CPU Performance Results

We spent a couple of days with the ECS P67H2-A2 before beginning our performance testing, running various configurations and CPUs, and checking hardware compatibility. We verified our power consumption numbers using various different power supplies, and played many hours of games with some members of the TPU community to get an overall feel for the board, and to verify stability. Once completed, we tore down the system, mounted our Noctua cooler, and put the board through the paces. On to the results!

SuperPi

SuperPI serves as our memory-focused benchmark, being highly single-threaded. We weren't really sure what to expect from the ECS P67H2-A2, but the numbers given did show the P67H2-A2 as the fastest board we've tested so far, proving to be a near seven tenths of a second faster than any other, and 23 seconds faster than the "B2" P67H2-A2 product. Fantastic job, ECS!

wPrime

wPrime is much more CPU-focused, but memory plays its role as well. In this test, the numbers were much closer, but still slower than the other two "B3" contenders. ECS has managed to bring performance up, near half a second in comparison to the "B2" board, perhaps showing the new "B3" chipset offers a bit more than was truly expected.

WinRAR

A new addition to our motherboard benchmarking suite is the built-in benchmark that is part of the WinRAR software suite. In this test, the ECS P67H2-A2 put up good numbers, and managed to match the Gigabyte board's numbers exactly. The additional 90 MB/s noticed from "B2" to "B3" revisions brings the ECS P67H2-A2 on par with the other tested boards, which is exactly what we had hoped for.

AIDA64

We employed AIDA64's memory bench to highlight memory bandwidth. We isolate the write performance metric as it serves as a good indicator of overall memory performance, while highlighting the real performance improvement that the P67 platform offers. The ECS P67H2-A2 put up good numbers here, but failed to take the top spot. With limited access to secondary timings, the P67H2-A2 still manages a very respectable showing.

HandBrake Encoding

Handbrake is used for encoding testing, and provided results much similar to the previous benchmarks, with the ECS P67H2-A2 beating our previously best result. Because Handbrake uses the CPU, memory, and hard drives fairly extensively, the ECS P67H2-A2 beating the numbers from the other boards was something we did not fully expect, as the previous results have been a bit mixed.

CineBench Encoding

In Cinebench, the ECS P67H2-A2 again notices a substantial performance boost from its twin on the GPU side, but CPU rendering numbers did go down a little bit. Based on the other results here, the Cinebench numbers are right on par, and while not the very best, are still pretty decent.