ASUS P8P67 EVO Motherboard Review

The ASUS P8P67 EVO is an EVOlutionary leap over previous motherboards, and introduces several new features such as the long-awaited UEFI to replace the traditional BIOS, DIGI+ VRM digital power management, Bluetooth remote overclocking control, and ASUS HyperDuo technology that combines a HDD with SSD to create a hybrid storage drive. Despite its many new features, the ASUS P8P67 EVO motherboard is only one half of the equation. Designed as the performance platform for mainstream enthusiasts, the P67 series unlocks and multiplies performance with Intel Core-i3/i5/i7 'Sandy Bridge' processors. In this article, Benchmark Reviews will explore the ASUS P8P67 EVO motherboard and test its overclocking limits with the unlocked Sandy Bridge Intel Core i7-2600K CPU.

There are two sides to the Sandy Bridge story: those that demonstrate how well this new Intel processor overclocks, and others that discuss how well the new motherboards harness its overclocking power. Benchmark Reviews has separately published our results of the Intel Core i7-2600K and Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge CPUs, allowing us to focus directly on manufacturer-specific features introduced by ASUS for their P8P67 series in this article. Intel has added native SATA 6Gb/s storage support on all LGA1155 motherboards, which ASUS further enhances with several newly introduced features:

• EFI BIOS - User Extensible Firmware Interface (BIOS replacement) with Graphical User Interface
• ASUS BT GO! - Adds an onboard Bluetooth 2.1 receiver with BT Turbo remote and BT-to-Net functionality
• DIGI+ VRM - Precision digital Voltage Regulator Module replaces analog management
• ASUS HyperDuo - Creates a hybrid storage drive by combining HDD and SSD
• AI Suite II - Combines DIGI+ VRM, EPU, TurboV EVO, BT GO!, FAN Xpert, and Probe II software into one program

ASUS reincorporates some of their recent technologies in the P8P67 motherboard platform:

• ASUS DIP2 - Dual Intelligent Processors integrated onto the motherboard:
  • ASUS TPU (TurboV Processing Unit) Relieves parts of process-intensive tasks from CPU
  • ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit) Reduces power drain by up to 80%
• MemOK! - Enables the motherboard to boot up successfully even if there might be some memory compatibility issues.

Proprietary features are what separate one motherboard from another. Generally speaking, without these special features the overall system performance would be approximately identical between P67-Express platforms. The discrete graphics card, system memory, central processor, and storage device performance usually deliver the same performance... unless the manufacturer has introduced additional technology or made design sacrifices that penalize pipeline performance. This article compares three different P67-Express motherboards against previous Intel and AMD platforms.

On 4 January 2011 Intel launched a series of desktop processors codenamed 'Sandy Bridge'. These new Core-i3/i5/i7 CPUs are designed to operate on Intel's P67-Express platform, which supports a new LGA1155 processor socket. While the Sandy Bridge processor architecture brings its own set of innovations, motherboard manufacturers have pushed back with several key improvements of their own. ASUS offers a full series of motherboards based around Intel's 6-series, which include the following models:

Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Model Number: P8P67 EVO
Product Name: Intel P67-Express Motherboard
Price as Tested: $199.99 at NewEgg

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by ASUS.

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