Yet another P8P67 thread (LE vs PRO-M)

[whatisboom]

I originally built my system on a P8P67 LE board (on a budget). Right now the games I'm playing (WoW, don't laugh/BFBC2) are easily maxing my GPU (HIS 6850) on mostly high settings. I have done the SB recall and gotten my replacement board back in, and after talking to the NE agent they said they were handling SB recalls as RMA refunds and new orders, so I had another 30 days to return my new B3 board (after me mentioning wanting to upgrade).

The only reason I would consider upgrading at the moment is better crossfire support, as the LE board only handles 4x on the secondary card, whereas the PRO will handle 8x on both.

Next point, NE seems to only be offering the PRO boards in a micro-atx form factor. Other than the reduced number of PCI slots, is there a major difference? Price-wise its a $5 upgrade from my LE to the PRO-M, and I could possibly snag another of those 6850's for fairly cheap.

So my real question is: If you were in my position, is the upgrade from 1 6850 to 2 6850's (vs buying a better GPU when I need it) worth the trouble of ordering a new board, and doing a refund on my current one?

PS - all important system info in sig

 

[Blahman]

I have a P8P67-M PRO (started with B2 then replaced with B3 revision) and I can tell you it is definitely different from the desktop boards. The way you set the CPU voltage is trickier -- through a CPU voltage offset setting, Additional Turbo Voltage (ATV) as well as Load Line Calibration (LLC), which on the mATX board is either Enabled or Disabled, where with the ATX boards there are several different settings for LLC like Low, High and Extreme, and being able to simply enter the desired voltage instead of using offsets.

Also it would appear that ASUS is neglecting the mATX version in terms of keeping their website up to date with the latest BIOSes. Good luck finding the BIOS the B3 board shipped with on their website, the one on the CD you get is newer than the website (0703 vs 0413, I don't even think 0413 works on B3 rev boards, so they are still only offering a BIOS for a recalled, defective board, nice one ASUS).

In terms of specs you can go to the ASUS website and use their product comparison tool to compare them. Here's a pic for the lazy.

I and several others over at this thread on OCN have also noted a pretty significant increase in the voltage required to achieve stability at overclocks above 4.2-4.5GHz in comparison to the B2 rev P8P67-M PRO. So yeah I am a little wary to recommend it unless ASUS fixes it through a BIOS update.

All that being said it is a nice board that probably just needs some TLC from ASUS. Others have gotten some very nice overclocks with it, even 5.1GHz with a 2500K.

 

[whatisboom]

Well, like I said, mine's currently running on the LE board @ 4.6ghz without any voltage tweaks. I haven't had any stability issues at all.

I'm wondering if there are any feature/utility draw backs to the M-ATX boards that might not be directly advertised.

 

[l3uLLDoZeR]

Awesome post with tons of good info...thx Blahman.
What about the sleep issue...will your computer wake up?

 

[Blahman]

Sleep seems fine at moderate overclocks but at 4.8GHz where I'm at currently it doesn't work