X48 Crossfire Performance vs Intel P45 motherboards

X48 Crossfire Performance is already on the market, but the Intel P45 motherboard is not out until later this year however; this does not stop people like TweakTown from putting the pair through their paces. There are a few differences between the two boards, but there is only one thing that matters, and that is with the performance of each board.

Check out what TweakTown has to say, here are their final thoughts “This is really a very interesting article and is something people need to be taking note of. The first thing you need to be checking is if you’re reading a review where Crossfire is being tested. Make sure that the board there using is a x16 / x16 motherboard. The results really do speak for themselves and it’s clear that there is a performance difference between a x16 / x16 configuration which the X48 offers, and the x8/x8 one on the P45.
If you’re really thinking about going down the Crossfire path, we would be highly recommending that you spend the extra money to go to an X38 or X48 based motherboard over the P45. Of course, if you’re not then it doesn’t really matter. With one card the P45 runs at x16, which is exactly what you want.

The thing is, the X48-DQ6 is only about 10% more expensive, so you could easily say that you should just spend the extra money and get that. You may in future go Crossfire without knowing it yet, but admittedly the P45-DQ6 does have some very cool features such as the new ICH10R controller, loads of SATA ports and just some really funky new add-ons like the power buttons on board. Of course, we will cover all these in more detail in our full motherboard review at a later date.

Before you rush out and buy that P45 board thinking that x8 / x8 will be just fine, sit back and have a think if you’re really aiming to go down the Crossfire path in the near future.”

Big Motherboard Choice: Intel P45, NVIDIA nForce 780i & 790i

When it comes to motherboards, the consumer has never had so much choice and Intel have now got a total of 12 different chipsets. This gives you a great range of performance levels and features for all types of users. NVIDIA have entered the market with its nForce 790i and 780i chipsets to increase this choice even further, and with Intel’s P45 replacing the P35 and becoming the brands mainstream chipset…the motherboard world is looking good.

Tweak Town have created a 17-page report on the specifications, benchmarks and more for two-GIGABYTE motherboards based around the P45 chipset. In their final thoughts they said “Intel’s P45 Express chipset hasn’t officially hit the market yet (it will launch shortly at Computex in Taipei), this is why we haven’t been able to give a huge amount of detailed features on the P45 Northbridge or its ICH10R companion chip, however, what we were able to get is based on testing as well as early information from our board provider.

P45 in its early form looks the goods! While it’s early days, we haven’t been able to test its overclocking ability, and this is something that will really determine if the board is able to take the crown away from the P35 – we are just waiting for the final revision boards to start arriving for testing. We have been able to hit speeds beyond 550MHz with P35 based boards, so P45 has some big shoes to fill, that’s for sure.

Some of the major changes are welcomed especially the inclusion of PCIe 2.0 interface, increased DDR-2 speeds of 1066MHz, matching the speeds AMD is now supporting with its Phenom X3 and X4 processors, making Intel still a major player in DDR2, even though they are still pushing for DDR3.

GIGABYTE’s EP45-DS3R and EP45-DQ6 in our early tests have proven to be fantastic. We managed to get the system perfectly stable, running Vista without any problems. We were very happy with the feel of the board as well as the initial performance. We will continue with overclocking tests and power usage using the DES as soon as we are able to get more time with the boards. For now we hope you enjoyed our preview into some upcoming P45 boards and there will be plenty more on this subject from us once we are finished at Computex early next month.”

Read the 17 page review.