Efficiency And Overclocking
Even though the G45T-M2 has only three power phases and its onboard graphics were disabled for this test, it still fell slightly behind on our power consumption comparison. Efficiency differences between all of today’s motherboards were extremely small.
Voltage regulators with sinks run cooler than those that don’t have any. Even though none of today’s motherboards ran exceptionally hot, heat can affect efficiency, stability, and longevity.
The ASRock P45XE is the only motherboard in today’s low-budget comparison to handle high bus speeds like a mainstream-overclocking motherboard should. Jetway’s P45 equipped BI-500 falls between the FSB we’d expect from a P45 chipset and the FSB we achieved from various P43 products.
MSI’s P43 Neo3-F was unbootable at FSB clock settings of 400 MHz or higher, but using the 399 MHz setting resulted in a 400 MHz clock. This is likely a BIOS issue.
The BI-500 takes a slight win in CPU stability. This particular benchmark probably reflects voltage regulator capability more than any other factor. Other motherboards were limited by our processor’s 10x multiplier and the bus speeds they had formerly achieved in our FSB test.
All of today’s charts are sorted in order of average performance and the BI-500 shines when four modules are installed. Anyone looking for higher memory speeds using two modules might instead choose the ASRock P45XE.
