A first look at Initial Nehalem mainboards - the Asus example

BEFORE the initial test results are out next week, we took a look at some of the initial Nehalem mainboards to compare the features and looks. Take a glimpse at these two Asus entries, side by side.

Anything special here? Well, both P6T Deluxe and Rampage II Extreme are high end overclocker's boards, the Rampage being the ROG ultra high end entry.

So, it's not exactly easy to differentiate them - aside from the fact that we did manage to plug in a wholesome 12GB RAM, six Qimonda Aeneon Xtune DDR3-1866 DIMMs - in the P6T first, while the other mobo's memory slots stand empty.

The commonalities are many: same X58 + ICH10 chipset, similar CPU, memory and peripheral positioning, StackCool 2 PCB backside cooling, and six DIMM slots for up to 12 GB DDR3 RAM there. 16-phase CPU power delivery, inherited from the X48-based Rampage Extreme, is there as well.

However, P6T has extra two power stages for the DRAM controller, while the Rampage provides three stages there, plus two stages for the QPI messing up. The ROG one is supposed to have better capacitors and other components too.

Look at both mobos CPU surroundings...

Both boards have three physical PCIe x16 slots, as well as a mix of smaller PCIe and old PCI slots. The mix is not that different: for the three x16 slots, the actual electrical combination is either x16/x16/x1 or x16/x8/x8. The only difference is that P6T Deluxe has one added x4 PCIe slot, plus two PCI old legacy ones, while the Rampage has two x1 PCIe slots and one old PCI. Note that, this time, all PCIe slots on both boards are v2 double speed (500 MB/s per direction) ones.

Also, on board software sound is integrated on the P6T, while Rampage goes with a separate PCIe audio card bundled, which can always be replaced by something like Creative X-Fi Titanium, for instance. If you invest many thousands bucks into an overclocked extreme Nehalem and associated goodies, you may as well put in an extra hundred for a good DSP-based sound card. The on board sound is just a waste of precious mainboard real estate, in this case.

Interestingly, the "lower-end" ubermobo, the P6T Deluxe, sports an all-copper heatpipe set for the chipset and VRMs, while the more expensive Rampage II Extreme uses standard aluminum stuff, although much more of it as you can see.

There are a few more things that the P6T has, but Rampage doesn't have: the USB-attached PDA-like gadget called Palm OC (not Palm PDA but a device held in your palm) which can, OS-independently, handle your overclocking and other system tuning needs is a good example. Then, Marvell's Dual SAS interface for enterprise-class disk drives is there on the P6T but not the Rampage.

Then we come to a literally touchy subject - on-board buttons. Even P6T has the direct, very visible Power and Reset buttons on the edge, but the Rampage II outdoes it, and any other mobo on the market including its Rampage Extreme predecessor. The usual, big and bright, power, reset, CMOS clear and BIOS switching buttons are supplanted by directly accessible multimeter voltage probe points for all key components from CPU to QPI, chipset, memory and such - no more depending on the often untrustworthy BIOS monitor readings!

In summary, the initial Core i7 Bloomfield mainboards, like these from Asus or its competitors, seem well built if not overbuilt: our Aussie Gigabyte contact says its water cooling chipset option makes sense as in some peak cases X58 could consume more juice than X48, which is something to check. Anyway, the mobos do provide plenty of tuning headroom as well as features not really seen before.

As for the performance? Wait till the weekend is over to hear more! µ