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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cmdrdredd - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
How come they talk about using 1.5125 vcore and then CPU-Z says it's only 1.26. Are they running at 1.5125 as they said or not?I don't know many people who can get a E6300 to 3.6 wih that type of low voltage.
Gary Key - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
CPU-Z does not report the voltages correctly on the Core 2 Duo processor series.cmdrdredd - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
It sure works fine for me when I downloaded it off the site. I guess it's a newer version.On your past articles that showed voltages they also read low which may mean it wasn't reading at all.
Gary Key - Thursday, October 5, 2006 - link
The article was already completed when 1.37 came out. I have tested it the past couple of days and notice the voltage is reading a tad bit high on some boards now. However, it is a lot more accurate than 1.36 or before. At least it will be easy to tell from the screenshots what range our voltage settings are at now.vailr - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
There's an updated CPU-Z "version 1.37" available.vailr - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
http://www.majorgeeks.com/CPU-Z_d425.html"> CPU-Z 1.37LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
Does the P5B-E support Matrix RAID?Capt Caveman - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
Yes, it will support Matrix RAID as it uses a ICH8R Southbridge.LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
Every time I've looked for one, it didn't have the slot configuration I needed, or lacked Firewire...this looks like it might have everything.My only question left...I've not heard great things about the JMicron IDE controller used since the i965 no longer has ATA support. I'll still need it, what with the lack of good SATA optical drives, and some programs that appear not to like SATA optical drives even if I used them. What does Anandtech think of this controller as opposed to the native Intel ICH7xx IDE controller?
xsilver - Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - link
just wanted to clarify,485fsb was the highest you could get the board to go under default voltage (cpu+ram?) conditions?
do you think that was a mobo limitation or cpu?