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ASUS Previews USB 3.0/SATA 6G Motherboards
- Thread starter Terry Olaes
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jeremyshaw
[H]F Junkie
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it just pisses me off that you can get a board like this that has crossfire and sli support but on an amd board you cant. What a bunch of bs. And amd gets on nvidias case about compatibility. sheesh
You think nVidia is gonna release SLI to AMD?
nVdia has locked SLI out of AMD (only nVidia can/is allowed to create SLi chipsets for the AMD platform... and nVidia hasn't, so far)
AMD has allowed anybody to create Crossfire chipsets... for free. That includes Intel, their main competitor.
P6X58D at the bottom.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/23/asus-p7p55d-e-premium-specs-revealed.aspx
I like the P55 versions layout. With it I could have two cards in crossfire and have a PCI Soundcard or PCIe sound card... all while having the two crossfire cards at least a slot apart.
I want a x58 mobo though.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/23/asus-p7p55d-e-premium-specs-revealed.aspx
I like the P55 versions layout. With it I could have two cards in crossfire and have a PCI Soundcard or PCIe sound card... all while having the two crossfire cards at least a slot apart.
I want a x58 mobo though.
I'm waiting for USB3 and SATA 6Gbps support on motherboards. It doesn't matter that there aren't any USB 3 devices etc out now. I want my next PC to be as useful as possible for as long as possible, even if it ceases to be my main PC over time.
I am looking forward to the release of these new motherboards but I am worried about the use of 3rd party controllers. As others have said it may just result in a load of niggling issues. And can they run at full speed? It's a pity that proper, built-into-the-chipset support is such a long way off. I will probably end up buying a motherboard with 3rd party controllers but I guess I'll have to wait a bit before I buy to see if people have any issues with them post-release.
I am looking forward to the release of these new motherboards but I am worried about the use of 3rd party controllers. As others have said it may just result in a load of niggling issues. And can they run at full speed? It's a pity that proper, built-into-the-chipset support is such a long way off. I will probably end up buying a motherboard with 3rd party controllers but I guess I'll have to wait a bit before I buy to see if people have any issues with them post-release.
That'd be me. I like the feel of my old keyboard model and I like the advantages of PS/2
Yes, that works great, until you find a game that requires you to use two directional keys (move forward while strafing), jump, and use another key at the same time. Then, the system speaker beeps at you and you're locked out of the keyboard for a split second. Tried it, went back. Both my overbuilt Quietkey and my Model M are worth it over the cheap half-pound no-bezel USB deal that ships with Dell PCs now. Mice, you can take - they have no problem with converters, they are a much shorter-lifespan product even when properly cleaned, and most people have switched over to optical USB - but leave me my one PS/2 keyboard port. Forgive me for not wanting to shell out $70 for something I already own, in order to save backplane space.
The floppy is long overdue, because it's dirt-cheap to buy a USB unit and it takes up SO much real estate for the amount of use it sees. What I don't quite understand is why the motherboard makers havn't been more proactive in designing transparently well-supported USB/SATA -> legacy converter dongles, so that a mobo can ship with "parallel" in the box but not on the backplane. Is it that a southbridge isn't designed with enough connections or something? A single chip embedded in a cable has got to be cheaper than a steel PCIE slot and 1x lane.
HyperTension
[H]ard|Gawd
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Naysayers... STFU... You know dayom well you can use that PCI-X slot as an ISA to run triple SLI / X-Fire, or for physics.
wait.. huh?
wait.. huh?
I wouldn't worry about USB 3.0 or SATA 6 Gb for the next 12-18 months. Until peripherals are out in full force they're just items on a specs list rather than useful features. I just build an i7 rig with Windows 7 and an SSD -- Other than video card upgrades I see myself hanging onto this system past Sandy/Ivy Bridge. Maybe my next upgrade/rebuild will be a Haswell?
RumpleForeSkin
Limp Gawd
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remember how long there were USB ports on machines before there were actual USB devices? without a plethora of devices what is the point ?
.. your penis is fine.... no, really..it's long enough
.. your penis is fine.... no, really..it's long enough
Also do you remember how many of them had USB 1.0 and windows 95 didn't have drivers that worked properly?
Until USB 1.1 and Windows 95b came out using USB was a nightmare anyway. Back then the only USB device I had was a mouse. I ended up using its PS/2 adapter because USB just didn't work all that well.
USB 2.0 was basically just a simple upgrade of USB 1.1, so we were safe with that upgrade. With all the changes they made going to USB 3 it wouldn't surprise me if we end up seeing a USB 3.1 in a year or so. I'll also wait until Win7 SP1 or whenever the USB 3 drivers get rolled into windows. MS shipped Windows 7 with no USB 3 drivers, so we are at the mercy of the manufacturers.
People will worry about their e-penises plenty. I guarantee we will see someone bragging about how their USB 3 mouse totally lets them pwn noobs at whatever game they are playing.
Look at teh 4th picture in the set. It's an x58 mobo. It's triple channel. DOH!
For the P55 they can't put a 4x electrical slot on in addition to the 2x16's without getting rid of most of the 1x's and all of the misc controller chips. The southbridge only has 8 1.0 lanes. SATA 6GB needs a minimum of 2 lanes to be worthwhile (5/6ths of theoretical speed), although a single drive could saturate the controller in a large sequential read. Aas expensive as SSDs are this probably isn't a major concern on consumer mobos, and server models would presumably use some of the lanes that won't be needed for high end GPUs to power multiple controllers. A pair of USB3.0 slots need the same (~500MB/sec theoretical, ~300MB/sec expected real world limits) but will let you run both devices at almost full speed at the same time. If you were short on lanes a single USB3 device wouldn't suffer much from a 1 lane hookup.
According to hothardware.com the USB3 and SATA6 controllers share 4 PCIe 1.0 lanes (via a PEX bridge chip) that multiplexes 4 1.0 lanes into a pair of 2.0 lanes (one for each).
It appears that they're configured on the p55 board as:
2 lanes: sata6.0
2 lanes: USB3
2 lanes: ethernet controllers
2 lanes: 1x PCIe slots.
Since that consumes all 8 available PCIe lanes the PATA and Firewire controllers are presumably using legacy PCI.
The x58 board has 6 PCIe 1.0 lanes coming off the southbridge, but only differs in having a single 1x PCIe slot. I assume it's either using the ICH10 for one of the ethernet ports or has an nv200 chip to power the 3rd x16 slot. The former solution would obviously be cheaper, the latter would allow both USB3 and SATA6 devices to run at max speed concurrently by giving each a pair of faster PCIe2.0 lanes, although that assumes that the chips themselves are capable of using 2 lanes itself (unknown). Unfortunately while lots of sites have write ups for the p55 board, I can't find any detailed information on the x58 model.
EDIT: Above I was thinking the 16x slots were configured as 16/16/4 (is this an allowed configuration?). If the only options were either 16/16/0 or 16/8/8 it would leave 4x 2.0 lanes free which makes connecting everything up much simpler. /EDIT
I suspect the reason Intel isn't going to officially support either until 2011 on the p55 is that the DMI bus (equivalent to a 4x PCIe1.0 slot) doesn't have enough bandwidth to do so without bottlenecking.
QPI as implemented on Nehalem is ~25x faster (~50 PCIe 2.0 lanes equivalent) so there's no technical reason that they couldn't do so on the x58 if they made a new north bridge that either had it on die, or provided additional PCIe 2.0 lanes to connect it. I'm really not sure why they're delaying here; perhaps the x58 successor would be too expensive??? The flip side is that adding full speed support to x58 would give it a mean meaningful differentiation vs p55 being able to support 3x SLI/xFire.
EDIT2 Moving SATA and USB3 onto the northbridge would be a fairly major architectural change, and the x58 southbridge is bottlenecked by DMI. THis is probably a better explanation than it just being a matter of cost /EDIT2
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To all the people whining about the legacy IO connections taking up space on the board: IF you have an x58 system, are you using an ASUS P6T WS Revolution (or equivalent) mobo (only legacy IO port is a PS2); or a standard model with a bunch of legacy connections? Until boards like this start selling as well as or better than standard high end models new features will be premiered on the latter and only added to the former later on.
My only legacy device at this point is a BIOS POST code reading card that works on PCI. If a PCIe/usb/firewire model becomes available, or if PC mobos finally replace BIOS with EFI (1 second from power on to OS boot start FTW!) I'll be legacy free. In the mean time, one $10ish card is much cheaper for troubleshooting boot problems than buying the super premium mobo every time to get a post reader that only works with that particular mobo.
My only legacy device at this point is a BIOS POST code reading card that works on PCI. If a PCIe/usb/firewire model becomes available, or if PC mobos finally replace BIOS with EFI (1 second from power on to OS boot start FTW!) I'll be legacy free. In the mean time, one $10ish card is much cheaper for troubleshooting boot problems than buying the super premium mobo every time to get a post reader that only works with that particular mobo.
Asus has been putting 2 different NIC controllers on their P55 boards, (I think Kyle complained about it when they reviewed it) so I am wondering if they might be putting one of the NICs on the PCI bus also.
With the break down of the PCI-E lanes, I don't know why anyone would choose this board specifically for the USB3 and SATA 6.0. There are so many P55 boards with open PCI-E x4 slots that are quite a bit cheaper than this board and/or offer better board layouts. With this board you are stuck with the controllers they pick for the board. If you get a board with a x4 slot, then when the expansion cards come out you'll be able to pick the one with the best chips on it. Also if you only needed one of them, you'd be able to dedicate all for lanes to it.
I see all these posts about how useless Floppy, IDE, Serial and PS/2 ports are.
While I admit most that will buy this board will be enthusiasts some may actually have mainstream
needs.
For one thing a USB KVM that actually works right is damned sight more expensive than a PS/2 model.
Try to hook up to the console of a Cisco router without a serial to USB adapter and you're out of luck and some adapters work better than others. I know I had to go through 3 different models before I found one that actually worked right.
Further a lot of USB keyboards don't get instantly recognized by the BIOS at bootup which makes it a real pain to get into the BIOS. PS/2 gets seen much more quickly that's why they're still there.
As for floppy connectors, I like them especially if I set up a lab with server 2003 and try to load the RAID driver. Your USB stick isn't going to be seen as a floppy when you hit F6. The IDE connector is legacy but there's still a whole lot of DVD/CD drives out there with that interface.
At least ASUS recognizes that allowing certain "legacy" features can only add value to an already impressive product.
While I admit most that will buy this board will be enthusiasts some may actually have mainstream
needs.
For one thing a USB KVM that actually works right is damned sight more expensive than a PS/2 model.
Try to hook up to the console of a Cisco router without a serial to USB adapter and you're out of luck and some adapters work better than others. I know I had to go through 3 different models before I found one that actually worked right.
Further a lot of USB keyboards don't get instantly recognized by the BIOS at bootup which makes it a real pain to get into the BIOS. PS/2 gets seen much more quickly that's why they're still there.
As for floppy connectors, I like them especially if I set up a lab with server 2003 and try to load the RAID driver. Your USB stick isn't going to be seen as a floppy when you hit F6. The IDE connector is legacy but there's still a whole lot of DVD/CD drives out there with that interface.
At least ASUS recognizes that allowing certain "legacy" features can only add value to an already impressive product.
Possible, but because a single gige connection could saturate 94% (125/133) of the PCI bandwidth available for the board doing so would be a fairly poor design choice.
Taking the added input lag from a USB mouse, I'd rather have 2 x PS/2 connectors and then loose 2 x USB...
Hello All,
This has been a very interesting thread to read. A couple of quick notes.
1. People concerned with 3rd party controllers (almost all boards currently user multiple third party controllers and users do not seem to mind? Firewire, Network, Storage.
I can tell you I have had the chance to visit Marvells office and see testing on production boards like our current P7P55D Premium and see it provided close 400MB read. The reality is the controllers are fine and will actually only improve as drivers continue to get optimized the bigger point of concern is the cost of the SSD drives that net you 280MB+ speeds to fully benefit from SATA6G although there are other benefits. Additionally availability of these type of drives should be sometime in Q1 of next year.
2. Availability will be soon please keep your eye out for more information on our website. Or here at HardOCP where we will provide the information. ( this is in relation to the boards ). We will also have another solution available that is pretty cool for those that do not want another board but have purchased our current P55 solutions already.
3. Due to the limited design path of PCI-E lanes on P55 we had to integrate a custom PLX solution to ensure we did provide the bandwidth needed to have the performance gains available for the USB3.0 and SATA6G Platform.
This has been a very interesting thread to read. A couple of quick notes.
1. People concerned with 3rd party controllers (almost all boards currently user multiple third party controllers and users do not seem to mind? Firewire, Network, Storage.
I can tell you I have had the chance to visit Marvells office and see testing on production boards like our current P7P55D Premium and see it provided close 400MB read. The reality is the controllers are fine and will actually only improve as drivers continue to get optimized the bigger point of concern is the cost of the SSD drives that net you 280MB+ speeds to fully benefit from SATA6G although there are other benefits. Additionally availability of these type of drives should be sometime in Q1 of next year.
2. Availability will be soon please keep your eye out for more information on our website. Or here at HardOCP where we will provide the information. ( this is in relation to the boards ). We will also have another solution available that is pretty cool for those that do not want another board but have purchased our current P55 solutions already.
3. Due to the limited design path of PCI-E lanes on P55 we had to integrate a custom PLX solution to ensure we did provide the bandwidth needed to have the performance gains available for the USB3.0 and SATA6G Platform.
I'm planning to buy a new PC soon..
I would have bought this mobo if the PCI-E x16 slots would had more space between them.
But in this mobo there is little space between the ports so graphics cards in SLI/CF will have very little if any space between them, causing high temps on the GPU's ofc.
So i choose P6TD Deluxe over this mobo, since the P6TD Deluxe have plenty of space between the PCI-E x16 ports.
I would have bought this mobo if the PCI-E x16 slots would had more space between them.
But in this mobo there is little space between the ports so graphics cards in SLI/CF will have very little if any space between them, causing high temps on the GPU's ofc.
So i choose P6TD Deluxe over this mobo, since the P6TD Deluxe have plenty of space between the PCI-E x16 ports.
SylarPowers
[H]ard|Gawd
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filco usb 2.0 keyboards need to use the ps2 adapter (there are no filco usb 3.0 keyboards) for full n key rollover, as usb 2.0 has a 6 key limitation for gaming.
orubasarot
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Only 1 at near full speed. The SATA6 controller has a single PCIe 2.0 lane which gives it 500MB/sec of bandwidth. SATA6 has a theoretical maximum speed of 600MB/sec. IF it's efficiencies are similar to SATA3, it'll top out at about 520-540MB/sec. I don't know how close PCIe can come to its theoretical maximum bandwidth. Raiding 2 drives on this controller would probably not benefit sequential read. OTOH sequential write and random IO is still much slower than current SATA bandwidth and would be doubled in a raid.
orubasarot
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There's only a single QPI link coming from a s1366 Nehalem, so no. There's no reason someone couldn't make a chip that took a 2x PCIe 2.0 input that would be much less vulnerable to bottlenecking in heavy use. Probably easiest to do on a 1366 board because the x58NB has 36 2.0 lanes. 32 for the 16x lanes (16/16/0 or 16/8/8). 4 for SATA6/USB3, and the 6 1.0 lanes for 1x slots and misc onboard peripherals.
s1156 is harder because you've got so many fewer lanes to work with. You'd probably need to drop down to the mATX form factor. 2 16x slots in (16/0 or 8/8) mode. 4 1.0 lanes for SATA6, 2 for USB3, 1 for the obligatory ethernet chip, 1 for a 1x slot, and a legacy PCI slot to round out the board.
s1156 is harder because you've got so many fewer lanes to work with. You'd probably need to drop down to the mATX form factor. 2 16x slots in (16/0 or 8/8) mode. 4 1.0 lanes for SATA6, 2 for USB3, 1 for the obligatory ethernet chip, 1 for a 1x slot, and a legacy PCI slot to round out the board.
I find the lack of questions/concerns about the socket (and who makes it, e.g., Foxconn) amazing. In fact, in many forums it seems few are discussing the potential LGA 1156 Foxconn socket issue. Does anybody know why this is?
And to make my question relevant to the thread, does anyone know who makes the LGA 1156 socket for this motherboard, and if it's the same Foxconn socket (revision?) that others have found fault with?
And to make my question relevant to the thread, does anyone know who makes the LGA 1156 socket for this motherboard, and if it's the same Foxconn socket (revision?) that others have found fault with?
Hey Juan_Jose, do you have anything to say about the ASUS P6X58D Premium? Like spec sheet and/or expected release date? Most of the talk is about the new P55 board, but I'm personally a lot more interested in the new X58 board. I haven't seen any P6X58D Premium info on the ASUS website either unfortunately. I hope it's still coming...
Blazestorm
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I really doubt Asus puts those connections on there just for people using the Model M
It's just for legacy purposes... it doesn't cost them any more to put it on there, but someone will make use of the connection. It's not like they're running out of space on the PCB board or I/O section of the board...
Great. I LOVED the old IBM keyboards, like the ones I used with 2740 terminals and then my PC AT.
Where is the Win XP version that installs from USB?
I agree about letting the floppy die. Try this experiment. Take your 20 year old floppy diskettes and try to read them.
Then try to format them and see how successful you are. Fact is, Mother Nature is going to "discontinue" the floppy for us. Kaldskryke
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There are two models of the Marvell SATA6Gbps controller, one supports RAID0 (#88S9128), the other (#88S9123) does not. Gigabyte so far has been using 88S9128 (RAID version) but connects it to the processor, sacrificing PCI-E channels. The Asus boards so far as I know use 88S9123 (no RAID) but connect it to the P55 chipset via their PLX chip which bonds two P55 PCI-E v1.1 lanes together. Source
DanNeely is correct that RAID would be somewhat crippled using Asus's implementation, but based on the posted specs I really doubt they're using the 88S9128 anyway. Gigabyte's implementation can feed the Marvel chip enough bandwidth for RAID, but you can only run a graphics card in x8 configuration if you have SATA6gbps enabled.
This is a large part of the reason why I'm waiting to hear about X58 boards, because I want to run dual video cards and RAID0 SATA6Gbps devices at the same time, which is not possible with any of the P55 boards available at this time, so far as I know.
spacecowboy
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The x58 board is available at neweegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131614
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131614