ASUS P5E3 Deluxe: X38 and DDR3 arrives... almost
by Gary Key on September 18, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gaming and Graphics Performance
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apples-to-apples comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations, they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
In our 3DMark06 test, all of the boards are basically even in this test. When looking at the individual tests, the ASUS board scores slightly better in the SM2.0 and SM3.0 tests while the CPU scores are just about identical between all three boards - we'll ignore the ASUS board's seven point advantage.
In the more memory and CPU throughput sensitive 3DMark01 benchmark we see our ASUS P5E3 Deluxe board is around 1% faster. We believe Gigabyte still has some tuning left to complete with their DDR2 X38 board as it scored a fairly anemic 35311 with the memory set to DDR2-800 with 3-4-3-9 1T timings. The differences in performance are not really noticeable in either 3DMark unless you're looking to reach the top of the ORB, which we have a good feeling the X38 was designed to do with the right setup.
Gaming Performance
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a couple popular games. We ran our benchmarks at a 1280x1024 resolution with high quality settings
Battlefield 2
This benchmark is performed using DICE's built-in demo playback functionality with additional capture capabilities designed in house. During the benchmark, the camera switches between players and vehicles in order to capture the most action possible. There is a significant amount of smoke, explosions, and vehicle usage as this a very GPU intensive Battlefield 2 benchmark. We run Battlefield 2 using medium quality graphics settings available in the video settings. The game itself is best experienced with average in-game frame rates of 35 and up.
Prey
Prey offers some superb action sequences, unique weapons and characters, and is a visually stunning game at times. It still requires a very good GPU to run it with all of the eye candy turned on. We set all graphic settings to their maximum except for AA/AF and utilize a custom timedemo that takes place during one of the more action oriented sequences. We generally find the game to be enjoyable with an average frame rate above 35fps.
Gaming Summary
The ASUS P5E3 provides an almost 3% improvement in frame rates under BF2, which tends to be more CPU limited than most games, but in the latency sensitive Prey benchmark we find it falls about 5% behind the Gigabyte board. This is the only benchmark where we witnessed a measurable decrease in performance when utilizing DDR3 at 1066 on the X38 chipset. For now, we will chalk it up to the BIOS needing fine tuning as other latency sensitive benchmarks did not show this pattern in offline testing. Once we receive the shipping BIOS for the retail boards, we will revisit these same games and provide CrossFire results against the P35 and 975X equipped boards. However, the preliminary CrossFire results show minimal gains for the X38 over the 975X when comparing percentage increases between single and dual card configurations.
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apples-to-apples comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations, they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
In our 3DMark06 test, all of the boards are basically even in this test. When looking at the individual tests, the ASUS board scores slightly better in the SM2.0 and SM3.0 tests while the CPU scores are just about identical between all three boards - we'll ignore the ASUS board's seven point advantage.
In the more memory and CPU throughput sensitive 3DMark01 benchmark we see our ASUS P5E3 Deluxe board is around 1% faster. We believe Gigabyte still has some tuning left to complete with their DDR2 X38 board as it scored a fairly anemic 35311 with the memory set to DDR2-800 with 3-4-3-9 1T timings. The differences in performance are not really noticeable in either 3DMark unless you're looking to reach the top of the ORB, which we have a good feeling the X38 was designed to do with the right setup.
Gaming Performance
As usual, gaming performance was tested with a couple popular games. We ran our benchmarks at a 1280x1024 resolution with high quality settings
Battlefield 2
This benchmark is performed using DICE's built-in demo playback functionality with additional capture capabilities designed in house. During the benchmark, the camera switches between players and vehicles in order to capture the most action possible. There is a significant amount of smoke, explosions, and vehicle usage as this a very GPU intensive Battlefield 2 benchmark. We run Battlefield 2 using medium quality graphics settings available in the video settings. The game itself is best experienced with average in-game frame rates of 35 and up.
Prey
Prey offers some superb action sequences, unique weapons and characters, and is a visually stunning game at times. It still requires a very good GPU to run it with all of the eye candy turned on. We set all graphic settings to their maximum except for AA/AF and utilize a custom timedemo that takes place during one of the more action oriented sequences. We generally find the game to be enjoyable with an average frame rate above 35fps.
Gaming Summary
The ASUS P5E3 provides an almost 3% improvement in frame rates under BF2, which tends to be more CPU limited than most games, but in the latency sensitive Prey benchmark we find it falls about 5% behind the Gigabyte board. This is the only benchmark where we witnessed a measurable decrease in performance when utilizing DDR3 at 1066 on the X38 chipset. For now, we will chalk it up to the BIOS needing fine tuning as other latency sensitive benchmarks did not show this pattern in offline testing. Once we receive the shipping BIOS for the retail boards, we will revisit these same games and provide CrossFire results against the P35 and 975X equipped boards. However, the preliminary CrossFire results show minimal gains for the X38 over the 975X when comparing percentage increases between single and dual card configurations.
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Gary Key - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
It is scheduled in late October now. However, we do have the NV MCP73 launching next week and it looks like a very interesting part at this time. The big issue with G35 at this time is the driver situation. Intel is just now getting the G965 operating correctly under XP and the latest Vista drivers are still a joke. We were hoping to have a G35 preview with the G33 roundup and MCP73 release next week but that has been called off until drivers are in better shape.
SunAngel - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
What are you referring too? The Hardware and Lighting. It was out last month. We have to wait until SP1 for microsoft to fix some issues. Other than that, the G965 drivers are operating flawlessly.
Gary Key - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
Actually, the beta drivers and the first 14.31 release still had issues with Vertex Shaders along with HW Lighting hiccups. 14.31.1 has corrected about 98% of the problems under XP and there should be a follow-up release shortly to correct corruption issues in BF2 terrain along with flashing in several games and hopefully Alpha Blend, Tiled Alpha, and Tiled4 Alpha blends will work correctly 100% of the time. However, under Vista with the 15.6 drivers, there are still numerous problems from HDMI not working to OpenGL failing to Hardware Lighting not working at all in many cases.SunAngel - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Add another who is dying for the G35, although it doesn't add much over G965 other and DX10 and port multipliers.This X35 board is hot. Look at all that connectivity on the back panel. If I were not in bed with Intel Viiv at the moment, this would be the board for me. I know never to expect something like this from Intel, but it would be nice if Asus made this G35 board a Digital Home board supporting Viiv.
I'm also going to be sorely disappointed if G35 don't come in DDR2 flavor. I refuse to blow my 4GB of DDR2 800 on a slight chipset revision. But then again, to me upgrading has lost its aura. It used to be fun witnessing speed increasing, but it seems of the late increase are getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
Warcraft III can be played with the earlier IGP with 1600x1200 full. I reach frame rate limits of 60 fps with my E6600+G965 combo as it fluctuates between 59-60. G35 is supposed to be coming in October, it doesn't seem like its coming soon looking at the lack of news updates.Old strategy game playability is not impressive when it wasn't the most demanding one back 3-4 years ago, even on an IGP. Playbility on the later games like BF2/Supreme Commander is impressive. We'll see how much better G35 is over G965.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - link
G35 has been pushed out several times already, just like X38. Currently it's scheduled for release in October. (Originally, it was supposed to be out a lot closer to the P35 launch.)Gary Key - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
As of today, X38 has been moved to October 11th. G35 will probably go to November and to top it off, the DX10 capable drivers will be sometime next year.Nickel020 - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
Does this mean you can't publish full reviews as planned on the 24th?Gary Key - Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - link
Working with Intel on that question right now.....GeorgeP.gr - Thursday, March 25, 2021 - link
Is there any way to use the sdd Toshiba OCZ TR20240G01 with this motherboard (REV.1.02G No deluxe No pro) ?