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ASRock are stepping up their game. It has taken a lot of time persuading the enthusiast audience, but in the last year we have seen the company develop and progress, especially with their motherboard designs. Today we are looking at the ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Professional motherboard, which is targeted at the hardcore gaming audience.
We briefly looked at this product with our Intel 2500k and 2600k launch coverage, but today we put it under the KitGuru microscope.
- Premium Gold Caps (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors
- Digi Power, Advanced V16 + 2 Power Phase Design
- Supports Intel® K-Series unlocked CPU
- Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2133(OC)
- Supports ATI™ Quad CrossFireX™, 3-Way CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™
- Supports NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ and SLI™
- Dual PCIE GLAN with Teaming function
- 2 x Front USB 3.0 ports, 4 x Rear USB 3.0 ports, 6 x SATA3 connectors, 1 x eSATA3 connector, 2 x IEEE 1394 ports
- Dr. Debug, Smart Swith Design: Power/Reset/Clear CMOS Switch with LED
- Supports Fatal1ty F-Stream, Instant Boot, Instant Flash, Good Night LED, Multi-Fan Speed Control, AIWI, APP Charger, SmartView
- Combo Cooler Option (C.C.O.)
- 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), THX TruStudio PRO™ and Premium Blu-ray audio support
- ErP/EuP Ready
- Free Software : CyberLink DVD Suite – OEM and Trial
- Free Bundle : 1 x SLI_Bridge_2S Card , 1 x Front USB 3.0 Panel, 1 x Rear USB 3.0 Bracket
The product arrives in a dramatic, artistically designed red and black box with a picture of Fatal1ty himself on the front.
Inside the outer sleeve, the motherboard ships in the first box, while the accessories are in the second.
The bundle is extremely comprehensive with sata cables, cable adapters, literature, a software disc, USB 3.0 header panel and an SLI connector.
The board is based on the Intel P67 chipset and is a slot 1155 socket design. ASrock have incorporated Premium Gold Caps- 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors for extra life (2.5 times) and stability. ASRock have two holes cut into the CPU mounting area so people can use their older slot 775 coolers to save money.
The board is populated with heavy duty heatsinks, across all the voltage regulation board sections. These match the board red and black theme.
There are four ram slots, which are populated in a two channel configuration – marked red and black. The bios can support memory up to DDR3-2133mhz speeds in dual channel mode.
The P67 Fatal1ty supports AMD and nVidia multi graphics card configurations. Configurations up to Quad CrossFire and Quad SLi are supported out of the box. An ASmedia processor is used to supply PCI from PCIe x1.
The board supports dual PCIe Gigibit ethernet with teaming function. There is also a single eSATA port on the rear, a Fatal1ty mouse port, a 1394 port, 3 USB 3.0 ports, 6 Sata 3 connectors, three Sata 2 connectors and a front USB 3.0 header which also supports USB 3.0 (via another EtronTech processor). Coaxial and Digital SPDIF are included. ASRock use the EltronTech USB 3.0 connector saying that this is a faster controller when compared to the NEC configuration. There is also a handy diagnostic display readout, right above handy reset and power buttons.
The ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Professional motherboard uses a GUI based BIOS which has a staggering array of options at hand. It is well presented and covers all bases, especially for overclocking. Below are screenshots from various sections of the bios.
Overclocking the Core i7 2600k Intel processor didn't prove to be any issue at all. We have already detailed how to get 5.1ghz out of this processor on an Intel motherboard and we achieved the same results with the Fatal1ty board. This may sound slightly disappointing, but we are obviously at the maximum clock for this specific chip. Those users with high end watercooling kits or using phase change, should be able to push this even higher.
Intel Core i7-2600k System:
Processor: Core i7-2600k
Memory: GSkill Ripjaws 4GB 2133mhz
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200W
Motherboard: ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Pro
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Graphics: Inno3D GTX580 and AMD HD6970
Hard Drive: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB & Kingston HyperX Max 3.0
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
Software:
Aida 64
Super Pi 1.5 Mod
SiSoft Sandra
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cyberlink Media Espresso
Adobe Photoshop Elements V8
Adobe Premier Pro CS5
PCMark Vantage
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Native ports for all major operating systems are available:
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
- Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
- Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
- Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)
All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:
- SMP – Multi-Processor
- MC – Multi-Core
- SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
- MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
- GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
- NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
- AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
- IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit
A very impressive set of results from all the Sandra benchmark tests.
CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.
CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.
This combination of 2600k and ASRock Fatal1ty motherboard are a performance dream, scoring 6.87 points without any overclocking at all.
AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
AES performance, in line with the SiSoft Sandra testing, is incredible.
PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.
A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.
From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.
An overall score of 19k shows that the 2600k and ASrock motherboard can certainly deliver high levels of performance.
Super Pi is software that was designed for overclocking performance testing, it allows to test floating decimal point and mathematics performances of a processor. The test consists in calculating the part PI value with the CPU, the number being infinite.
We can select several lengths of calculations, from 16 KB to 32 MB.
We don’t normally include this software in processor reviews, but we have had a lot of requests from our audience to cover it. We are using the modified 1.5 version and are running an 8M calculation.
A final time of 1 minutes and 52 seconds is impressive for stock clock speeds. Next we will show the result from our maximum overclocked state at 5.1ghz.
Both 1M and 8M calculations. 7.3 seconds and 1 min 26 seconds is an incredible result.
A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance so we used two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach. We are using a 6Gb/s capable connector on the ASrock motherboard.
SATA 6Gb performance is very satisfying when paired up with the Crucial C300 Solid State Drive.
Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 is one of the finest solutions for the Blu-Ray experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the Bluray Disc of Avatar, one of our favourite sci-fi films in recent years.
Average CPU load is 10 percent which highlights that this system is easily capable of coping with an intensive multitasking environment.
We recorded CPU demand over a specific period of time to get a ‘real world’ rolling scale of activity.
Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.
Flash isn’t the most ideal platform for video content as it can be quite CPU intensive. The 2600k copes admirably on the ASRock Fatal1ty board, averaging only 15 percent CPU time.
CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.
Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.
We are using a 3.3gb MKV file today at 2 hours and 12 minutes in length. We are converting to a final output for an Apple Media Player, a real world situation facing many people.
A final time of 10 minutes and 41 seconds, impressive for a reference clocked processor configuration.
We are now going to test the USB 3.0 and 2.0 speed, so we used the fastest drive we have, the Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 128GB, which is an Toshiba based SSD product within a USB 3.0 capable enclosure.
Today for testing we first copied a 3.9GB MKV file to and from the Kingston HyperX USB 3.0 drive.
USB 3.0 performance is great and we recorded well in excess of 140 MB/s when reading from the drive. USB 2.0 performance is pretty much at the limited bandwidth peak.
HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.
There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.
This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.
We are using an AMD HD6970 for this test today.
Read our initial analysis over here.
| Fatal1ty / HD 6970 |
|
|
Dial
|
4 |
| Dial with static pattern | 5 |
| Gray Bars | 5 |
| Violin | 5 |
| Stadium 2:2 | 5 |
| Stadium 3:2 | 5 |
| Horizontal Text Scroll | 5 |
| Vertical Text Scroll | 5 |
| Transition to 3:2 Lock | 5 |
| Transition to 2:2 Lock | 0 |
|
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video
|
5 |
|
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video
|
5 |
|
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed
|
5 |
|
5:5 FPS Animation
|
5 |
|
6:4 12 FPS Animation
|
5 |
|
8:7 8 FPS Animation
|
5 |
|
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)
|
5 |
|
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Sailboat
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Flower
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Sunrise
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Harbour Night
|
5 |
|
Scrolling Text
|
5 |
|
Roller Coaster
|
5 |
|
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
|
Bridge Traffic
|
5 |
|
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text
|
5 |
|
Roller Coaster
|
5 |
|
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
|
Bridge Traffic
|
5 |
|
Luminance Frequency Bands
|
5 |
|
Chrominance Frequency Bands
|
5 |
| Vanishing Text | 5 |
|
Resolution Enhancement
|
15 |
|
Theme Park
|
5 |
| Driftwood | 5 |
|
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
|
Skin Tones
|
7 |
| Total | 196 |
The highest levels of image quality are available from the HD6970 running via the ASRock Fatal1ty motherboard.
Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.
Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.
Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.
Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.
To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.
Great figures from all configurations running on the ASRock Fatal1ty board.
Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.
Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.
Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.
After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.
We are testing in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high.
Both engines prove to run like butter with this configuration, even the intensive Lost Planet 2 in Direct X 11 with settings on maximum.
Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.
We are testing across three screens in Direct X 11 mode with 4aa and 16af enabled. All settings are switched to high.
Crysis Warhead, like the original Crysis, is set in the near future when an ancient alien spacecraft is discovered on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of former SAS Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns. In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield.
The engine is still a system killer, all these years later, but modern day hardware can finally generate the frame rates we wanted when it was released !
Colin McRae Dirt 2 doesn't prove to be a problem for any of the configurations. Crysis Warhead however is a different story, Single card doesn't keep all the environmental areas running smoothly, and even though the CrossfireX gains seem small, it really helps to smooth out the overall experience considerably raising the minimum frame rate from 19 to 25.
ASRock have always been known for achieving a good price point. In recent months they are getting a name outside the budget market as they deliver quality products aimed at the more demanding enthusiast gamer. The Fatal1ty Professional makes a good counterpart to the MSI Big Bang and Asus Republic Of Gamers boards.
On a connectivity level there is nothing missing, we have dual GbE LAN Teaming, THX TruStudio Pro, SmartView, AIWI and a plethora of sata and USB 3.0/2.0 headers to name but a few. We like the front mounting USB 3.0 panel which also works as a housing for an SSD Drive.
On a performance level we encountered no issues during testing, with results matching other P67 boards we have tested to date. Board installation is straightforward and the layout is fantastic with no glaring placement issues apparent. Overclocking is equally straightforward and while we could push the 2600k no further than the Intel board in our labs (5.1ghz), getting there was much easier.
Overall, this board impressed the KitGuru team, ASRock have cut no corners with the bundle, build quality or performance characteristics of the board. Obviously with such a luxury product, the pricing is fairly high at around £190 inc vat but if you are looking for ultimate performance and want every luxury possible, then this should be right at the top of your shortlist.
KitGuru says: Quality build quality and killer performance.
