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  • AnnihilatorX - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    "Surprisingly, only one 8-pin 12V connector is on the board, which is somewhat odd if the board has a liquid nitrogen mode and power needs to be pumped into the CPU."

    Just on the right hand side of the first PCIe X16 next to VRMs, there is also a 4-pin molex connector.
  • AnnihilatorX - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Oh sorry I didn't see that you mentioned it. Are you sure the power just goes to PCIe only?
  • IvanChess - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    I believe that 4-pin molex connector is a leftover from the AGP days and is actually meant to be plugged into the graphics card as an auxiliary power source. That's what it is on my board anyway.
  • Kiji - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Still no UEFI... :(
  • Kiji - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Scratch that. Seems that the entire P67 lineup from Asus comes with EFI (http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/a... Can someone tell me the difference between UEFI and EFI or how do they relate to each other ? Maybe Anandtech can do an article about that, since it will be a trend in 2011 :P
  • XZerg - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    EFI - Apple's version. UEFI - rest of the industry going to follow - Universal.
  • ViRGE - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Close but no cigar. The early Intel-developed versions of EFI are officially known as EFI, while the later EFI versions starting in 2005 developed by the Unified EFI Forum are UEFI. So both Apple and Asus would be using UEFI.
  • B3an - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    You're not right either... atleast i'm pretty sure you're not. Macs still use EFI.
    PC's will get UEFI, which is basically EFI 2.0.
    I know for certain that the current 2010 macbooks and pro's use EFI 1.1.
  • AmineBouhafs - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    "And on the fifth day of x-mas my true love sent to me...an Asus Maximus IV Extreme!" :p
  • The_Lauging_Man - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Besides the extra 4-pin molex where the first PCIe x1 would be that was mentioned, I see a second right angle mounted 4-pin molex beneath the PCIe X4 slot. There is no mention in the article about this connector. Would both 4-pin molex be for powering the PCIe slots. I have a felling that this would not be the case, but can't say either way. I also like the plethora of 4-pin fan headers on the board.
  • jonup - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Nice catch! I had to look hard to notice it. I almost thought you were on something good. Anyways, I would like to know if the second molex is indead for the PCIx or is it to supply additional power for all the additional controllers on this board. Maybe it is for the NF200.
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  • Qapa - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    1 - Why would anyone need dual GBe?? Are you expecting to have 2 internet connections with 2 different ISPs, and want to be sure be always online? :P

    2 - No UEFI? For real? I don't understand that! Specially in high end MBs. And that probably means 2012 till mainstream gets it :(

    PS: I also wish something could be done about Intel not having direct support for USB3... any ideas? Cause it is costing us all...
  • GeorgeH - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    1) One reason:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

    2) If it becomes necessary, UEFI can be implemented on top of a BIOS and isn't a complete BIOS replacement anyway:
    http://www.uefi.org/about/

    3) Intel won't release USB 3.0 until the 2011/12 time frame, which very coincidentally is also the Light Peak time frame. I'll let you connect the dots.
  • Qapa - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    1 - As I said, redundancy seems ridiculous. And more speed the same.

    2 - Point taken and learnt :) On the other hand, I doubt they will add UEFI to their MBs and how would those really be booting faster as UEFI systems should.
    AFAIU, UEFI replaces parts of BIOS, not all. But if they already have full BIOS, would they really remove parts to move them to UEFI? Don't think so.

    3 - AFAIK, I think they are even trying to put LightPeak in, ahead of USB3. No dots need connecting here. What I wanted was ideas on what to do to change this and make them put USB3 in the market together with Sandy Bridge...
  • jonup - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    3. I don't know. Did you try showing up at Paul Otellini's house with a baseball bat?
    Dont you get it? Intel has business agenda that does not coincide with your need. Intel vs Qapa -> Intel wins!
  • strikeback03 - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Well since these chipsets are obviously shipping already there isn't anything to be done about USB3 now, the customers simply get screwed. All the SATA ports should have been SATA 6Gb/s and all the USB ports should have been USB3. Maybe these issues will be fixed on more consumer-level versions of the chipset (that can use the integrated graphics in SB), otherwise they are giving AMD another opportunity.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link

    Someone may want to update the Wikipedia page on Link aggregation, if Windows 7 now supports it:

    "Note that Microsoft Windows does not natively support link aggregation (at least up to Windows Server 2008)."
  • Regenweald - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Large format printers and plotters often use a dedicated lan port. what if you wanted wired network access on your printing machine as well ? There are many instances where two lan ports can be very handy, as they would in my office right now.
  • Qapa - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Well, that's a niche implementation.
    More commonly, the printer would be connected to the network as well (router/switch/etc), so everyone can access it and not only your computer.

    Still, seems overkill to me.
  • Egowhip69 - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Not really niche... More for professionals. Many medium and small shops use home made systems for workstations for money reasons. I work at a large Post house, and even we do that when money is tight and we can't afford the mainstream workstations (as they command a VERY large price premium).

    In our shop, most of our systems are SAN attached through fiber. CVFS (the filesystem we use) requires a secondary nic for "metadata". You can do everything through 1 nic, but at a huge preformance penalty if any latency exists.

    Plus, with dual nics, you can setup you system as a router, DHCP server, firewall, print server, dual home the system in a work network, etc.

    While I do agree, for 99% of the "high end" gamers won't need it... but for the $.30 it cost to throw the second nic on there... why not? Then your product applies to a larger portion of the users out there.
  • Taft12 - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    The Realtek network chip these OEMs use is not at all fit for use in a professional environment.

    Now please pass me my Intel PCI-E NIC:

    http://www.intel.com/products/server/adapters/pro1...
  • 7amood - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Would love to see ASUS get seriously into smaller mobos (mini-ITX).

    I am planning to use the SilverStone SG07 to build a small beast.
    ONLY if ASUS put serious thought into building a good Mini-ITX mobo.
    I am already planning two bios settings for it, quite mode where not even the behemoth fan of the SG07 is needed and the other for serious computation and gaming.
  • Qapa - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    The PC could live a lot longer if it moved to SFF, but mostly companies are taking 2 routes:
    1 - laptops
    2 - PCs with the same old size from dozens of years!!

    I wish they would focus on SFF as well, I'd make one for myself if it wasn't too damn hard to find the MBs, graphics, etc and at a similar price!
  • Egowhip69 - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    I agree, I love the smaller boards... but the reason the Mobo Manus concentrate on those two areas, is a simple answer... money.

    To shrink the board, you have to do alot more design and research. This ups the cost, so you have to charge more to recoup. And I don't think they sell even close to as many of the mini and pico boards as normal size ATX, probably cause they cost more.

    Laptops are the hot item now. More sales means more money, which means more money going back into R&D into that area, which then makes the product better, which helps drive more sales. All a circle.

    Boils down to money. I would like more small options, but until livingroom integration really takes off, I think it'll stay as a smaller niche market.
  • Mr Perfect - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    I was going to ask the same thing, where are the mITX boards? Asus made a nice one for AM3s, so we know they're watching the market.
  • Etern205 - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    The P8P67 Deluxe has UEFI bios

    http://www.techspot.com/news/40984-asus-motherboar...

    After 3:00, look at the top left corner and you'll see the model.
    May need to watch it on YouTube to get a clearer picture.
  • Pneumothorax - Sunday, November 14, 2010 - link

    Since Intel's forcing you to by a chip with built in gfx, wouldn't be helpful for at least diagnostic purposes or even a "bad flash" to be able to boot up using the GMA core on Sandy Bridge?
  • Stahn Aileron - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    It's a P-series chipset. An H6x-series is probably where the intregrated GPU will be supported, much like how the current chipset work (P5x = Dedicated GPUs ONLY; H5x-series for CPUs with integrated GPU.)

    The question I have to ask is will ALL SB-based chips have a GPU in them, or will the higher-end (like the EE) chips use all the silicon for CPU cores? (I mean, if you're shelling out for a high-end CPU, you probaly have a high-end discrete GPU or a SLI/CrossFire set-up of some sort.)
  • nevcairiel - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    All SB chips coming in the first generation (1155 chipset) will have the GPU cores. The 8-cores coming Q3/11 presumably won't have them.
  • duploxxx - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    The Sandy Bridge platform on P67 relies on discrete graphics only, and as such there are no video out connectors on the back panel, but two PCIe x8 slots on the board itself (or one PCIe x16 if only one card is used). There is another PCIe slot available, presumably x4, for non-GPU duties.

    wow Intel is that all youc an design 1*16 or 2*8 nice one for a high-end board.....
  • strikeback03 - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    These first SB chips aren't going to be the absolute high-end for Intel, see here: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/sand...

    So maybe there will be a further high-end chipset that supports more PCIe lanes for the true high-end SB once it launches.
  • Stahn Aileron - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link

    I would think so. We (or at least I) haven't heard of any announcements concerning something like an X6x-series Chipset. (I would think X68 if Intel is keeping with it's chipset naming scheme since the 3-series.)

    If nevcairiel is correct regarding the all the arly CPUs coming with iGPUs, there's no real need for an X-series chipset board from Intel yet. Then again, that set of SB chips are coming with a new socket type. Maybe the high-end SB chips will come on LGA1366 and you can just re-use the X58 chipset. (Assuming Intel lives up to it's pledge of supporting 1366 for a while longer...Heaven forbid they release ANOTHER socket in so quickly again. I don't want to see an LGA1365 or something for high-end SB chips...)
  • DanNeely - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    That's because like LGA1156 intel views LGA1155 as a mainstream platform. The high performance platform will transition from LGA1366 to LGA 2011 sometime around Q3 of next year.
  • Stahn Aileron - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link

    Ah, crap...I forgot about LGA2011...And now that I saw this post and read up on Wikipedia, there will be an X68 chipset for the high-end...
  • Veroxious - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    I agree about the price. I wish there was not such a big price differential between uATX and full ATX as well........... I hate uATX because they are usually very minimal and when the features are up to scratch the amount of PCI-E slots are lacking
  • neoflux - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Any details on ASUS's P8P67-I mini-ITX board? Specifically, is RAID built in and what Wi-fi specs are built in i.e. b, g, or n and then 2.4 and/or 5GHz?

    As seen here and here:
    http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/15/asus-sandy-brid...
    http://techreport.com/articles.x/19982
  • neoflux - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Also, why does it have HDMI, DVI, and VGA if the P67 series doesn't support on-board graphics?
  • DanNeely - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    At a guess in addition to all the other integrated stuff itemized, there's a low end amd/nVidia GPU hiding somewhere on the board.
  • strikeback03 - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Or the reported name could be incorrect, might be an H67 instead to take advantage of the graphics on the chip
  • neoflux - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    I think you're right, the image from the techreport article is "p8h67-i.jpg"

    http://techreport.com/r.x/asus-sb-mobos/p8h67-i.jp...
  • Wardrop - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Can someone explain to me why PCI is still alive and kicking. 6+ years after PCI-e became mainstream, we're still seeing PCI slots on motherboards. Why are Intel so stingy with how many PCI-e lanes their chipsets support?

    When will PCI finally rest in peace?

    By the way, I realise that legacy support is sometimes required in some industries, but not every mainstream motherboard needs two PCI slots (the vast majority don't need any).
  • DanNeely - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Probably because each PCIe lane needs a bit of dedicated hardware and dedicated traces on the mobo to support it, vs legacy PCI daisychaining all its devices on the same bus. In Intel's case this is aggravated by DMIs relatively low bandwidth limiting the number of lanes that the southbridge can support without bottlenecking.

    As far as the bus actually dieing completely... Your current mobo almost certainly still implements a variant of ISA in the form of the LPC bus which has the PS2 ports, Floppy controller, and BIOS attached. On server type boards the connector for a TPM device is also wired into LPC. It's possible that the minimal differences between PCI and PCIe (vs ISA and PCI) will result in PCI dieing completely, but since ISA has lingered over a decade after its slots disappeared I wouldn't hold my breath.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Pin_Count
  • strikeback03 - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    I care more about the slots disappearing than the bus itself. Not so big a deal on full-size ATX boards, but with uATX and only 4 slots it is annoying that an otherwise good board might have 2 PCI and 2 PCIe when you might need/want more PCIe. Someone needs to take the lead in pushing the removal of PCI from the majority of products.
  • DanNeely - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    3 and 1 does makes more sense on a mATX board, and aside from filling space on the board itself I don't see much need for more than 1 of them. The only thing that would make me hesitate a bit on an all PCIe board is that I can't find a PCIe bios post code reader.

    Unfortunately with 1155 though, at least for high end boards there might not be enough lanes available to go all PCIe even on an mATX board. The CPU's 16 lanes power the two 16x slots in 16/0 or 8/8 modes. The southbridge only has 8 1x lanes. USB3 and Sata6GB controllers take 2 lanes each. GigE controllers will take 1 or 2 more, leaving at most 2 or 3 lanes left. IF operating the two 16x physical slots in 16/1 mode is an option there goes another lane. Likewise if PCIe audio or wireless controllers are also shoehorned onboard.

    LGA1155 will help on this front somewhat by upping the southbridge lanes to 2.0 speeds, and providing 2 sata6Gb ports on the southbridge. In theory this would allow for a 16(8)/16(8)/4/1 configuration. Although board designers can undo these gains by sticking more than 1 USB3 controller or additional Sata6GB controllers onboard.

    Without using NF200 chips to multiplex PCIe lanes though I don't think we'll see any LGA1155 full size ATX boards that completely shed PCI though. LGA2011's 36 (40?) 3.0 + 8 2.0 lanes will probably be able to do it.

    I fear that their marketing people might be drawing the wrong conclusions from (presumed) lackluster sales of pricey legacy-free boards.

    A final comment I'd like to make is that the people who wrote the PCIe physical spec missed a trick that the original PCI designers did to help the transition from ISA. Because PCI and ISA slots have the physical connection on the opposite side of the case opening you could make PCI/ISA slots that had both connectors side by side. Unlike in the bad old days, PCIe 1x slots barely take any physical space, so fitting them next to the single PCI slot you're keeping for legacy use wouldn't have nearly as much of an impact in figuring out how to cram everything onto the board.
  • jonup - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Is socket 1155 would be compatible with scket 1156 coolers? I have a Mugen2 that I pulled out from my P2 machine in anticipation of bulding a new rig. And now that I have my mind set on SB I am really anxious to know.
  • blowfish - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Surely it's high time PS2 ports were dropped. With the minimal cost of keyboards and mice, it can be no great hardship to replace old PS2 devices with USB ones. And maybe dropping the PS2 ports might have allowed a second ethernet port.
  • DanNeely - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    The cost from the connector is negligible, as is the board space for connecting the PS2 controller; and with the exception of the mITX board they all had enough space to fit a 2nd ethernet port or another bank of USB ports on the back. Even there the mITX board probably could've dropped the VGA connection in favor of a DVI-D plug and a dongle to get the needed space.

    The reason PS2 ports still live on in so many mobos is for the benefit of BIOS/low level OS driver developers. Because PS2 is orders of magnitude simpler than USB it's much less vulnerable to a buggy software build leaving the system without a means of user input for troubleshooting/disaster recovery.
  • Mr Perfect - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Normally, I'd be right there with you. The BIOS writers and low level driver coders probably aren't using ASUS ROG boards, so why's it on there?

    The only reasonable reason I've seen to date to have a PS\2 port is N-Key rollover for keyboards(NKRO). If you have a NKRO keyboard, PS\2 can identify every individual key, even if you somehow manage to mash them all down at once. Even with the best keyboard, USB can only recognize six keys at a time plus modifiers(Alt, Ctrl, Shift, etc). Ever been playing a game, go to hit oooone more key and have it not register? Yep, that wouldn't happen with NKRO. The Geekhack keyboardists explain it much better of course.

    http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Do+I+need+N...

    I know of no good reason to use a mouse on PS\2 though.
  • Dimarini - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Please forgive me if someone else posted this ... "Obviously, expect the Deluxe to retail at a high price than the Pro." ... Should this read "higher"?
  • ChuckDriver - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    Since they are including Bluetooth with these motherboards, I wonder if it will be possible to access the BIOS with a Bluetooth keyboard. This has been a drawback with Bluetooth, in my opinion; especially when you consider that a proprietary RF wireless keyboard doesn't have this problem. Few people will care about this, but it has bothered me for a long time. I read that Anycom made a BT dongle (I think the USB-500) where this was possible, but Anycom appears to be out of business.
  • JessusChristDoOTcom - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    I second this notion.
  • ClagMaster - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link

    This P67 motherboard looks like a worthy successor to their P55 motherboards.

    I noticed the clamping device has a fairly large CPU bearing surface so there is no tilting of the CPU in the socket that can cause pins to melt at high overclock.

    But I do not think the quality is there as in the P55 boards released a year ago.

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