Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard, Part 2
by Rajinder Gill on February 22, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
Out of the eight boards we've tested over the past six weeks, there are three we could live with comfortably now that things have matured sufficiently. We're not going to bestow any awards at this point though, because we feel that there have been issues on all test-samples during the review period that should have been addressed prior to public release. Simple things like memory compatibility, bundled software issues, BIOS lockups and basic peripheral problems all reared their head at some point. We're bemused by how these things make it out of vendor test labs in the first place; it has to be down to a lack of in-house testing while precedence is given to being first on retailer shelves—and that's unacceptable.
Nevertheless, we promised to help make a decision on which board to choose so here are the ones we're short-listing as "ready for retail" at this point. Unsurprisingly, the ASRock H55M-Pro, Gigabyte H55M-USB3 and the ASUS P7H55D-M Evo are the three boards we feel most comfortable recommending. Get one of these three, flash it to the latest BIOS, and you should be in for a trouble/frustration-free ride.
There's no absolute winner, although we feel ASRock set the pace by bringing the H55M-Pro in at a price that's hard to ignore. The only thing missing is USB 3.0, but you can always add a PCI-E card to supply a couple of ports at a later date. We have a slight reservation over ASRock's warranty period of 12 months; ASUS and Gigabyte offer 36 months on their boards which is something that's worth bearing in mind.
We'd only consider purchase of the ASUS and Gigabyte models if you have specific overclocking needs and like to have all the tweaking functions at your disposal, or if you have a pressing need for USB 3.0 right now. In the overclocking department, Gigabyte's board surpasses ASUS by a slim margin for raw memory frequency, while the ASUS board appears to be a little more robust for heavier CPU loads and higher CPU freqeuncies (ASUS is using a 188 amp capable VRM vs a guessed 110~120amp VRM on the Gigabyte H55/H57 boards, so we'd pick the ASUS boards for Lynnfield CPU overclocking). Anything else between these two boards is merely a matter of subjective preference. After a few hundred hours of testing, that's all we have to say about it.
Don't let any of what we've said here today deter you from a Clarkdale system entirely though; the i3 series of CPUs makes a tremendous amount of sense for a low cost, low noise HTPC—just be sure to choose the partnering motherboard wisely. Now that most of the teething problems are behind us, there's plenty to like, but next time a new chipset launches we hope to see fewer false starts.
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Swivelguy2 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Okay, USB 2 transfers a gigbyte in 36 seconds. This is consistent with the rated spec of 480 Mbit/s. Isn't USB 3 supposed to be 10x faster? What's causing the limitation? Is it the implementation by Asus and Gigabyte (like attaching the USB 3 to too narrow of a PCI-e lane)? Is it simply the write speed limitation of the USB HDD used? If the latter, why not write to some flash memory to see if the results improve?C'mon Anandtech, I know you can do this right - if you're going to benchmark and discuss the USB 3 capabilities of these boards, do that!
Rajinder Gill - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Good point. In-depth analysis of USB 3 & external HDD's etc will be offered up in a dedicated article.later
Raja
JarredWalton - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
USB devices have always had some level of overhead compared to SATA devices. USB 1.1 devices never actually achieved 12Mb/s but were closer to around 8Mb/s (1MB/s) maximum. USB 2.0 is rated at 480Mbits, which translates into 57.22 MiB/s (remember that Windows uses 2^20 MiB for transfer rates instead of 10^6 MB). However, there's overhead and the maximum sustainable transfer rates on USB 2.0 tend to be closer to ~38MiB/s. At that speed, most conventional HDDs can easily saturate USB 2.0, but they're not significantly faster (i.e the fastest HDD is going to be in the realm of 100 MiB/s).Move to USB 3.0 and the maximum theoretical data rate is 572 MiB/s, but there's still overhead that limits performance to 4 Gb/s instead of 4.8Gb/s, and it looks like transfer rates of up to ~380MiB/s will be considered "ideal". Even the fastest SSDs aren't going to come close to 380 MiB/s right now, as they would need external enclosures and SSDs with SATA6G support.
With USB 3.0, a 1TB HDD transferring data at around 93MB/s is very close to the speed of a 1TB drive connected via SATA, so the HDD is now the bottleneck for USB 3.0. If Raja tested with a fast SSD, we could see if USB 3.0 can get up to ~250 MB/s, but we can't test if it can achieve any better than ~43% of the theoretical throughput without SATA 6G.
Swivelguy2 - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
I'm sure we can come up with a way to challenge USB 3 and make sure the boards are actually performing to the spec. There are two USB 3 ports on the motherboard, how about writing large files to SSDs attached to each one? How about copying a file from one to the other? How about streaming off of a USB 3 camera or two?michal1980 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Firstly, thanks for ripping into these compaines.Secondly; Any plans on testing any of the itx boards coming out? Zotac?
Thridly. How come reference intel boards are never tested? It would be nice to see how intel mobo's are right out of the gate.
Rajinder Gill - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Hi,1) Couple of ITX reviews are in the pipeline - including the Zotac H55 and Intel M-ITX 'Jet Geyser'. The Intel review is what I'm working on right now (board is due for release mid-march with an MSRP circa $125)
2) We've currently got 3 Intel boards in lab due to be reviewed. The Intel 'Jet Geyser' is first. The two other boards in-lab from Intel are the P55 M-ATX and ATX models, reviews for both should be up sometime in March..
Hope this helps..
-Raja
The Wasp - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Raja,Any chance you'll be reviewing the new ECS H55H-I ITX motherboard?
How about the Giada MI-H55?
I'm trying to pick the best 1156 ITX motherboard, so it would be great to get some more in-depth info on all of the options.
Thanks!
Jon
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Hi Jon,We're focusing on the Intel and Zotac M-ITX boards at present,so it will be a few weeks before we can look at the models you mention (will def try and add them in if possible somewhere down the line).
regards
Raja
The Wasp - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
Hello again,I don't know if it's available, but if you could include the Jetway NC97 that would be awesome too!
Jon
grazapin - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Based on past experience, how do you expect the Intel boards to compare to the other manufacturers?Strange that Intel is only using the H57 in the Mini-ITX board and not in the larger two. Seems counterintuitive, like in many cases aren't you more likely to want the RAID features in a larger case that can hold more drives, therefore accommodating a larger motherboard also? Maybe that's just my preference or assumption.