Intel P965 Shoot-Out: Asus P5B-E vs. MSI P965 Platinum

How we configured our test systems: When configuring our test systems for the following set of benchmarks, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High-Performance Defaults." We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for DDR2-800 at 4-4-4-12 1T latency.  The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows XP Professional SP2 was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed the drivers necessary for our components, and removed Windows Messenger from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were then disabled, and we set up a 768MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems Intel Inside

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA 2007 Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2007 suite (CPU, Multimedia, and Memory) with the ASUS P5B-E and the MSI P965 Platinum, both using our Core 2 Duo E6300 processor and 1GB of DDR2-800 memory. All of the scores reported below were taken with the processor running at its default clock speed of 1.86 GHz.

MSI P965 Platinum CPU Module Core 2 Duo E6300

MSI P965 Platinum Multi-Media Module Core 2 Duo E6300

MSI P965 Platinum Memory Module Core 2 Duo E6300

The two boards compare favorably in SANDRA's suite of benchmarks, with the ever slightest edge in CPU and Multi-Media performance going to the MSI P965 Platinum.  Memory performance was exactly the same for both boards.  Compared to SANDRA's internal database, the CPU and Multi-Media modules have the E6300, running at 1.86 GHz, positioned directly behind a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor.  The latest memory bandwidth scores that were shown came from a 955X board, so there's no direct comparison, but the 965P boards are outperforming the test score by over 140 MB/s.