Introduction



Intel’s socket 775 is running its last meters in sight of the finish line, as the Nehalem platform is approaching us rapidly now. Only a few more months to go and we'll be working with brand-new sockets, chipsets, memory ... in short new technologies. We all know that when a certain platform is about to be replaced, manufacturers try to push the old technology a last time, just to show what really is possible. So, before we actually make the change to the Nehalem series, we have a look at Intel's latest push in technology as they gave the P35/X38 chipset a few new updates, making it the best performing chipset for the S775 CPU: the P45 and X48 chipsets.

P35 versus P45

We've already provided you with our findings on the P35 and X38 conclusions in both our P35 round-up and the DFO X38 review, so you already know that the X38 mainly is a P35 tuned for higher-end processors and memory.

Now, after reading more about the differences between the X38 and P35 chipsets on the Intel homepage and looking at the comparison between the two, I can only say that the only drastic difference is the extra x16 PCI-E lane. In fact, the X38 is just a higher-binned P35 chipset and should guarantee better overclocks and tighter Northbridge latency straps. That's all, nothing more, nothing less

So what is the main difference between the P35 and P45 then?

PCI express 1.0 (8GB/s) => PCI express 2.0 (16GB/s)

ICH9 => ICH10

Introduction of the 'Intel Extreme Tuning' support

While the first two are only minor improvements (well, not world-shocking any way), the third evolution is interesting. Intel is now openly supporting the overclocking community in spite of numerous rumors of the Nehalem not being overclock-friendly (FSB and multiplier can be locked). Those rumors were invalidated by Intel, so Nehalem should be overclockable, and in addition, they've made overclocking a lot less difficult. Well ... it's easier to reach high clocks with a minimum of effort and extreme overclockers have more tools for absolutely maxing out their system. Actually, many motherboard manufacturers have started competitions all over the world to draw attention to their version of the P45 chipset, showing a lot (really, a lot) of new options and settings. Clock skews, amplitudes, GTL+ voltages and many more are available for the enthusiasts among us.

What to expect from this article?

Of course, we'll be focusing on what both the MSI P45 Platinum and Asus Maximus II Formula can bring us in terms of performance, overclocking and the performance gained from overclocking. We'll be giving you basic pointers for better results and will spend a little time on the energy-saving technology of both MSI and Asus. But first, we'll start with the pictures to find out what we'll be dealing with.

Box Lay-out

Undressing the package, we start with the box itself; continue by looking at the extras added to the mainboard and end with the mainboard itself.





Accessories

Quickguide

Manual

Driver CD for Windows XP

Driver CD for Windows Vista

Efinity extra

1 x Pata HDD cable

1 x Floppy cable

1 x Crossfire link cable

1 x I/o backpanel

1 x Molex to 2 x sata connector

4 x Sata cable

1 x USB + IEEE1394 bracket

1 x M-Connectors

Motherboard





Flashy lights all over the board; these four green ones tell me the system is running.



Officially, DrMos stands for:

GreenPower: less wasted energy

XpressCool: cooler surface temperatures

RapidBoost: better overclockability



The socket area is quite open; insulating the motherboard for extreme overclocking shouldn't be a big problem.

1 x Clear CMOS button

1 x PS/2 Keyboard

1 x PS/2 Mouse

1 x eSATA port

1 x IEEE1394 port (optional)

6 x USB 2.0 ports

1 x RJ45 LAN Jack

1 x 6 in 1 audio jack

1 x Optical SPDIF-out

2 x PCI Express x16 slots (1 x16 or 2 x8)

2 x PCI Express x1 slots

2 x PCI slots

1 x CPU / System x 5 FAN connectors

1 x CD-in connector

1 x Front panel audio connector

1 x Front panel connector

1 x chasis intrusion connector

1 x serial port pinheader

3 x USB 2.0 connectors

1 x Floppy disk drive connector

8 x Serial ATAII connectors

1 x ATA133 connector

1 x SPDIF-Out connector

1 x Clear CMOS Jumper

1 x IEEE1394 connector support additional 1 port (optional)

2 x HW-OC FSB jumpers

1 x GreenPower Genie connector (optional)

1 x Reset Button

1 x Power Button

1 x TPM module connector (optional)



The hardware-OC FSB jumpers.



2-phase Power on Memory/Northbridge



Bling-bling cooling unit, the CircuPipe2!

The BIOS

The groundwork of a good overclocking motherboard, in fact just of a good motherboard, lies in the bios and the number of options and settings you can manage from the bios. Let's have a look at what MSI's bios engineers have come up with, having in mind that the P45 chipset is launched as an enthusiast’s and environment-friendly product.

Main screen



H/W monitor



GreenPower



Cell menu

The overclocking center of a MSI motherboard is in the Cell Menu.




Memory-Z is a new feature in the Cell menu's: it gives specific and detailed information about the SPD settings of the memory sticks plugged in.





Opening the advanced configuration options, we find a new level of tweaking possibilities. Only for the real enthusiasts, to be honest, but it's worth the effort if you want to max out your setup completely.




The ClockGen tuner is used for better overclockability. Explaining what each setting does, would take us too far, just know that tweaking these settings will give you more headroom when overclocking.




A reasonable extended voltage section: play with the REF voltages in order to stabilize your overclock.

Let's have a look at what Asus delivers with their Maximus II Formula motherboard.

Box Lay-out




The accessories are all packed together in a box inside the main box.



Accessoires

LCD Poster

ASUS Optional Fan

3 in 1 ASUS Q-Connector Kit

UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable

Floppy disk drive cable

SATA cables

SATA power cables

2-port USB2.0 + IEEE 1394a module

Q-Shield

Driver DVD

User's manual

SupremeFX X-Fi Audio Card




Motherboard

What does the motherboard offers us:

1 x PS/2 Keyboard port(purple)

1 x eSATA port

2 x LAN (RJ45) ports

6 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports

1 x IEEE1394a port

1 x Clr CMOS switch

2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (single max @16,dual @ x8 speed)

3 x PCIe x1 ( the PCIEx1_1 (black) is compatible with audio slot)

2 x PCI 2.2

3 x USB 2.0 connectors supports additional 6 USB 2.0 ports

1 x Floppy disk drive connector

1 x IDE connector for two devices

6 x SATA connectors (Blue)

2 x Speeding HDD connectors (Black)

8 x Fan connectors: 1 x CPU / 1 x PWR / 3 x Chassis / 3 x Optional

3 x thermal sensor connectors

1 x IEEE1394a connector

1 x Chassis Intrusion connector

24-pin ATX Power connector

8-pin ATX 12V Power connector

1 x En/Dis-able Clr CMOS

1 x LCD Poster connector

1 x ROG connector

1 x Power-on switch

1 x Reset switch



Special features

Asus added some extra overclocking features as well:

Pin Fin Thermal Module

Extreme Engine
- 16-phase power design for CPU
- 3-phase power design for north bridge
- 2-phase power design for memory

BIOS Flashback

iROG

Extreme Tweaker
- CPU Level Up
- AI Overclocking (intelligent CPU frequency tuner)
- ASUS AI Booster Utility
- O.C Profile

Speeding HDD

Voltiminder LED

COP EX (Component Overheat Protection - EX)

ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)

Loadline Calibration

Let's have a look at the bios ->

Main screen - Extreme Tweaker

This board is for the enthusiasts, no doubt about that. Asus even made the tuning page of the BIOS the main page!











Skews, refs, voltages, timings ... it's got it all. If you want to get the absolute most out of your system, you'll be given more than enough tools by Asus to try to do so.

Advanced





Power





All in all, quite a complete bios. We're missing the energy saving options, though.

Test setup

Intel Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 E8500 (from )
Cooling	Stock Aluminum Intel Heatsink
Mainboard	Asus Maximum II Formula MSI P45 Platinum
Memory	2 * 1GB PC6400 TeamGroup
Other	Sapphire HD4850 Tagan 520W PSU Western Digital 320Gb SATA HDD Windows XP SP3 Dutch

Methodology: benchmarks

To compare all motherboards, we used the following benchmarks:

3DMark01

3DMark03

3DMark05

3DMark06

Aquamark

Superpi 1M

Superpi 32M

Lavalys Everest: Memory latency

Cinebench 10

PCMark05

TechArp HD x264 benchmark

Trackmania Nations

Methodology: test settings

We used two different test settings:

- CPU @ 333x9.5; Memory @ 400 4-4-4-10
- CPU @ 500x8; Memory @ 500 5-5-5-15

Futuremarks tests

These synthetic 3D benchmarks from Futuremark allow you to evaluate the expected performance of a system with different generations of games. As each 3DMark uses different features and quality settings, it allows you to get an idea of how your system will perform.



3DMark01

3DMark01 has become more and more a system benchmark rather than a graphics card benchmark over the years. Nowadays, you can really see the difference in DDR2 and DDR3 memory setups, high and low FSB setups and so on.



The MSI leaves the Asus behind, however, by quite a small margin.

3DMark03

3DMark03 is very GPU dependant, which comes down to: the more cores, the higher the score. SLI and CF performance increase is spectacular in this benchmark.



As expected, the difference between both motherboards is very, very small.

3DMark05

This product of the 3DMark series is again more CPU dependant than its predecessor, meaning that an overclocked CPU will have a big influence on the end score.



The difference between the Maximus II Formula and P45 Platinum is hardly worth mentioning.

3DMark06

3DMark06 features a CPU test which only relies on the processing power, in other words: it doesn't matter which graphics card you're running, at same clocks, the cpu score will remain the same, making it ideal for cpu comparisons.



Again, not that much of a difference.

Aquamark3

While this 3D benchmark is aging quickly, it still serves as a good evaluation tool for system performance, as it stresses the VGA, CPU and memory subsystem, any advantage had from a faster motherboard or memory setting will be apparent.



The difference is small, though noticeable. Keep in mind that Aquamark3 is sensitive for any setting: cpu/gpu/ram overclocking will almost always help you.

Let's have a look at some 2D benchmarks ->

SuperPi

The mother of all “enthusiast” benchmarks, SuperPi, still is a good single core measurement tool to determine what's fast and what's not.




The results are again quite close to each other, although the Asus is losing ground in the 32M benchmark. Having the previous set of benchmarks in mind, I'm wondering why the Maximus II Formula can't beat the P45 Platinum.

Lavalys Everest 4.50



We used the memory benchmark utility to measure the performance of the memory management.




This is a real eye-opener, as the Asus Maximus II Formula gets pounded by Msi's P45 Platinum in terms of memory performance. The explication why this happens, you can find on page10 in the overclocking section.

Cinebench R10



Cinebench is a benchmark that fully stresses the CPU and measures the raw power of your processing unit by rendering a high-quality image.



Although you'd think the difference between 104 and 105 should be considered non-relevant, it is in the Cinebench10 benchmark, as this benchmark is about CPU processing power and not about memory performance. That one point difference tells us that there's something different between both boards.

Let's continue with more real-life applications ->

PCMark05

PCMark05 is the last benchmark of the PCMark series which works in Windows XP and it still offers the simplicity of multiple small benchmarks in one. We've selected the most interesting subtest and put the all in one chart.





Without going too much into detail (you can check the graphs for more details), we see that the MSI wins in 7 of the 14 tests, which means that both boards have their advantages and drawbacks.

TechArp X264 HD benchmark



This benchmark has been introduced to me by Piotke, who used it in his QX9650 review. Using multiple cores it gives us quite a decent view on how fast our setup can encode a short DVD-MPEG2 video clip into an X264 clip. We used the latest HD resolution version of the benchmark to run our tests.



The MSI wins in all except one test here.

Trackmania Nations



A free game in the truest sense of the word, TrackMania Nations Forever lets you drive at mind-blowing speeds on fun and spectacular tracks in solo and multiplayer modes. Nations Forever will offer a new "Forever" version of the Stadium environment, a solid solo mode and 65 brand new, progressively difficult tracks. TrackMania Nations Forever will unite an even larger number of players than the original Nations thanks to its engaging multiplayer modes, innovative online functions and revolutionary interactivity between players.

We'll be testing the differences in 3D rendering in two set-ups:

1152x864 - Medium quality & 1680x1050 - Highest quality



Although differences in real-life gaming applications do exist between both boards, these will be very small or in other words not noticeable.

Overclocking

While going through the performance results, I wondered what caused the Asus to perform slightly less than the MSI P45 motherboard.

We stumbled on the answer pretty quickly when we launched Memset which allows you to take a look at the different memory timing settings.


Take a look at the screenshots below, on the left, you find the MSI P45 Platinum, on the right the Asus Maximus II Formula.

We've included both stock and overclocked memory settings.


MSI ___________ ASUS




In our Intel 45nm tweaking and overclocking article, we mentioned that the overclocking results obtained with a P45 chipset are often not on par with other chipsets, meaning that the increase of FSB often implied a decrease in performance clock per clock. The main reason is the 'performance level' memory setting, which basically is the most important setting. The lower the performance level, the higher the performance; the higher the performance level, the lower the load on the northbridge, thus the higher the overclockability.

The Maximus II Formula can absolutely run at the same settings as the MSI does, but at Madshrimps we believe that even the worst overclocker should be able to gain performance by overclocking, without touching the more experienced settings. Yes, tweaking the Asus will get it on par with the P45 Platinum, but I do think that Asus should have chosen for a better tweaked standard configuration.

Now, regarding the actual overclocking performances. We've all witnessed the elaborate bios options to be able to tune the system as perfect as you want, and basically that's what you get. Both motherboards are capable of getting the most out of your 24/7 air cooled overclocked setup, without any drastic voltage changes. In fact, since long, the motherboard isn't the limiting factor anymore, as you'll most likely end up being either FSB-limited because of the CPU or being FSB-limited because of your memory, as the lowest available divider is 1:1. Therefore (this might be the first time ever), I don't think it's very interesting to show you maximum FSB screenshots. What will be more interesting is an article we're planning here at Madshrimps to show you exactly how easy you can tweak your system using a P45 motherboard in only a few steps.

As a teaser we’ve posted a very-quick guide to start you off. Note that it comes in handy when you know the maximum stable frequency of your memory kit and CPU already. I test basic stability with Superpi 1M, longer stability with Superpi 32M and 24/7 stability with OCCT, Superpi 32M, Wprime 1024M and 3DMark06 all running at the same time.

Vcore: 1,35v

Vdimm: 2,2v

Vtt: 1,35v

Vnb: 1,4v

Performance level: 12

Divider: 1:1

Apply these settings and start raising the FSB frequency. When your system stops being stable, do the following (in this order):

Lower the CPU multiplier

Increase 'performance level' by 1

When neither of these settings help, you can start increasing voltage. Note that playing with ref voltages, should get the system stable as well. Basically, by tuning the ref voltages, you should need less voltage to reach the same frequencies in comparison with not tuning the ref voltages.

Energy consumption

As said before, the new P45 chipset is not only about overclocking, but about energy-saving as well. Both Asus and MSI came up with their concept of green computing: Asus has their EPU-six engine, MSI its GreenPower technology. We tested both stock and overclocked setups and tested their idle and loaded power consumption.

Idle: at windows desktop

Load: 3DMark06 run



This is MSI's GreenPower center. As you can see, you can enable and disable the power saving features with one easy click. This program cannot only be used for saving power, but also when overclocking! Changing different voltage setting is a piece of cake.



Asus' EPU-six engine program looks a bit fancier than the GreenPower utility, but has fewer features, as Asus likes to split up the different extra tools by using a different application for each feature. The power consumption can be lowered in 4 stages, much like you see in notebooks. If you chose the maximum power saving setting, the performance of your system will decrease.



I think the graph is pretty clear: both MSI and Asus have made this energy-saving system interesting for those who want to save as much as they can and save on their energy bill. I'm however not convinced that this is the right way to save energy. If you spend a day working on finding the lowest voltages on which your rig can run fully stable at stock speeds, I'm pretty confident that you'll save more energy than with any of these power-saving features. Note that we don't have results of the power saving mode in combination with an overclocked Asus setup as Asus disabled the power-saving feature when your system is overclocked.

Pricing

We added up the prices of about 30 different P45 based motherboards and averaged them so we could weigh both boards in price comparing them to the average price of a P45 motherboard. Please know that these prices are just indicative, local prices may vary.



First thing we notice: both boards are more expensive than the average P45. Why? Because both boards are fine-tuned already? Both boards are made for the more enthusiast-minded people and are therefore equipped with; for example, better chipset cooling, better PWM areas, more feature rich bios. All these extras require time and money.

The Asus Maximus II Formula is noticeably more expensive than the MSI P45 Platinum. Does that mean that it's not worth the money? Definitly not. As the M2F is part of the ROG (Republic of Gamers) series, it has been packed with a lot of extras, really ... a lot. LCD Poster, extra fans, fancy cooling unit, fancy looking board and so on.

Furthermore, I'd say that the M2F is a tad better when it comes to overclocking. Although it's still too early to give a conclusive opinion as many people are still trying out different settings (as well are we) and both manufacturers release a new BIOS every other week which improve stability and overclockability. At the moment I'm writing this, I have seen the Asus clocked at 600FSB 3DMark stable, whereas the MSI only reached 550-560FSB. Much can still be improved; however, we'll keep you updated.

Evaluation

Asus Maximus II Formula

In the end, I'd have to say that the Maximus II Formula is quite a good motherboard if you're looking extreme tuning and want a complete package, including all the (un)necessary extras.

+ Board looks phenomenal
+ Bios is filled with overclocking options
+ First overclocking are looking very promising (600FSB)
+ Accessoires
- Price
- Green power options (no saving when oc'd, only software)
- Timings are set too relaxed when overclocked

Asus Maximus II Formula recommended For


MSI P45 Platinum

When I heard that MSI was going to send me one of their boards, I had mixed feelings. On the one side, it still is one of the major hardware manufacturers, but on the other hand, I had a less fortunate experience with the P35 series. As an overclocker, I was a little bit worried about the overclockability. However, when I first booted the board, it already felt good in terms of stability and overclockability. In contrary to the P35 motherboard I tested, this P45 motherboard gives even the worst overclockers a chance to tune their system quite well. I was even more surprised about the power-saving features, which were so straight-forward that even I, who's totally not into energy-saving (OCing and saving power never goes hand in hand), found it interesting to just turn it on.

+ Green power options
+ Overclocking results are fairly good
+ Price is not that high
- Will need very good bios to battle at the top
- Weird place for molex connector for Crossfire

MSI P45 Platinum recommended For


Conclusive thoughts

Before we let you go, we need to say the following: if you own a P35/X38 motherboard, there’s no immediately reason to upgrade on these P45 motherboards. When it's all about performance, you can easily tweak your old board to reach the same performance levels, but when it's about overclocking, you might want to check on one of these P45's.

Recently, we've also seen X48 motherboards performing out of this world in terms of dualcore overclocking, reaching over 600FSB as well. It seems that the C2D LGA775 motherboards are finally all coming together in decent products, as we all wait for the next generation of processors to be launched. In terms of technology, I'm not so fond of the C2D series anymore, as they've become very easy to overclock and stress. However, I will still be looking at one of these P45 boards to find out how to tweak them well. Be on the look-out! C2D's are now being pushed beyond 6,5GHz.

I'd like to thank Chantal from MSI for sending us the MSI P45 Platinum and Milan from Asus for sending us the Asus Maximus II Formula.

Also a well deserved thank you to Tones.BE for lending us the E8500 CPU.