Conclusions
The tests really weren’t what I expected, there wasn’t as much difference between the two systems as I thought it would be. Overall, the X58 rig outperformed the P55 rig, but it wasn’t the sound beating that I had expected.
ASRock has really moved ahead since I began looking at their motherboards about two years ago. Though they were never elcheapo pieces of junk, they were very obviously low end motherboards built to be very inexpensive. Today their boards are excellent, and easily stand up against motherboards built by the big boys, Asus and Gigabyte. ASRock’s motherboards have tons of excellent features, some of them very innovative, and few you’d expect to find on boards in their price range.
The P55 Deluxe may be the nicest motherboard I’ve reviewed costing under $200. It has everything I’d expect to find on Asus’ and Gigabyte’s mainstream boards costing $250 or more. Little things like plenty of fan connectors, three internal USB ports, and a PoweredUSB port, along with a well put together BIOS sets this motherboard apart from anything in its price point. Add to that its being the first motherboard supporting DDR3-2600, and the 16 phase power regulation, this board is a real winner.
I was unable to figure out the issue when the processor was running only one core. It could have been a driver, though I really think that it is probably a Windows update that the system didn’t like. I have had that problem before, and ended up installing the updates one by one until I found the culprit. As Vista now has well over 100 updates, I opted not to do that at this time, though I suppose I eventually will have to. I will give an update when I find the reason.
The ASRock P55 Deluxe sells for $159.99 at my favorite online retailer. The other boards at that price just weren’t as nice as this one, and even boards costing $25-$30 more didn’t have some of the features. ThinkComputers.org gives the ASRock P55 Deluxe Intel P55 motherboard a 10 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Tons of features
– Only motherboard on the market supporting up to DDR3-2600 memory
– Priced right
Cons:
– There was an issue with the CPU running slow when utilizing only one core. Will update when I determine the reason.