thought on: x58 vs P55 (for USB 3.0)

[augustus524]

this is going to be kind of con't from Bladen "Any estimations on when more USB3 and SATA 6Gbps X58 boards will come out?" (01-01-2010, 05:43 PM )

Everything Bladen mentioned in his 1st post applied to me as well: live in Aust; checked out the price of the GA-X58A-UD7 and ASUS P6X58D, which is way above my budgeted price for mb. I'm looking at Asus P6T ($277) or Foxconn FLAMING BLADE ($251) or Asrock x58 extream (about $216, which seems to be the cheapest x58 mb I could find). I justify spending $400+ on mb, when I won't be doing anything extreme. I still remember the Athlon day, when I spend $250 for the Asus a7n8x deluxe, it was considered top range(I think).

My plan: Air OC; like most people, prefer to future proof as much (I'm still using athlon 2500+ with Asus a7n8x deluxe; not very good with Video, Youtube, and running Office at the same time); will be doing software virtualization (learning Linux, and developing software which need to compatible with XP & 7); will be playing game like WWC3, starcraft 2 (when available), and Dragon Age (3rd person), unlikely any 1st person shooting game.

To some extend, I think the P55 is not very future proof at all, because it can't really handle USB3. I had done some research, and most people are saying that most games don't use the full bandwidth (x16 lanes) on the P55 chipset, but to me, that just not very future proofing for the Gigabyte p55a* series? As for the Asus p7p55* series, it seems it is the better solution, but wouldn't the PLx PCIe implementation would slow down the USB3 performance (ie additional chip, running off the P55 chipset)?

I think there will be a revise P55 chipset for the USB3 (maybe all current USB2 will be updated to USB3.0).

I think the x58 will be a lot more future proof, because of the 36 Express 2.0 lanes . And for someone like, who ain't going to run SLi/Crossfire, i think it is the most future proof system.

Please let me know what you guys think.

 

[Stefan Payne]

Take a x58, that one has (real) PCIe 2.0 lanes for the chips, the P55 doesn't.

 

[PCboy]

The biggest difference here is the fact that core i9 will still use socket 1366, not socket 1156.

But Anand said it best:

I believe there are three major advantages to the LGA-1366 platform for single-socket desktops:

1) Support for Gulftown. You can only get 6-cores from the LGA-1366 platform in 1H 2010, Intel currently doesn't have any 6-core LGA-1156 parts planned.

2) More overclockable CPUs. The best yielding Nehalems (and highest clocked Nehalems) will be LGA-1366 processors. I wouldn't expect any 1GHz+ overclocks from LGA-1156 CPUs.

3) More bandwidth to PCIe slots. I don't see this as a huge advantage today, but there may come a time when having as much bandwidth to your GPUs as possible is important. I'm thinking general purpose GPU computing, DX11, OpenCL sort of stuff. But we're not there yet.

Except #2.

 

[Jd007]

Interesting article today on CrossFire scaling of P55 vs. X58 with 5870s.

 

[RussianSensation]

A couple points.

"ike most people, prefer to future proof as much"

- That's not really true. Latest technology has the most bugs and with progress so fast these days, it hardly ever makes sense to futureproof. For instance, if you bought an Intel SSD 160GB today for $500, in 6-9 months you will be able to get it for half. Most people have also figured out that it's better to buy 2x $250 videocards every 15 months, than to hold a $500 videocard for 30 months. Recall GTX 280 which cost $600 and was matched in performance by $200 GTX 275 just 12 months later....

- Futureproofing nonsense is a waste of time imo. Instead think of it: "What features am I getting that I will use now". For instance X58 Core i9 compatibility is not a feature 99% of people care about since the processor will cost $999. However, USB 3.0 you can use even now. Even if USB 3.0 is not performing at 100% of its potential due to early adoption, it has the ability to provide real world benefits since you can buy USB 3.0 hard drives now. Having the option of 24 Gigs of Ram on X58 motherboard? Again, likely not that useful for most people.

- Buying >$200 motherboard is again a massive waste of funds unless you are doing extreme overlocking. Something like Gigabyte UD3 will more than suffice unless you need CF in which case you can go for UD4P. Asus has the Evo P55. A $130-150 motherboard and $400 motherboard perform more or less the same in the real world with a single graphics card and both will net you 4.0ghz+ from a Core i7 easily.

- If you do spend $$$ on a board, consider putting that $ into an SSD or a faster graphics card if anything.

- Furthermore, both X58 and P55 will fade away in 2011 or 2012 at most with Sandy Bridge and whatever AMD has to offer. Sure X58 may be barely faster, but in 2-3 years we'll have 8 core processors and more. Also, if you aren't going to run SLI/CF, there is even less benefit to X58.