ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition Motherboard Review

Overall Performance

We measured the overall performance of this motherboard using SYSmark2004, which is a program that simulates the use of real-world applications. Thus, we consider this the best software to measure, in practical terms, the system performance.

The benchmarks are divided into two groups:

• Internet Content Creation: Simulates the authoring of a website containing text, images, videos and animations. The following programs are used: Adobe After Effects 5.5, Adobe Photoshop 7.01, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Discreet 3ds Max 5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.
• Office Productivity: Simulates the use of an office suite, i.e., simulates sending e-mails, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. The following programs are used: Adobe Acrobat 5.05, Microsoft Office XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1, NaturallySpeaking 6, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.

The software delivers specific results for each batch and also an overall performance result, all in a specific SYSmark2004 unit.

We compared the reviewed board to ECS PN2 SLI2+ (nForce 680i), ECS NF650iSLIT-A (nForce 650i), ASUS P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i), MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35), MSI P35 Neo Combo (Intel P35), ASUS P5B (Intel P965) and Intel D975XBX2 (Intel 975X). On the graphs present on this and on the following pages you will see the clock rate we configured our memories. Since we had DDR2-1066 memory modules installed, we ran our tests two times, first with our memories configured at 800 MHz and then configured at 1,066 MHz. Some motherboards (like the ones based on nForce 650i and Intel 975X chipsets), however, do not support DDR2-1066 and that is why you won’t find DDR2-1066 results for them.

You can see the results on the charts below.

With our memories configured at 800 MHz, ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition achieved an overall performance similar to MSI P35 Neo Combo (Intel P35), MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35), ASUS P5B (Intel P965) and ECS NF650iSLIT-A (nForce 650i), all with their memories also running at 800 MHz. Under this scenario the reviewed board was 3.90% faster than Intel D975XBX2 (Intel 975X), 4.53% faster than ECS PN2 SLI2+ (nForce 680i) and 4.85% faster than ASUS P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i).

When we set our memories to run at 1,066 MHz, ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition achieved an overall performance similar to MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35), ASUS P5B Premium (Intel P965) and  ASUS P5B (Intel P965), all with their memories also running at 1,066 MHz. Under this scenario the reviewed board was 5.11% faster than ECS PN2 SLI2+ (nForce 680i).

On Internet Content Creation with our memories configured at 800 MHz ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition achieved the same performance level of all motherboards included in our comparison with their memories also running at 800 MHz.

When we set our memories to run at 1,066 MHz, ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition achieved a performance similar to MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35), ASUS P5B Premium (Intel P965) and  ASUS P5B (Intel P965), all with their memories also running at 1,066 MHz. Under this scenario the reviewed board was 3.47% faster than ECS PN2 SLI2+ (nForce 680i).

On Office Productivity with our memories configured at 800 MHz ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition achieved the same performance level as MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35), MSI P35 Neo Combo (Intel P35) and ASUS P5B (Intel P965), being 3.85% faster than ECS NF650iSLIT-A (nForce 650i), 5.47% faster than Intel D975XBX2 (Intel 975X) and 6.30% faster than ECS PN2 SLI2+ (nForce 680i) and ASUS P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i) – DDR2-800.

When we set our memories to run at 1,066 MHz, ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition achieved a performance similar to MSI P35 Platinum (Intel P35), ASUS P5B Premium (Intel P965) and  ASUS P5B (Intel P965), all with their memories also running at 1,066 MHz. Under this scenario the reviewed board was 6.61% faster than ECS PN2 SLI2+ (nForce 680i).