ASUS P5B-E: P965 stepping C1 versus C2, Round One
by Gary Key on October 4, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
ASUS P5B-E Features
Our featured motherboard today is the ASUS P5B-E with both the P965 C1 and C2 Stepping. Each motherboard has the latest 0402 BIOS installed with each board being based on the 1.01G revision level PCB. We will fully test and review the P5B-E in our P965 roundup. According to ASUS the performance and capability of each board should be equal and hopefully our test results will prove this statement correct.
ASUS has delivered a well optioned and performance oriented Intel P965 board for the midrange sector that should sell for around US $160 or under. While our motherboard and BIOS are new releases, we were still surprised at the overclocking prowess of the P5B-E during our benchmarking runs with the Core 2 Duo E6300. We will provide BIOS screenshots and a more in-depth review of the BIOS in our full review. At this time the two glaring omissions when compared with other boards in this price range is the lack of memory voltage settings past 2.10V and the MCH voltage is not adjustable. ASUS will address this in their 1.02G board revision but honestly with the right components you can still get this board to the 500FSB level without the additional voltage options - not that it wouldn't be nice to have them anyway. At this time the C1 stepping will be shipped on this board until the scheduled switch to the C2 stepping later this month.
Our featured motherboard today is the ASUS P5B-E with both the P965 C1 and C2 Stepping. Each motherboard has the latest 0402 BIOS installed with each board being based on the 1.01G revision level PCB. We will fully test and review the P5B-E in our P965 roundup. According to ASUS the performance and capability of each board should be equal and hopefully our test results will prove this statement correct.
| Asus P5B-E (C1 or C2 Stepping) | |
| Market Segment: | Mid-Range Performance |
| CPU Interface: | Socket T (Socket 775) |
| CPU Support: | LGA775-based Pentium 4, Celeron D, Pentium D, Pentium EE, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Extreme |
| Chipset: | Intel P965 + ICH8R |
| Bus Speeds: | 100 to 650 in 1MHz Increments |
| Memory Speeds: | Auto, 533, 667, 800, 889, 1067 |
| PCIe Speeds: | Auto, 90MHz~150MHz in 1MHz Increments |
| PCI: | Auto, Fixed at 33.33 |
| Core Voltage: | Base CPU V to 1.7000V in 0.0125V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier: | Auto, 6x-11x in 1X increments if CPU is unlocked, downwards unlocked |
| DRAM Voltage: | Auto, 1.80V ~ 2.10V in .10V increments |
| DRAM Timing Control: | Auto, 10 Options |
| MCH Voltage: | not available |
| Memory Slots: | Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 8GB Total |
| Expansion Slots: | 1 - PCIe X16 3 - PCIe X1 3 - PCI Slot 2.3 |
| Onboard SATA/RAID: | 6 SATA 3Gbps Ports - Intel ICH8R (RAID 0,1,5, 1+0,JBOD) 1 SATA 3Gbps Ports - JMicron JMB363 1 e-SATA 3Gbps Port - JMicron JMB363 |
| Onboard IDE: | 1 ATA133/100/66 Port (2 drives) - JMicron JMB363 |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394: | 10 USB 2.0 Ports - 4 I/O Panel - 6 via Headers 2 Firewire 400 Ports by VIA VT6307 - 1 I/O Panel, 1 via Header |
| Onboard LAN: | Gigabit Ethernet Controller - PCI Express Interface Attansic L1 |
| Onboard Audio: | ADI 1988 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC |
| Power Connectors: | ATX 24-pin, 4-pin EATX 12V |
| I/O Panel: | 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x Parallel Port 1 x S/PDIF Optical 1 x S/PDIF Coaxial 1 x IEEE 1394a 1 x Audio Panel 1 x RJ45 1 x eSATA 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 |
| BIOS Revision: | AMI 0402 |
| Board Revision: | 1.01G |
ASUS has delivered a well optioned and performance oriented Intel P965 board for the midrange sector that should sell for around US $160 or under. While our motherboard and BIOS are new releases, we were still surprised at the overclocking prowess of the P5B-E during our benchmarking runs with the Core 2 Duo E6300. We will provide BIOS screenshots and a more in-depth review of the BIOS in our full review. At this time the two glaring omissions when compared with other boards in this price range is the lack of memory voltage settings past 2.10V and the MCH voltage is not adjustable. ASUS will address this in their 1.02G board revision but honestly with the right components you can still get this board to the 500FSB level without the additional voltage options - not that it wouldn't be nice to have them anyway. At this time the C1 stepping will be shipped on this board until the scheduled switch to the C2 stepping later this month.
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crash6767 - Friday, January 26, 2007 - link
ORDER PLACED 1/23/2007 9:10:24 PM FROM NEWEGG.COM.RECEIVED 1/26/2007 1:14 PM.
MODEL NUMBER PRINTED ON CIRCUIT BOARD, ABOVE DIMM A1:
P5B-E 1.02G
YYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
still waiting on the power supply to arrive (purchased from another retailer) so no OC numbers yet. BUT 1.02G IS ALIVE AND KICKING!!!!#!#!@!#@!@
*crossposted everywhere*
agigolo - Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - link
Ok, so I've read this and the unfortunate part (unless I missed it and I don't think I did) but when these acronyms are used (like MCH) I wish they would be defined on the 1st useage... can someone be a good soul and explain MCH please???Gary Key - Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - link
MCH - Memory Controller Hub, aka Northbridge. :)cornfedone - Sunday, October 8, 2006 - link
We've seen time and time again in the past few years where rushed out the door mobos are over-hyped and in fact don't perform as advertised. Many don't even run industry standard memory without problems which is a disgrace. These boards are way over priced and sought by naive consumers after they read the glowing online reviews that fail to mention the many defects in these products.Once the motherboard problems start to get online exposure the mobo makers move to the next model chipset and rave how it's so much better than the previous model. Naturally the mobo companies don't fix the problems with the previous products they shipped and in many cases refuse to even acknowledge the defects that become confirmed by tens of thousands of duped customers. Instead the mobo companies whip out the next trick of the week half baked mobo and make sure that hardware review sites get "special" versions for testing so the reviews are always positive despite the production board defects that exist. Unless a reviewer is buying the retail mobo from a retail outlet, they ain't necessarily getting the same mobo as all other consumers.
You gotta wonder if the gullible fanboys will ever wake up to this scam or if they will keep paying through the nose for defective, over priced mobos. As long as sheep keep buying these dysfunctional mobos the manufacturers will keep shipping garbage. There is no incentive to deliver a properly functioning mobo if the sheep will buy half baked goods at twice the price they should sell for.
The C1 / C2 chipset deal is just another example of hype yet people will believe the C2 will provide a 20% performance increase because they are so gullible. One accurate scientific test is worth much more than a thousand online opinions. The fanboys need to buy a clue instead of pissing their money away on crappy mobos and over hyped chipsets.
Binkt - Thursday, October 5, 2006 - link
Hi, nice sleuthing so far guys, thanks.One thing that concerns me is the NB temperature. My Gigabyte 965p-DS3 has a very high operating temperature and I was wondering if you had observed a difference between the steppings in this regard.
Gary Key - Thursday, October 5, 2006 - link
Hi,There were no temperature differences between the two boards on the MCH. We highly recommend that you replace the paste on the MCH heatsink with AS5 and place a 40mm on it if you plan on overclocking 24/7. The same holds true with the DS3, on my personal system I just replaced the MCH heatsink with this one - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...">SwiftTech.
jambaz - Thursday, October 5, 2006 - link
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/a...">synthetichttp://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/a...This picture shows a CPU speed of 2.4 Ghz when really the speeds are 1.86, 3.6 and 2.4 Ghz. The "general" picture below has the correct way of showing it imho.
By the way, it would be nice if Anandtech would try to show performance of a lowbudget e6300 paired with value ram instead of this RAM they use that cost 800$..
Like the benchmarks we see now are 1:1 @ 515 Mhz = DDR1030, but what if you did 5:4 or 4:3 so ram would be less of an expense?
Thanks for great articles!
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 5, 2006 - link
I don't believe you can go lower than 1:1 with the 975X/P965 chipsets and Core 2 Duo. That was from the days of Pentium 4/D where you could run the FSB at a higher speed than the RAM. So if you want to overclock, either you pay a boatload of money on RAM, or you don't OC as far, or you get a more expensive CPU. Not great choices unfortunately.lopri - Thursday, October 5, 2006 - link
I can do memory frequency lower than FSB on P5W-DH. Of course it is not a recommended configuration.JarredWalton - Friday, October 6, 2006 - link
Must vary by motherboard/BIOS implementation. I know I've seen several boards where 1:1 (DDR2-533) is the lowest possible selection. Or maybe there was a DDR2-400 choice I missed? Meh - can't check now, since I don't have the systems anymore.