ASUS P6T Deluxe X58 Motherboard Review

Page 3 - Closer look, Rear I/O, BIOS and Overclocking Potential

The closer look at ASUS P6T Deluxe reveals few things. First of all the motherboard is rather... ornate. Since the board is high-end it comes with a bunch of doohickeys and the various chip controllers are endless. The big processor socket and the amount of mosfets are a factor too. Most ATX motherboards so far had usually 4 DIMM slots, but ASUS P6T Deluxe has two more and these has no small footprint either. A lot of effort and creativity was apparently made by the ASUS engineers in order to fit all these parts on the board.

The oddest looking thing is the battery though. Not only it is sticking up but it is also placed on the opposite end of the motherboard (opposite of its usual position that is). But despite all these (and any free space on the motherboard), ASUS overlooked nothing. Both SAS connectors and the four SATA are turned backwards. That's quite reasonable, since on such expensive board, surely a high-end videocard is to be used and we all know they rarely (these days) are shorter than the motherboards, and indeed at times are even longer (especially the dual-cored NVIDIA and AMD cards), thus easily overshadowing the SATA connectors, making your life miserable if you don't use L-shaped SATA connectors.

As for the back plate connectors, you'll get all the ones you need (and some you probably don't). Having Gigabit Ethernet connector was the fashionable choice, not any more, now the fad calls for two. There is bunch of USB 2.0 connectors (eight to be precise), digital S/PDIF sound connector, Firewire and universal PS/2 connector in case you still hold dear some old mouse or keyboard.

BIOS, Overclock

When we speak of overclock with ASUS P6T Deluxe we are inevitably referring to the motherboard BIOS and all of its special features (if any). But then again BIOS doesn't necessarily binds overclock, so lets sort things one at a time.

What we see is the AMI BIOS in its most recent version - 2.61. Its much easier to navigate than any of the previous ones, that MSI for example are still using. The interface has something resembling "tabs" and if you got ASUS motherboard through the last two years you're probably well accustomed to it. ASUS P6T Deluxe has also an UEFI alternative - Express Gate. UEFI is alternative to BIOS destined to gradually replace it. UEFI has friendly (and variegated) interface allowing use of mouse, animated menus and use of UEFI applications such as, Web Broser, E-Mail client and various other that are available to you in mere seconds should you choose not to load OS (or have problems preventing you from even installing one) and search the Internet for information and solutions. Express Gate is somewhat different though - it is essentially an mini-OS (property of ASUS), that has SKYPE, MSN, ICQ and other IM clients, Web Broswer and so on.

As you can see ASUS had heavily accented on overclocker's needs. X58 with its SLI and Crossfire support predisposes enthusiasts and it is exactly they that are expected to buy it along with Core i7 processors throughout the next year, since Intel's new processor is not quite suitable for the common user. We get all kinds of overclock settings - including automatic and semi-automatic ones. There is the AI NET 2 diagnostic tool, that diagnoses the network before loading the OS (no one bothered to ask if you want it or not, its just there!) and ASUS OC Profile 2, the benefits from which are well known for quite a while now.

Any overclocker (or at least any man that have some observations on its old Core 2 platform for that matter) will notice big difference from before. There is no FSB, only BUS, just like AMD processors. Now the memory controller is inside the processor, thus no need of FSB. The BUS is running at frequency much lower than 133MHz and that,s why the processor has much higher multiplier in order to reach its high frequency. In this instance we tested with Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition, that runs at 3.2GHz or 25x133MHz. As we already had said it before - Core i7 has new communication protocol, namely - Quick Path. When you overclock Core i7 you must remember to keep QP values twice as high than the ones of the memory frequency. In other words, if you run at DDR3 1600MHz memory, if QP is under 3200MHz the motherboard will not even pass POST. Looking at the immense memory settings, we cannot overlook a thing that might be the most maleficent feature of ASUS P6T Deluxe - the memory voltage is limited at 1.65V. Though the problem is not exactly in the motherboard, it is actually in the processor - after all the memory controller is integrated in it, and the high memory voltage could leak somewhere else and do its damage. MSI however found with their first Core i7 X58 Eclipse motherboard solution for this problem - a buffer between the processor and the memory, that can supply voltage of over 2.00V only for the memory, eliminating any threat to the processor in this way. Interesting enough, ASUS Rampage II Extreme uses that same solution.

Upon receiving the motherboard, we were still lacking the proper brackets for the CPU cooler, so some improvisation had to occur. Two long cable ties dealt with the task of securing our favorite Noctua NH-C12P cooler to the motherboard. And wouldn't you know it - on the following morning the proper brackets generously sent to us by Noctua arrived, so we mounted the cooler properly and continued eagerly with our tests!

With ease we overclocked the processor all the way up to the measly 3840MHz, where we had to stop due to cooling issues. Even at 1.35 V the 45nm Nehalem heated up to 90 degrees centigrade with one of the best cooler we at ModReactor had ever tested - the engineering sample was extremely hot. Still, Intel assures that voltages up to 1.45V are OK with it (just like with Core 2 Quad) as long as adequate cooling is provided. We'll soon repeat the tests with good water cooling as soon as mounting brackets for the blocks we have become available. And now lets go on with the tests.