Intel DP55KG and DP55SB - Two P55s Reviewed

We'll sum up the weaknesses for both boards together, as they are essentially the same. Automated overclocking routines seem to be an increasing trend among the board-makers, but sadly Intel's "Auto-Tune" software failed horribly. With our i7 870 sat at stock and BIOS defaults, we started the Auto-Tune and chose the 1st option of overclocking within Intel’s safe range. The program quickly ran into problems such as application crashes and BSOD’s. Auto-Tune’s pre-programmed routines start IDCC and reinitialize the Auto-Tune option when Windows loads, so unfortunately this problem persisted as it failed to advance past the point it kept failing at. The only solution was to stop Auto-Tune starting at the Windows UAC prompt and then uninstall and reinstall the software.

Memory overclocking was disappointing. While the 2:6 and 2:8 memory ratios were satisfactory, the 2:10 ran into problems and refused to boot any higher than 175 BCLK from a power cycle which equated to 875 MHz or DDR3-1750. This was despite trying up to 1.35v VTT and loosening timings to 9-9-9-27 and slacking off tRFC and tFAW. The only way to get both boards to POST past 175 BCLK was to use or high-end Corsair 2200 MHz modules - and that too was only possible by ramping BCLK slowly so that the board did not need a full power cycle when exiting BIOS.

Unfortuantely, we ran into problems whilst stress testing at memory freqeuncies above 1800MHz, the board shut-down when running Hyper-Pi. We tried all manner of changes to circumvent this problem, finding that using VTT voltage above 1.42V resulted in the board shutting down whilst loading Windows. It would be logical for us to put this down to some kind of over-current protection - we're used to seeing more overhead from motherboards that are given an 'Extreme' moniker. It's clear this is an area that Intel need to work on in the future.

Four months after the launch of Intel's 32nm Clarkdale CPUs and after a number of supported BIOS releases, we didn't expect to run into a bug such as the PCI-E x16 slot running at 1x speed with an i5 670. This was another disappointing discovery that affects the lowly 9500GT in terms of benchmark results, meaning that better and faster cards are likely the be affected even more.

S3 resume was ok on both boards until around abut 170-175 BCLK where the board would resume Windows, but fail-back to restore the session from the hard drive like a hibernation.  Again, this is an area where Intel are not quite competitve with the rest.

The list of what we would like to see improved or added to Intel’s “Extreme” series is quite lengthy. The BIOS could be better laid out, with more options to tweak but even just the simple things like ‘Auto’ settings for memory timings. The IDCC software could also be improved, with Auto-Tune needing a large overhaul. Memory overclocking should be a strong focus, with the minimum requirement of having all the dividers working as expected, at least to the same level as other vendors.

Stepping back from the specifics, the board layout, while understandable for Intel’s standard desktop range, should have been redesigned to allow larger aftermarket heatsinks to be used and a full board of good quality solid capacitors isn’t much to ask as it's become standard for products in this price range.

If you forget that these boards are part of Intel’s “Extreme” series and just look upon them as basic P55 ATX and M-ATX boards, they’re much easier to recommend. As with all of Intel’s boards, they have a lot of ‘little things’ that just work and you find yourself overlooking some of the finer details unless you stop to think. The disappointing fact is that Intel is marketing these under their “Extreme” series and they just don’t do enough to satisfy their ‘extreme’ price tags.