Introduction

Another contender from Taipei hits our test bench, sporting a new UEFI bios complete with mouse/keyboard support, and a fully customizable digital VRM. The ASUS P8P67-PRO seeks to bridge the gap between high-end and enthusiast products, offering many features not found elsewhere, including Bluetooth built right into the back panel. Will it turn the competitors black and blue, like its color scheme, or do those colours hint that maybe it can take a beating? We strap the gloves on the ASUS P8P67-PRO in a heavyweight battle sure to entertain the masses.

Specifications

Intel P67 Chipset

A few short months ago, Intel launched their latest platform, codenamed SandyBridge. Shortly after release the majority of motherboard chipsets were recalled by Intel for a revision, and today, all of those products are back on the store shelf, and not without a bit of fanfare. Manufacturer packaging lauds the inclusion of the latest revision of Intel's P67 chipset, the B3 stepping, and with good reason, as this indicates that the chipset's SATA drive controller will survive throughout the warranty period.


The above block diagram shows basic layout and functionality of Intel's P67 chipset. Supporting four SATA2 channels and two SATA 6 Gb/s channels natively, it offers full functionality and speed for both internal drives as well as for external drives over eSATA and USB3.0, thanks to a full-speed PCIe 2.0 implementation integrated directly into the CPU and chipset. In fact, the P67 chipset merely serves as a basic input/output hub, with the majority of features previously relegated to the chipset now fully integrated within the CPU silicon itself. This serves to provide high-speed, low latency throughput, but at the same time, does limit expansion possibilities a bit. With 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes in the CPU itself, and another eight lanes in the P67 silicon, the platform supports dual graphics connected directly to the CPU itself, and the remaining add-in devices, unless situated in one of the graphics ports, are all managed by the P67 chipset proper.

Like the past P55 chipset, USB3.0 connectively is not provided natively, although unlike P55, the full speed PCIe 2.0 implementation in the P67 chipset ensures that external SATA and USB3.0 controllers receive the bandwidth they need. USB 2.0, on the other hand, is almost over-allocated, with a total of 14 ports driven natively off the P67 chipset. Lost, though, is legacy device support for things like IDE drives and Floppy controllers, although like USB3.0, these can be added by manufacturers if they really want to. With drive technology advances where they are today, we've tossed out such legacy devices for recycling in favor of today's excellent drive performance and hope that almost everyone else does too.

Of course, that leads to today's product, the ASUS P8P67 Pro. How will it fare, stacked against its competitors? Read on to find out.

Packaging

The ASUS P8P67 Pro arrived in a very nice black box. Two things stick out immediately; the board name logo and a "DIGI+ VRM" logo take up the majority of the box face, with only a few logos below indicating what technologies the P8P67 Pro supports. Turning the box over reveals a diagram of the board showing where some of the features are located on the P8P67 Pro, as well as several descriptive boxes for the technology logos that are on the front of the box. We were very eager to rip open the box, as several of the listed features are not seen elsewhere on other products, making us quite curious indeed.


Opening the box reveals the P8P67 Pro itself right on top, and we were a bit confused, as the box is predominantly black and green, but the board inside is black and blue. Lifting the board reveals the included box candy, and the first thing to catch my eye was the included USB 3.0 port header included with the P8P67 Pro. Having the board right up top has to be one of the best things ASUS has done here, as sifting through the other stuff in the box to take a look at the motherboard, and then placing everything back in to put the box back on the shelf can be a thorn in the side of many a PC store employee.