ASUS P8P67 Motherboards Preview

ASUS P8P67 Pro 

ASUS has given us a preview of their newest lineup of motherboards, due to be launched in 2011. These are made for Intel's new Sandy Bridge architecture. The motherboards use the new LGA1155 socket, the successor to the Nehalem-compatible LGA1156. The LGA1155 will make its debut at CES 2011, along with the processor it supports. The P67 is one of the many chipsets we have seen for the new architecture. Others include the H67, H65, Q67, and Q65 chipsets.

The P8P67 Pro motherboard comes in a nice blue and black color scheme, and is full ATX sized. It uses passive cooling, with no heatpipes on or around the CPU socket. It also uses a new design of VRM, the ASUS Digi+VRM. The power phases are controlled by ASUS' EPU microcontroller, found near the processor socket. Users have greater flexibility when adjusting power phases, load-line calibration, and even VRM frequency. This gives overclockers greater potential with the new chipset.

The board supports dual-channel DDR3 memory, so we expect the maximum supported frequencies to be higher. The board also features 3x PCI-E x16 slots, though we are not sure how the speeds will configure during SLI/CrossFire usage. The speed may decrease to x8/x8 when in SLI/CrossFire. The board also has two PCI-E x1 slots, and two PCI slots, good for hardware such as dedicated sound cards.

The board also has the words "BT GO!" near the heatsink above the processor. The BT GO! feature of the ASUS boards uses Bluetooth technology to enable users to interact with their computers using a smartphone. According to ASUS, all their new ATX boards will feature onboard Bluetooth technology as a standard feature. Users will be able to transfer files such as music, photos, videos, and more.

The board has the words "Dual Intelligent Processors II" stamped on the PCB directly below the second PCI-E x16 slot. This indicates that the board uses ASUS' second generation of Dual Intelligent Processor design. According to ASUS, the first design increased performance and cut down on power usage by a significant amount. We are eager to see how the new design will improve on this.

The P8P67 Pro does not have any video outputs, because the board doesn't have integrated graphics. All P67 chipset boards require a dedicated graphics card. The I/O panel at the back has two PS/2 ports, for keyboards and mice, an S/PDIF Out port, a Bluetooth transmitter, 6x USb 2.0 ports, 2x USb3.0 ports, an IEEE 1394a port, two eSATA ports, a Gigabit ethernet port and eight-channel audio ports.