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  • spacedude - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link

    Just wanted to comment that I just ordered a EVGA P55 SLI (NOT FTW) from newegg and received a foxconn socket...

    Though on the forums, the evga reps are insistent that there is no problem with their boards.... Who knows if I even have a revised socket........

    ARGHHHHHHH
  • johnyfriend - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link

    Saw recently a number of boards from asus and gigabyte with Usb3 and Sata 6gb support.Are you guys planning to include those boards in your upcoming p55 board reviews?
  • groove420 - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link

    The new Gigabyte boards will be designated as "P55A-UD6" for example, along with a "333" designation on the box.
    The feature that caught my eye on these is that they have been refitted with a LOTES clamp instead of the Foxconn.
    They remain fitted with a Foxconn socket apparently though.
    Whether the fix for the "hot socket" was just a better clamp, or indeed the socket is a revision as well remains an unknown from what I've gathered.



  • johnyfriend - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - link

    Think they went with the more afordable way to change the clamps than the entire socket.got to wait and see if it pays out..incase those who are willing to buy decide to dump $$$$$$$$ in that
  • Arbie - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    "Be warned the results are geared more towards benchmarking fanatics and are not in any way indicative of your everyday web browsing PC needs... "

    Is this a benchmarking fanatics website? Or is it aimed at folks who want high-performance gear for day-in, day-out use? I am in the latter group, which is why I visit AnandTech practically every day. But I won't even bother clicking through a report like this.

    In fact, probably only 0.1% of your readers are going to build on the edge (sub-zero cooling?), and there are plenty of websites for them. I'd rather see the same time and effort spent on something more relevant to the other 99.9%.

    My opinion...
  • dingetje - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    fail troll, stop whining or go to tomshardware
  • matthewfoley - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - link

    I happen to agree 100% - I am interested in the high-performance gear for day-in, day-out use idea.

    Anybody who wants Lynnfield for breaking OC benchmarks is wasting their time.
  • dia - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - link

    99% of the articles here are for regular users. This happens to be an article that is not for everyone. So what's the big deal if the minority audience occasionally gets a hearing every now and again? When I see articles like this going up every single week I might start to ask questions, but not before that.
  • AstroGuardian - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link

    Guys and gals,

    This article is 100% for everyone despite what other ppl say.
    You are totally missing the point of this post. This post is not about manufacturers and main boards. This post is about P55!!!

    I am sure everyone (including benchmark fanatic) would like to hear about P55's capabilities. This article says about P55's abilities and gives insight about possible scenarios when pushing the P55 to its limits.

    So what do you want to say? Do you criticize this site or what? Not all of you are IT professionals. As a matter of fact so few of you are IT professionals. And as professionals you musk know as much as possible about your area of expertise. I would like to know everything Anandtech has to say about everything. That's the beauty of it
  • cyclo - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link

    +1. I rarely overclock myself but I still am interested in what the capabilities of this CPU/chipset combo are. I like seeing systems pushed to their limits until weaknesses become apparent. Extreme overclocking in my opinion is like stress testing... if there is any weakness in a design overclocking can expose it. In this case it could be the Foxconn socket, the lesser number of pins on the CPU itself (compared to previous gen i7s), the interface, or all of the above.
  • McDaniel - Sunday, November 8, 2009 - link

    Gigabyte is always ahead in cooling trend.. nice review anyway.. is it possible to set my old processor(core2duo) on this main board? & by the way where i should go for it?
  • darkslyde - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    you can't use socket 775 CPU in a socket 1156 board.

    but AFIAK, you can use socket 775 cpu cooling (heatsinks, cpu waterblocks) on the P55 evga boards. it has mounting for both 1156 & 775. that's one thing you can save on...

    if you want to re-use your c2d (i.e e6600) there are good intel G/P/X 4X series and nvidia geforce 7000/9000, nforce 700 boards.

    i'm reusing my old E6600 on an ASUS P5N7A-VM for media pc use. i get to use my old ddr2 dominators too.

  • techraze - Sunday, November 8, 2009 - link

    Yes, you certainly can use it for core 2 Duo. but as this main board is designed for core i7/core i5 & their over clocking performances it's wise to have a new processor for this main board. i also did it recently & http://micropartsusa.com">http://micropartsusa.com can be a site for u also..anyway good luck dude
  • yyrkoon - Sunday, November 8, 2009 - link

    As a matter of a fact. Doing some looking around I saw . . .

    LGA 1366 == i7 only
    LGA 1156 == i5 only
    LGA 775 == Core 2 duo, core 2 quad, core 2 extreme ( just another core 2 ), Pentium 4, and Celeron ( could be based on core2, P4, or others, but so long as LGA 775 pin layout).

    Of course, with LGA 775, some manufacturers do not allow all CPU types, but it is possible for them to do, if they wish.
  • erple2 - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    Technically,
    LGA 1366 == Certain i7 (9xx parts).
    LGA 1156 == i5 and SOME i7 (8xx parts).
    LGA 775 == Core2Duo, Core2Quad, and some Pentium 4 parts (any after "Northwood"), and some Celeron parts.
  • yyrkoon - Sunday, November 8, 2009 - link

    Uh, you know I have not really looked into it, but I am fairly sure a socket 775 CPU would not fit into these newer sockets. Unless Intel took extreme precautions they normally have not in the past. I7 is what? 1368 pin ? Socket 775 is . . . 775 pin . . .
  • MrCommunistGen - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    In the first paragraph of page 8 (the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 page)you mention cooling on the "ICH10R". It should probably say "PCH" instead.
  • leexgx - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    even past reviews never seen these types of problems before guess P55 is an no go until they fix the socket issues (overclocking or not)
  • yyrkoon - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    "Unfortunately, any jubilation for a platform winner ends here until we know the exact cause of the issues we experienced on motherboards using the Foxconn 1156 sockets."

    Does this mean that all boards use this socket ? Or does it mean that the ones you wish to be winners use this socket?

    I also find it odd that you would mention the Gigabyte board is good, but costs too much, where surely it is fairly priced compared to many Asus boards of the past. Yeah, the same company who seemingly wins all of your top awards, and comparisons.

    Asus is *not* that good. EVGA is definitely not that good. and Gigabyte while not perfect definitely is not as bad as you make it seem. Not only that, these three companies are definitely not the only three in the motherboard business. Why is it that MSI, DFI, and other board makers are no longer sending you samples for review ? Hmm . . .
  • Rajinder Gill - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    Gary has the MSI board already; it was not tested in this compare because of CPU damage. The too expensive comment is aimed at the EVGA Classified 200 which does not deliver a significant advantage over the other boards in terms of CPU/memory overclocking even for the extreme crowd. DFI's board was not ready as early as the 4 boards we have tested here.

    The socket comment was made because in light of the failures we experienced during testing. Our failures have been all related to Foxconn sockets, but there is now a confirmed user case having issues with a LOTES socket too. In light of this, it's hard to give any board accolades for raw overclocking until we know for sure that the 'problem' is fixed. Out of all the boards, the EVGA P55 FTW was the most consistent and easy to use. Also note, this article is in no way reflective of 24/7 PC's and what matters in typical usage scenarios.
  • yyrkoon - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    Ok, sorry for the rude comments. But the main reason why this perturbed me, is that something similar happened to a company that I did like a few years back. They lost a lot of revenue because of the situation( and then left the market altogether; yeah . . . guess who ). With that said, I am glad that you guys reported this issue, because at that time, I was seriously considering the board afflicted. Then, I could even go as far back as the terrible capacitors used by many builders, which also caused bad reviews(and feeling from loyal customers)from many reviewers. You would think these companies would learn eventually. Of course, at the time, the builders had no idea these capacitors were going to ruin long term stability ( or maybe they did ? ). Then even in some cases long term was not an issue, because short term stability suffered as well.

    So, for now on, I suppose I will just have to remember that highly OCable motherboards,are not really dependable for 24/7 operation, and then keep my "mouth" shut :)

    I am glad to see one of you does have something from MSI. Now if only the other players would get something out as well.
  • petergab - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    Can you, please, give the socket type of the tested boards? I don't want to start the foxconn/lotes dabate here.

    And one more clarification: The MSI board (I supoose p55-gd80) was not testes because it had a foxconn socket that burned out OR because the two i7 870 were burned out (on asus)?
  • Rajinder Gill - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    MSI GD80 was not tested because of damage to 2 870 CPU's, one of which was the best sample I had on hand (the one that ran Wprime over 5.2GHz). I've already presented the socket info of the tested boards in the article, but just to recap for you; EVGA boards were on TYCO AMP (E657) and LOTES (E659), ASUS and Gbyte both on Foxconn.

    MSI's board was ready for review once the CPU damage had already taken place. It was a choice of starting afresh on all 5 boards once again (and risking coming away with even less same CPU comparative info) or running with the almost complete information on 4 boards I had at the time. The latter made more sense to me. Nothing against MSI, their boards were still in beta and undergoing a revision for PCI/e when this all started so they were not in the initial lineup anyway.

    later
    Raja


  • petergab - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    >> Nothing against MSI, their boards were still in beta and undergoing >> a revision for PCI/e when this all started so they were not in the >> initial lineup anyway.

    Can you explain this in deteils? I think I found something about it 1-2 months ago and haven't saved the address.

    Your review was published in Nov. This means you've tested them in Oct, so the planning should have been some time in Sept. As far as I can remember the current MSI board range was on the market before Sept. Does this mean than the MSI has some problems with PCI- PCIE speeds with the current boards? What about the other verndors?

    Any links are also appreciated.
  • Rajinder Gill - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    Hi,

    The delay between the article posting and now was simply becasue I tore some fo the content out for the socket burnout stuff a couple of weeks ago. No idea if the MSI PCI/e overclocking patch was post retail or not because I've never had a GD80 in my hands so don't know what to look for per se.

    later
    Raja
  • petergab - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    >> No idea if the MSI PCI/e overclocking patch was post retail or not because...

    This is exactly what I'm asking about. What was the original problem with this (if any existed)? The fact that you've not considered thier boards talks about some not that trivial issue. What was it? What made you not consider the board?
  • Rajinder Gill - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    It's simple;

    1) At planning stage of who is going to be in the article one, MSI not added to inital lineup because board not ready.

    2) By the time revision board is ready, 2 CPU's have been damaged while completing tests of 4 other boards (was in week 4 of testing at this point). Leaving me in a position where all tests must be re-run on every board with a new CPU just to add the MSI board into the report. Given the apparent weakness being experienced and not knowing if I'd be lucky enough even to make it through all 5 boards without another failure I decided to post what I had.

    There's nothing more to it. You're reading into this too deeply. If I had anything whatsoever to hide, I would not have posted anything in the first place.

    later
  • Makaveli - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    Very happy I just build a P6T Deluxe V2 + 920 D0 combo. Those overclocking numbers look good for the lynnfield setups, but I needed a true and tested platform and with these boards all just coming out I don't trust them.
  • dingetje - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    wow the p55 platform is totally screwd if this problem persists...any overclocker still oc'ing the hell out of their p55 must be either brave, rich or (michael jackson voice on:) ignoraaaant
  • Raptor88 - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Raja:
    Thank you for you insights..
    Can you provide more detail regarding the Max BCLK testing. Were all the boards running AUTO settings? If not, what were their respective settings?
    Regards,
    Raptor
  • Rajinder Gill - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link

    For max BCLK testingPCI/e speeds were increased (where required) to 115MHz or so (the highest the CPU's I had could run were between 115-118MHz). I tried changes to RTL, memory dividers and all voltages were also changed. Subtiming ranges were shifted out to near maximums to see if that helped and also matched between the best and worst boards in the tests just to make sure something was not creating a hurdle.

    regards
    Raja
  • dingetje - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    wow the p55 platform is totally screwd if this problem persists...any overclocker still oc'ing the hell out of their p55 must be either brave, rich or (michael jackson voice on:) ignoraaaant
  • dingetje - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    oops, this was supposed to be a comment, not a reply...damn UI :P
  • dingetje - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    now if we could only edit our posts I would so happy
  • petergab - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    What about any MSI boards? I know they may not count to the "extreme" OC but I think they should have a representative in such reviews.
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    The MSI board was due to be included but left out becasue of CPU damage that occurred during the socket burnouts. This left no real way of cross comparing the prior results with the MSI boards abilities on the same CPU. At that point I decided to run with what I had at the time rather than starting afresh thus delaying the article even further.

    regards
    Raja


  • spiderbutt - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Are you planning to include the MSI boards at a later date? I am curious to see how they compare to the other boards.

    Thanks for your hard work Raja it is appreciated!
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Hi,

    There will be some MSI P55 board reviews coming, although those were planned in more typical usage scenarios. I guess what I can do is use a different CPU in the E657 EVGA board for cross compare to any high-end P55 MSI offering we review to see how things stack up.

    regards
    Raja
  • 1stguess - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Wow. This is a bold article. Does anyone dare OC their P55 setup? Madness.
  • jav6454 - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    I've been looking at these P55 boards and somehow I always thought high of the EVGA. However these results have proven my gut feeling right.

    Bad thing of the EVGA boards is sometimes their higher price tag.

  • michael19 - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    "Our test sample arrived with the revised Foxconn socket.."

    how can we tell if we have the revised foxconn socket as opposed to the defective version?
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    No idea at this point. Only Foxconn seem to know what it is they changed in the June revision.
  • michael19 - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Or perhaps a side by side picture would show us some noticeable visual differences, possibly..
  • cmdrdredd - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    How come the Asus board is left out of the final few notes and tests? It's in the 3DMark and SuperPi scores etc, but there's individual pages dedicated to the other boards...
  • Samus - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link

    probably because it failed mid-testing
  • AstroGuardian - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link

    It's socket burned as a result of not so extreme overclock. It's not ASUS fault, it's Foxconn's faulty socket
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Hi,

    The ASUS board died before I could complete the 750 retail CPU testing. We just got a new board last week so I will possibly update when that arrives here.

    later
    Raja
  • cmdrdredd - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    lol well, a dead board spells trouble anyway IMO. Unless something drastic was done to it (extreme overclock for example).
  • michael19 - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    OK, thank you. Would the numbers on the backplate give us any indication? Is there any consistent difference in the numbers printed on the backplate from the old burnt out sockets to the new ones you have now?
  • Corsairs - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    I'd love to see this board compared to the group reviewed here.
  • SpaceRanger - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    [quote]Gigabyte’s top end offering comes in at $*** and touts their answer to competing boards as having ’24-Phase’ PWM circuit (using a multiplexed ISL6336 6 phase controller).[/quote]

    So all it takes is 3 stars to get the top end offering from Gigabyte?
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, November 6, 2009 - link

    Sorry, that skipped through edit - corrected.

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