Author: William Henning
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/asus_p5e3_premium_x48/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.
Introducing the X48
Today we will take a look at Asus' P5E3 Premium - a feature packed motherboard, based on the Intel X48 chipset.
Don't be surprised If this board seems familiar to you - it is basically a new version of the X38 based Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi that we reviewed last October. Visually, the boards look practically identical, with the only difference being this board having three less chassis fan connectors, two less USB ports, and one PCIe x1 slot less than the X38 based board. And other than being labelled with an 'X48' instead of an 'X38', and officially supporting a 1600MHz FSB - and presumably with a newer BIOS revision - I strongly suspect that other than the cost reductions due to the fewer connectors, the boards ARE basically the same.
Frankly, it is widely known on the net that the X48 chipset is basically identical to the X38 chipset, other than officially supporting 1600MHz FSB - at most it seems to be a new die revision of the X38. At most.
Mind you, none of the above really matters - as even the X38 was a fine chip.
Ok, now that we have the obvious out of the way, let's take a look at the specifications of this board.
| Specification |
|
CPU
|
Intel Socket 775 Core™2 Quad/Core™2 Extreme/Core™2 Duo/Pentium® Extreme/Pentium® D/Pentium® 4 Processors
Compatible with Intel® 05B/05A/06 processors Support Intel® next generation 45nm CPU |
|
Chipset
|
Intel X48
Intel ICH9R Intel Fast Memory Access Technology |
|
Front Side Bus
|
1600/1333/1066/800 MHz
|
|
Memory
|
4 x DIMM, Max. 8 GB, DDR3 2000*/1800*/1600/1333/1066/800 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel memory architecture Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) * Overclocking speed ** For the X.M.P. support, CPUs with FSB 1333 or above are recommended. *** Refer to www.asus.com or this user manual for the Memory QVL (Qualified Vendors List). |
|
Expansion Slots
|
3 x PCIe x16 (blue @PCIe2.0 x16 mode, black @PCIe x4 or x1 mode) supports CrossFire Technology
1 x PCIe x1 2 x PCI |
|
Storage
|
Southbridge
6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports Intel Matrix Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10 JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller 1 xUltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices 2 xExternal SATA 3.0 Gb/s port (SATA On-the-Go) Support RAID 0,1,JBOD |
|
LAN
|
Dual Gigabit LAN controllersMarvell 88E8056® PCIe Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2
Realtek RTL8110SC® PCI Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2 |
|
Wireless LAN
|
ASUS WiFi-AP @n
- 300Mbps* IEEE 802.11n (Draft) and backwards compatible with IEEE 802.11g / b - Software Access Point mode *300Mbps is IEEE 802.11n draft specification. Actual throughput will vary depending on the wireless environment and other parameters |
|
Audio
|
ADI® AD1988B 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
Coaxial / Optical S/PDIF out ports at back I/O Support Jack-Sensing, Enumeration, Multi-streaming AI Audio 2 |
|
IEEE 1394
|
Agere® L-FW3227 1394a controller supports 2 x 1394a ports (one at midboard; one at back panel)
|
|
USB
|
10 USB 2.0 ports (4 ports at mid-board, 6ports at back panel)
|
|
ASUS AI Lifestyle Features
|
ASUS Power Saving Solution
- ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit) - ASUS 3rd Generation 8-phase Power - ASUS AI Nap ASUS AI Lifestyle - ASUS Express Gate - ASUS WiFi-AP @n - ASUS AI Direct Link ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution - ASUS Fanless Design: Pure Copper Heat-pipe solution - ASUS Fanless Design: Stack Cool 2 - ASUS Q-Fan 2 - ASUS Optional Fan for Water-cooling or Passive-Cooling only ASUS Crystal Sound - ASUS Noise Filter - ASUS AI Audio 2 ASUS EZ DIY - ASUS Q-Connector - ASUS Q-Shield - ASUS O.C. Profile - ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 - ASUS EZ Flash 2 - ASUS AI Slot Detector |
|
Overclocking Features
|
Intelligent overclocking tools
- ASUS AI Booster Utility Precision Tweaker 2 - vDIMM: 65 -step DRAM voltage control - vCore: Adjustable CPU voltage at 0.00625V increment - vChipset (N.B.): 49-step voltage control - vFSB Termination: 16-step reference voltage control - vCPU PLL: 65-step CPU PLL voltage control SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection) - FSB tuning from 200MHz up to 800MHz at 1MHz increment - Memory tuning from 800MHz up to 3200MHz - PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to 150MHz at 1MHz increment Overclocking Protection - ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall) |
|
Special Features
|
Multi-language BIOS
ASUS MyLogo 3 |
|
Back Panel I/O Ports
|
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
2 x External SATA 1 x S/PDIF Out 1 x IEEE 1394a 2 x LAN(RJ45) port 6 x USB 2.0/1.1 8 -Channel Audio I/O 2 x WiFi-AP @n antenna jack |
|
Internal I/O Connectors
|
2 x USB connectors support additional 4 USB ports
1 x Floppy disk drive connector 1 x IDE connector 6 x SATA connectors 1 x IEEE 1394a connector 1 x CPU Fan connector 1 x Chassis Fan connector 1 x Power Fan connector 1 x COM connector 1 x S/PDIF Out connector 2 x4-pin ATX 12V Power connector 24 -pin ATX Power connector Front panel audio connector Chassis Intrusion connector CD/AUX audio in System Panel Connector |
|
BIOS
|
16 Mb Flash ROM
DMI 2.0 AMI BIOS PnP WfM 2.0 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
|
UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
FDD cable 6 x Serial ATA cables 1 x 2-port Serial ATA power cable ASUS Q-Shield User's manual ASUS WiFi-AP @n manual 3 in 1 Q-connector 1 x 2-port USB2.0 / 1-port IEEE1394 module 2 x Optional Fan for Water-Cooling or Passive-Cooling only ASUS WiFi-AP @n omni-directional antenna |
|
Support Disc
|
Drivers
ASUS PC Probe II ASUS AI Suite Anti-virus software (OEM version) ASUS Update ASUS WiFi-AP @n Wizard Image-Editing Suite |
|
Form Factor
|
ATX Form Factor
12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x24.4 cm ) |
The Board
As you can see, the Asus P5E3 Premium has a nice clean layout - and it definitely has some serious heat pipes and cooling fins.
In the box you will find:
Asus did a really good job on the heatsinks surrounding the processor socket, I did not have any trouble mounting our Noctua-12. Note that the second motherboard power socket can accommodate either four or eight pin secondary motherboard power supply connectors.
Note the bright blue/white logo on the Northbridge heatspreader.
Four DDR3 dimm slots, color coded for channel pairing.
Six SATA2 connectors, four of them at right angle to the board - I am not a fan of right angle SATA connectors; and the IDE connector round out this section of the board.
Two blue PCIe 2.0 16x slots and a black 16x connector that can run in 4x or 1x mode only, a single PCIe 1x slot and two PCI slots complete the I/O expansion slots. I don't like the fact that if you use two dual slot GPU's you will lose access to the PCIe 1x slot and one of the PCI slots, leaving you with only two usable expansion slots (one PCI, and the black PCIe 1x/4x connector).
The back I/O panel has six USB 2.0 ports, optical and SP/DIFF output, two Gigabit ethernet ports, dual eSATA ports, a firewire port, six regular audio connectors, two WiFi connectors, and a partridge in a pear tree.
The BIOS
When you turn on the Asus P5E3 Premium, you are presented with the Splashtop desktop. In our review of the X38 based predecessor of the P5E3 Premium, the P5E3 Deluxe Wifi, we presented some information about Splashtop - so visit that review if you want some more details on Splashtop; for now, suffice it to say that it is a tiny Linux based desktop that integrates web browsing and Skype into the motherboard, so you don't even have to boot another OS such as Windows for basic web surfing or making Skype calls. Frankly, I really like the feature, and I hope that over time it is expanded to some other applications - perhaps even OpenOffice - along with a small user area to save files.
If you don't do anything for five seconds, the boot process will continue, and you will see the "Ai Lifestyle" splash screen. This screen gives you an opportunity to enter into the Asus P5E3 Premium's BIOS - where you can tweak it to your heart's content.
The "Main" menu, and its three sub-menu's, are quite standard, no real need for us to talk about them.
Ahh.. the "Ai Tweaker" menu. This is "THE" place to be if you are an enthusiast and want to tweak the best performance out of your system. If, like me, you turn off all the "auto" overclocking aids, the options available for tweaking fill three screen fulls!
The selection of Vcore voltages is fine grained, and the GTL Voltage references are also settable, along with CPU PLL voltage, DRAM voltage, Nortbridge voltage and reference, Southbridge voltage and clock overcharging voltage.
The processor base clock rate can be set by simply typing in what MegaHertz you want for it; and of course the multiplier ratio can be varied (up to the maximum allowed by whichever processor you are using).
PCIe and DDR3 frequencies, and FSB strap, as well as DDR timings are also quite tweakable.
There are a LOT of memory timing parameters to play with :-)
The "Advanced" menu and its sub-screens are not that exciting.
More BIOS
The "Power" menu is also pretty standard.
As is the "Boot" menu.
The "Tools" menu is more interesting.
The EZ Flash 2 utility is quite easy to use, thankfully no more need to drag out a floppy to update the BIOS! Any thumb drive will do.
The "OC Profile Configuration" not only has the two standard flash based profiles we've gotten used to, it adds a "Start OC Profile" that can be used to save/load profiles from a thumb or other drive. Nice!
The "Ai Net 2" can help us find Ethernet cabling faults.
The "Exit" menu, while necessary, is quite boring.
Test Setup
We made the test systems as similar as we could, other than the memory - so it should give us some very interesting results! Hardware used for testing the motherboards:
Benchmarks Used Here is a listing of all the tests we performed: NVIDIA's ForceWare 169.12 video drivers were used.
Business Winstone
Very interesting... the Asus P5E3 Premium does well at stock, and very well when overclocked - but the top result was taken on its older sibling, the X38 based P5E3 Deluxe.
Content Creation
We have an even better result with the content creation benchmark - the P5E3 Premium did extremely well at the E8500's stock speed, and totally dominated the overclocked results.
WinRAR
The P5E3 Premium got an excellent score at the E8500's stock speed - slightly beating the same processor in an X38 board - and repeated the slight lead over the X38 when overclocked to the max. Strangely, the X38 beat the X48 with a 400MHz FSB.
HDTach
For some strange reason the SATA results were a little lower for the X48 than for the X38, however the CPU utilization was 0% in all cases for the X48.
LAME MP3
The P5E3 Deluxe (x38) was slightly faster for LAME than the P5E3 Premium (x48) for stock 333MHz and overclocked 400MHz FSB results, and tied for the highest overclock.
TMPGEnc
Excellent stock and overclocked results for the P5E3 Premium for TMPGEnc video encoding!
XViD
And also excellent results for XViD encoding!
Call of Duty
Wow. Call of Duty loves the Asus P5E3 Premium - just look at those results! Here the X48 had a 13.1FPS advantage over the x38 at stock E8500 speeds, and totally dominated the chart when overclocked!
Commanche 4
Strangely enough the X38 did better at Comanche than the X48. Go figure.
Doom 3
Very good Doom 3 results for the Asus P5E3 Premium; it was slightly beaten by its X38 based sibling at the stock 333MHz FSB setting, but the X48 dominated the charts when overclocked.
Quake 4
Oh my.
Excellent Quake 4 results for the Asus P5E3 Premium, stock and especially overclocked.
Halo
The X38 based Asus P5E3 Deluxe slightly beat the X48 based Asus P5E3 Premium for Halo, but the top spot was taken by the X48!
Jedi Knight
The X48 based P5E3 Premium did extremely well here, noticably beating its X38 based sibling at stock and overclocked.
UT4K
Very interesting!
For Unreal Tournament 2004, the X38 has a noticable lead over the X48 at stock and at the overclocked settings!
Sandra CPU
I think this is the last split chart... the motherboard really has little effect on the Sandra CPU result, the X38 and X48 are very close here.
Sandra Bandwidth
The X48 based P5E3 Premium had a slight lead for Sandra memory bandwidth over the X38 based P5E3 Deluxe at stock and overclocked speeds.
Sandra Latency
The P5E3 Premium's latency numbers are excellent when overclocked.
RightMark Read
Very nice.
The X48 based Asus P5E3 Premium edges out the x38 based P5E3 Deluxe at stock and overclocked results, taking the top spot with an amazing 12.2GB/sec memory read speed when overclocked.
RightMark Write
Slightly different story for writes - here the X38 slightly edges the X48 (mind you the difference is so small it is probably just random variability) but the top result came from the overclocked P5E3 Premium X48 board.
RightMark Latency
Ignoring the old, unbelievable results from the old Striker II, the Asus P5E3 Premium did very well at stock, and took top honors when overclocked.
RightMark Bandwidth
The X48 based P5E3 Premium slightly lost to the X38 based P5E3 Deluxe for bandwidth at stock speeds, and it was basically clobbered by the DDR2 results from the X38 based Gigabyte X38 DQ6.
Overclocking
What can I say?
New lab record.
4.37GHz with a Core 2 Duo E8500 (45nm Penryn dual core) - with just air cooling!
And the system was stable!
How did I get this high?
Power Consumption
As you can see from the chart, at 333MHz the X38 and X48 consume basically the same amount of power, however at 400MHz, the X48 consumes a bit more when idle, and a bit less when loaded. When highly overclocked, allowing for the 95MHz processor advantage for the X48, the power consumption is basically the same as well.
Conclusion
I just recently finished the E8500 review on the X38 version of the board - and I was amazed there at the 4.27GHz I obtained. The X38 was usable up to 500MHz FSB, but I found that the X48 could be stabilized as high as 525MHz - albeit with a lower multiplier for the CPU, resulting in lower performance than the 9.5x460 speed I found to be the best performer. Therefore for the "best performance overclock" I backed down to a "mere" 460x9.5 setting.
I must admit that I don't like some of the cost cutting measures (leaving off a PCIe 1x slot and two USB ports) compared to the earlier X38 based board - however I do very much like the extra overclocking elbow room the board gave me. You may well say that an extra 95MHz is not a big deal - and you would largely be right - however it sure does feel nicer to achieve a higher overclock, and at a lower Vcore to boot.
This board gave me the highest memory speeds I've yet obtained!
Basically I think the P5E3 Premium rocks, and it definitely deserves an Overclocker's Award.
Please do not redistribute or use this article in whole, or in part, for commercial purposes.