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Published: December 7, 2008 | Source: ASUS | Author: Rich Weatherstone

Asus P6T Deluxe X58 OC Palm Edition Motherboard

Test Setup

As promised, we will be pitching the Asus P6T deluxe and entry level i7 920 combo up against the best Skt 775 has to offer in the form of the Nvidia 790i Ultra and the range topping Intel QX9770. Obviously a direct comparison cannot be drawn due to the different motherboards, chipsets and not to mention triple channel memory but for the purposes of the review, the rigs will be run at there stock clocked levels. While I appreciate it is not a ‘clock for clock’ comparison, comparing clock for clock from one generation to another is fruitless as I think we all know what the outcome would be. With the QX having a 534mhz clockspeed advantage, the results may well be a little more even and should return a more balanced review.

To ensure that all reviews on Overclock3D are fair, consistent and unbiased, a standard set of hardware and software is used whenever possible during the comparative testing of two or more products. The configurations used in this review can be seen below:

i7 Rig

CPU: Intel Nehalem i7 920 Skt1366 2.66GHz
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe ‘OC Palm’
Memory: 3x2GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600mhz @ 8-8-8-24
HD : Hitachi Deskstar 7k160 7200rpm 80GB
GPU: Nvidia GTX280
Graphics Drivers: GeForce 180.60
PSU: Gigabyte ODIN 1200w

790i Rig

CPU: Intel Yorkfield QX9770 skt 775 3.2Ghz
Motherboard: Nvidia 790i Ultra SLI
Memory: 2GB Patriot Viper @ 1600 8-8-8-24
HD: Hitachi Deskstar 7k160 7200rpm 80GB
GPU: Nvidia GTX280
Graphics Drivers: GeForce 180.60
PSU: Silverstone Strider 1000w

 

During the testing of the setups above, special care was taken to ensure that the BIOS settings used matched whenever possible. A fresh install of Windows Vista was also used before the benchmarking began, with a full defrag of the hard drive once all the drivers and software were installed, preventing any possible performance issues due to leftover drivers from the previous motherboard installations. For the 3DMark and gaming tests a single card configuration was used.

To guarantee a broad range of results, the following benchmark utilities were used:

 
Synthetic CPU Test
• Sisoft Sandra 2009
• PassMark CPU test
• SuperPI 1m, 8m, 32m

Memory Test
• Sisoft Sandra 2009
• Everest 4.60

File Compression & Encoding
• Sisoft Sandra 2009
• 7-Zip File Compression
• River Past ViMark

Disk I/O Performance
• HDTach 3.0.4.0
• Sisoft Sandra 2009

3D / Rendering Benchmarks
• Cinebench 10
• 3DMark 05
• 3DMark 06
• 3DMark Vantage

3D Games
• Crysis
• Far Cry 2
• Company of Heroes

Overall System Performance
• PCMark Vantage

Power Consumption

Power consumption was measured at the socket using a plug-in mains power and energy monitor. Idle readings were taken after 5 minutes in Windows. Load readings were taken during a run of 3DMark Vantage.


 

As you can see, the Skt775 based setup uses a lot more power at both idle and load. No additional software for power saving (such as the Asus EPU-6 engine) were used so the differences at idle could be even more given the right configuration. A few years use changing setups over to skt1366 and in particular the Asus P6T Deluxe, could see the system pay for itself!
 
 

Overclocking

Using a respectable Vcore of 1.4v, the remainder of BIOS voltage settings were left in their stock state to ensure equality throughout the testing. Obviously the two boards and CPU are different but these graphs show the overclocking potential of the CPU’s and motherboards.


 
While it may look like the QX9770 overclocks a little better, the i7 920 starts of with a 534mhz deficit making it by far the better overclocker. All that was needed to overclock the i7 920 was a base clock increase to 200 mhz and the multiplier set to 20. With 1.4v on the Vcore, 4ghz was easily attained.

Let’s take a look at how each setup compares in our suite of benchmarks with the settings reverted back to their stock state. Special consideration should be given to the fact that the QX9770 costs £1000+, while the i7 920 CPU used on the P6T Deluxe costs around a quarter of that. Bare in mind also that the i7 920 is the entry level CPU in the i7 range whereas the QX9770 is the range topper of skt775. It certainly makes for some interesting testing!