Two souped-up mobos tested: Asus P5K3 Premium and Maximus Extreme

INTEL HAS now shipped two major high end DDR3-based chipsets: the P35 earlier this year and, most recently, the X38. While the latter is claimed to be the ultimate top end, with components tuned and optimised even further, the only real difference most users see is having two full PCI-E x16 - version 2 at that - slots vs one x16 and one x4 slot in the P35. This makes the new chipset a far better choice for multi GPU or I/O intensive situations.

However, the claim of X38 having better DDR3 memory performance - while logical, since it natively supports DDR3-1333 - should be put to the test. In this case, we compared two Asus boards that couldn't be more different in this respect.

The P5K3 Premium "Black Pearl", is a one of the kind 10-layered P35-based board, black of course, with 2 GB of DDR3 memory in 16 chips soldered right onto the mainboard.

No DIMMs and such. You got a direct die-to-controller connection with a couple of interesting benefits, like the northbridge connecting directly to each of the 16 DDR3 memory chips on each side of the mainboard through the "perfect T-tree design". This is familiar from DDR2, with 50 per cent reduced clock cycle timing, rather than a typical DDR3 DIMM 'flow-through'. Asus claims extra performance due to this - and, not to mention, direct heat-pipe cooling of all the dies. This is the first time we've seen a PC high-end mobo with integrated memory since, uhh... the mid 90s!

The other one is brand new Maximus Extreme, the very top end X38 board (and Intel-based desktop board overall) which we also used for the first Intel Yorkfield QX9650 processor tests. It has everything you can think of in a high end mobo - minus true hardware sound - and even has a direct connection for chipset liquid cooling if you desire so. Very flexible overclocking BIOS, one of the most exhaustive ever, adds to the lot.

Here we used the SuperTalent's brand new ProjectX DDR3-1600 CL7 DIMM modules in the same 2GB configuration, the product competing directly against the Corsair Dominators, with its extended cooling fins. SuperTalent is on or near the top when it comes to good latencies, and here we were running their ProjectX at CL6-6-6-12 CR1 at DDR3-1500 and 1.8 volts - an excellent result without the DIMM feeling hot at all during the benchmarks. On the other hand, the best we could get with similar voltage from the P5K3 Premium on-board soldered memory was CL8-7-7-16 CR1 at the same DDR3-1500.

These are high entries, yet with different feature sets: both have vast overclocking options - Maximus even more so - and with massive heat pipes for board-level cooling, a dozen SATA and USB interfaces, dual Gigabit Ethernet and other usual I/O. Maximus has the 3 GPU slots now (autoswitchable dual PCI-E x16 v2 or 1 x16 plus 2 x8) for TriFire presumably, while P5K3 Premium has added dual-mode on-board wireless with antenna and access point capability. The boards support StackCool 2 for board PCB cool operation when overclocked, although we'd strongly suggest having extra fans for the chipset area, especially when overclocking the FSB more. That need practically doubles if you have water cooling.

Both boards ran an otherwise identical setup: an Intel Xeon 3220 quad core CPU running at 3GHz FSB1500, all the RAM running at DDR3-1500 in sync at the best parameters possible, Leadtek Leviathan GeForce 8800Ultra water cooled graphics card, and Win XP. Everest and Sandra memory tests were run to compare the results.

As you can see, there ARE benefits to memory integration - like, say, five per cent total chipset plus memory read latency shaved off! While the number difference may sound small, that is a lot - more of real benefit than, say, reducing the memory latency from CL7 to CL6. Knowing that the X38 is just a bit better than P35 in the latency and bandwidth obtainable, here this Asus approach obliterates that difference and pushes the P35 board forward, despite also having much faster SuperTalent RAM dies against it. In fact, these SuperTalent ProjectX DIMMs are the fastest ever DDR3 we've had up to now.

Now, if they could just replace those Qimonda dies with the faster Micron ones, and do the same on the X38 - yes, the approach has the minus of not expanding the memory, but frankly, for gaming, unless really you're stuck with Vista, 2GB of very fast RAM - say, DDR3-2000 grade - should be just enuff. We'd like to see Asus continue this approach with denser 2Gbit DDR3 dies later too for 4GB on board RAM. After all, just like you have ROG - Republic Of Gamers - series for tuning enthusiasts, you can have ROM - Really Outstanding Memory - mobos for the memory latency freaks! µ