ASUS P5E3 Premium X48 Motherboard Review

BIOS Rundown

The exciting talk out of a performance memory manufacturer as of late has centered around the ASUS P5E3-Premium and the first sign of that praise revolves around the BIOS and it's new features that we are about to look at right now.

The first screen we receive in the BIOS is a standard AMI Main option section. There is nothing of real significance that hasn't been around since the 80s but the inclusion of a System Information screen is always nice to have. A quick confirmation of processor frequency, memory, and the BIOS version is very useful for a number of users.

Putting every single overclocking option in one section is great for end users, but not so good when trying to explain things. Needless to say, I will spend some time on this single image so drag it somewhere comfortable to still read and let's get started. Ignoring the three option boxes highlighted, this is the AI Tweaker section after loading BIOS defaults and restarting. Notice the memory timings of 7-7-7-20? This is because we are using XMP enabled memory and at BIOS defaults, that kicks in and adjusts not only the memory timings, but frequencies including FSB as well as various voltages. As it turns out, with this memory installed, our BIOS defaults are actually 450MHz FSB with a CPU multiplier of 7X and a DRAM ratio of 1:2 giving DDR3-1800 speed with timings of 7-7-7-20. All of this without touching a single option in the BIOS, Intel XMP profiles work well, and this particular memory seems to really like this board as well.

As for the options, this P5E3-Premiums BIOS is very close to being the ultimate playground for overclockers or system tweakers. Manual FSB Strap selection and DRAM frequency speeds give us ultimate versatility although the 266 strap seems to be quite problematic, more on this in the overclocking section. The DRAM CLK Skews turned out to be very favorable for memory overclocking on the DDR2 X48 Rampage Formula and with the same options ranging from advanced 350ps to delayed 350ps, we should be able to really tune memory for the last bit of what it will give. The one screen we have not shown is the endless memory timing options that we have available to us. Every single timing from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, is available to be adjusted by us here in the BIOS. The tRFC adjustment is the standard 60 / 72 / 82 / etc... instead of manual control, but it beats no control like we are still being punished for with another chipsets reference design.

Aside from showing the Ai Clock Twister options we won't discuss the Transaction booster options until the next screenshot. For now, let's skip ahead to the voltages at the bottom. Instead of showing you a dozen screenshots showing the various voltage options, we have made a nice little chart:

Although not quite as handsome at the upper end of a couple voltage ranges as the Rampage Formula, the P5E3-Premium shows that it has enough guts to push through some serious overclocking before volt mods will come into play. CPU voltage up to 2.1v is enough for all but 2 people benching with liquid nitrogen right now and 2.78v for vDIMM is just inviting the advancing of dry ice cooling pots for memory to become more abundant. Needless to say, 99% of users will have enough voltage adjustments at their finger tips to squeeze the most out of their components on air and liquid cooling.

We skipped the Transaction booster settings earlier as it deserves its own screenshot. We see the same manual selection of the Common Performance Level as well as the individual channels that we saw on the Rampage Formula motherboard. This is probably the most important timing when it comes to memory performance as well as overclocking stability. Too low a Performance Level and the system won't boot, too high a Performance Level and memory performance suffers drastically. The default XMP Performance Level of 6 is very aggressive but the appropriate voltages adjustments were made to compensate and run PL6 stable.

The Advanced section isn't really that advanced. There are just a couple sections worth noting, the CPU Configuration and Onboard Devices Configuration sections. The CPU configuration tells us what frequency our CPU is running at, and the CPU ratio. Here we can obviously see the 3.16GHz CPU frequency and 7X CPU multi we get with the XMP profile of the Corsair Dominator. All of the CPU features are also left enabled. If you were looking to disable the advanced power saving functions of the SpeedStep Technology, this is where you would be disabling items. The last screenshot above is of the Onboard Device Configuration section. Everything is nicely labeled and easy to understand so we know what we are disabling or not.

The Power and Boot sections of an Asus BIOS are pretty boring but there are a couple aspects I would like to discuss. The first comes in the Hardware Monitor section of the Power menu. The main issue is the fact that we didn't have to stitch two images together like we did with the Rampage Formula because there were too many voltages and temperatures being reported. To see nothing more than CPU temp, MB temp, and CPU voltage was quite the let down. This means there is no chance of any more reporting in Windows either and with the voltage options we are provided in the previous screens we just looked at, it is hard to wonder why there aren't more readings for the end user. A few more lights and bigger heat sink, seems to be about the only conceivable difference between the P5E3-Premium and perhaps a Rampage Extreme. At least voltage reporting and NB/SB temperature readings would be appreciated on a motherboard of this pedigree.

The last section labeled as Tools, is a pretty accurate description of what we find here. Like many previous ASUS motherboards, EZ Flash is available directly from the BIOS and provides the safest and easiest BIOS flashing method. Just upload a BIOS to the root directory of your FAT formatted thumb drive and go into EZ Flash. It will all but find the BIOS, verify, and flash it in a couple key strokes. The other listed tool is ASUS Express Gate. For those not familiar with Express Gate, they can check out the Long Term Impressions section for our brief report on our use. The last screen shot simply shows the fact that we still have the two OC Profiles available to us for saving and recalling BIOS settings. These too have been a part of the ASUS BIOS for a long time. We would like to see a couple more slots or the ability to label the saved profiles. Although we figure the labeling is a limit of the AMI BIOS and not what ASUS can or would be willing to do with it.