS update).
The P35 is made to support new DDR3 memory, however the PK5R still uses the older DDR2 RAM, so it’s great for people wanting to upgrade and use their old bits. Officially the P35 only supports DDR2 up to 800MHz, however ASUS say this board has native support for 1066Mhz (PC2-8500) DDR2 RAM with up to 2GB of RAM per slot and a max total of 8GB – providing you have an operating system to support it.
Another feature of high-end motherboards that has found its way into the mainstream market is that the capacitors are now becoming all solid type, instead of the older Electrolytic type that had a habit of bulging or exploding, rendering the motherboard useless. The solid type, as is found on the P5K range are far more reliable, with a lifespan up to 6 times longer than Electrolytic capacitors. All the capacitors on the P5KR are solid Capacitors, meaning better reliability.
So we’ve spoken a bit about what features the P5KR has, but now it’s time to see how it performs.
For our performance tests, we’re going to be comparing it to OzHardware’s test bench motherboard, the ASUS P5N32-E SLI, which runs nVidia’s 680i chipset, still one of the most popular on the market and one that supposedly still gives the best performance. We see how it goes against the new Intel P35 based P5KR in a range of different tests.
The Test Setup:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU
- ASUS P5N32-E SLI, and ASUS P5KR Motherboards
- Corsair TWIN2X 2GB PC2-8500 1066MHz Memory Kit (2 x 1GB)
- XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320MB PCI-Ex16 Video Card
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II Hard Drive
- Antec Basiq 500W ATX Power Supply
- Windows XP Pro SP2
We will be using PCMark05, 3DMark06, SiSoft Sandra and the game Prey to test all areas of performance for the motherboards. As both motherboards natively support only 800MHz DDR2 RAM, this is the speed it has been left at on the P5N32-E SLI board, and the P5KR, however we also ran the P5KR with the memory at 1066MHz due to the additional support for the speed from ASUS, and because we wanted to see what kind of difference it made of course.
Firstly PCMark05:
For PCMark05, all tests were run on default PCMark settings and with the latest WHQL graphics drivers available at the time of testing (Forceware 162.18), no beta drivers here. The tests were run twice and an average taken to give the final results, though in this case the tests were always only a few marks apart.
As you can see from the above graph, the P5KR does have a performance advantage over the nForce 680i based board, albeit not a great one, but we’re talking about two systems with the same CPU, memory and video card, there’s never going to be a huge difference, but the P5KR is clearly on top in this case, especially when the memory is used to its full potential.
Next: 3DMark06
With the 3DMark tests, again everything was run on default settings with the same video card drivers and always run twice for consistency.
For the 3DMark06 tests there is little as makes no difference between the boards in terms of 3D performance, with only 2 marks setting apart the two motherboards when run at standard settings. With the memory speed bumped up the increase was smaller then expected to be honest, only picking up 10 marks over the slower memory, and the marks were picked up mostly in 3DMark’s CPU tests only, all other tests had almost identical results as the test done with slower memory.
Next: Prey:
We’re using Prey to test real world gaming performance, done using both normal video settings and 4x Anti-Aliasing. All tests were performed twice with the final results being the average of each test.
.
From the above graphs we see there is almost no difference between the two boards, except when running the memory at its full potential when we see a very (!) small increase in performance. If you were to upgrade to this board and only had 800MHz RAM, based on what we’ve seen so far I wouldn’t be spending anything extra on new RAM just yet. But let’s see what the SiSoft Sandra tests can tell us.
Next: SiSoft Sandra:
With SiSoft Sandra we focused on tests that focus on the CPU and memory systems to see if they could finally show a significant difference between our two boards.
.
For the two CPU tests shown above, there is very little difference, even when the memory speed is ramped up. So for raw processing power, there’s almost no difference between the two, however if you want to be picky the P5KR does come out slightly in front on both tests.
The memory bandwidth tests shows a rather surprising result, when both boards are running the memory at 800MHz, the P5KR lags a fair way behind the nForce 680i motherboard, and only when the memory is taken up to 1066MHz does the P5KR finally catch up and *just* get in front. This is a surprising result and suggests that the memory controller on the P35 chipset really isn’t as good as it’s nVidia counterpart, but more tests to come.
The last test of the day shows a very different story with regards to the memory, with the nForce 680i motherboard coming in significantly slower than both P5KR tests, showing the P5KR gets far better performance from the CPU/Motherboard’s cache and memory subsystem. As it’s an Intel chipset and an Intel CPU, perhaps the ‘Intel Fast Memory Access’ that Intel talk about in their new P35 chipset does actually make a difference, though certainly not in overall bandwidth as we saw with the previous test.
Conclusion:
The P5KR from ASUS is a well featured motherboard and would suit a large market, from the home/office user after a fast and reliable PC, to a semi-serious gamer who doesn’t want to waste their money on SLI technology or useless features that no-one ever uses. The P5KR has proved to be a solid performer, and even though there’s no real improvement over the nForce 680i motherboard we compared it to, considering the success the 680i has had in the performance market, it’s really nothing to be ashamed of.
If I were looking to upgrade my home PC, I’d probably save my $20 and go for the base P5K without the RAID functionality, but for those of you out there who want a well featured, good value board and DO need the RAID feature, this could be the one for you.
OzHardware Rating – 8.5/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
-
|81.84.144.xxx |2008-05-28 11:11:38 David - xfx geforce 8800gts 320mbHey, i have a p5kr and a xfx 8800gts 320mb and he only can read the 2d standard and 3d performance he cant read the 3d low power, btw i have the latest drivers, can someone help me plz ? thx :)
-
|79.141.23.xxx |2009-12-01 18:53:52 alrawan - please helpPlease help. Put the type of processor Core 2 Quad 2.8 -12 MB cache to feel Broken full power as well as in some cases, the computer stops working. Note was examined for the processor on the motherboard again was effective. I'm a fan of products Azzouz So Aahb change the motherboard. Note that the type of motherboard he has is a kind Azzouz Khak please set the imbalance and assistance with appreciation
