Reviews - Pro-Clockers! PC Reviews One MegaHertz At A Time

Introduction

We have been reviewing Asrock motherboards for some time now. After reviewing so many we will find a gem amongst them that makes it a bit better from the rest of the Asrock offering. Today, we have just that board. The introduction of the Intel X48 got great reviews with motherboard that uses the newest Intel chipset like the ASUS P5E3 Premium and the Gigabyte X48-DQ6. Each of the board performed quite well according to the many reviews. But each of them would drop your bank account at least $300. We all know that Asrock is known for making budget boards and the trend sticks when comparing their newest motherboard to the two we mentioned early.

The Asrock X48TurboTwins-WiFi is the highest price motherboard from the company. But is cheaper than others sporting the same chipset. Spending $300 plus on a motherboard may be painless for some but many of us would be ill for some time even thinking about spending that much money on a motherboard. So in this class the X48TurboTwins would be considered the value board at $240. We will put it thru the test and see if it is worth the asking price.

Packaging and contents

We boasted about Asrock changing to the black box from the teal ones we have seen before in previous articles. I think that black gives the product that bad azz status. The one thing that I did notice is the box that protects the TurboTwins is nowhere near the thickness of the other high end boards we have like Gigabyte, ASUS and DFI. This is mostly due to the fact that the accessories are not packed in individual boxes like in the case of the Gigabyte boards.

Specifications

Features

• LGA 775 for Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme / Core™ 2 Quad / Core™ 2 Duo / Pentium® Dual Core / Celeron®, supporting Penryn Quad Core Yorkfield and Dual Core Wolfdale processors
• All Solid Capacitor design
• Intel® X48 + ICH9R Chipsets
• Supports FSB1600/1333MHz CPUs
• Supports Dual Channel DDR3 1600 with max. capacity up to 8GB and Dual Channel DDR2 1066 with max. capacity up to 4GB
• Bundle: 1 x ASRock WiFi-802.11g Module and 1 x Antenna

• Supports ATI™ CrossFire™
• 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (green @ x16 mode)
• Supports PCIE Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
• Supports 2 x IEEE1394 ports (one port on back panel, one header on board)
• 6 x Serial ATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, RAID 5 and Intel® Matrix Storage), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug functions
• 2 x eSerial ATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors
• 1 x WiFi header
• 7.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio with Content Protection, supports DAC with 110dB dynamic range (ALC890 Audio Codec), DTS (Digital Theater Systems) support
• Windows® Vista™ Premium 2007 Logo Ready
• Supports I. O. T. (Intelligent Overclocking Technology), ASRock OC Tuner
• ASRock 1394_SPDIF I/O Plus: 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED, 2 x eSATAII portS, 1 x IEEE 1394 port, 6 ready-to-use USB ports

Closer look

The overall layout of the X48TurboTwins is one that can almost be compared to the big boys like ASUS, Gigabyte and others. And the reasons that I say almost is because the placement of the ATX connector and the use of small heat sinks would never be used on the others. If we can take these two negatives away you have a good looking board. I believe the reasoning for the heat sinks is to cut cost to keep the board at the value level. Well the ATX connector is a different story.

Now that I have given you the not so good issues of the board we will get right into the good features. The board is based on the Intel X48 chipset that give you all the latest and greatest chipset advantages. The one feature that we cannot deny is the support for CPU that utilizes a FSB up to 1600MHz. As of right now the only two processors with a 1600MHz FSB would be the QX7550 and QX9775. With the X48TurboTwins you have to set jumpers to accomdate the proper FSB of your ram and CPU. I thought the day sof jumpers were gone but not with this board.

The rest of the beneficial features would be the PCIe slots that supports full 16x bandwidth. We have seen many X48 motherboards that have a third PCIe that does run at the old and tired PCIe 1.0 variation. The X48TurboTwins does not come with this third slot it would add to the cost of the board and was done without. Asrock placed a nice amount of distance between the two slots as to not interfere with Crossfiring of two cards.

The great thing about Asrock is there respect for people that don’t want to folk out a lot of money when building a new system. And the next feature shows evidence of that. With the prices of DDR3 still at a level where it does have the price to performance ratio as DDR2 not many of us are rushing to the local computer store to grab a kit. So Asrock included two DDR2 slot alone side the four DDR3 slots. So if you don’t plan on shoveling out $250 for four gigs of ram you don’t have too.

The locations of the SATA ports are pretty standard as they sit in the lower right hand of the motherboard. The headers for the USB and firewire ports as reside in this same area. For all you mad overclockers the CMOS battery and jumper lay right on the edge of the board. So reaching for it in case of a bad overclock is painless.

Remember when we were talking about the placement of the ATX? Well here is a better picture of it. Sitting right behind the I/O looking out of place. Just above the ATX connector are two more SATA ports that are linked to the two on the back of the board.

To cut cost of the board Asrock decided to use two passive coolers to cool the likes of the X48 and ICH9R chipsets. I am not one for a lot of bling that we are starting to witness on some boards like the MSI variations but I would like to see something more advance than these on such a board.

Lastly, getting to the I/O portion of the board you can see where Asrock did go all out in terms of ports and connectivity. The X48TurboTwins has several connections for digital audio. And for the storage freak in you there are six USB, one firewire and two eSATA ports.

BIOS

CPU Frequency: 100-800MHz
PCI Frequency: 90-150MHz
CPU ratio: 6 to CPU default
CPU voltage: 0.81875-1.60v
DRAM voltage: 1.47 +2.40v
MCH voltage: Low, Middle, High and Highest
ICH voltage: Low, Middle, High and Highest
DRAM Frequency: 667, 800, 1066MHz

Testing

Testing Hardware:
Intel Core2Duo E8400
DDR2 Crucial Ballistix PC6400 (4-4-4-12)
Maxtor 100GB SATAI
Sapphire Ultimate 3870
Thermalright Ultra 120
Thermaltake TP1000

Testing Software:
Futuremark PCMark05
Futuremark 3DMark06
SiSoftware Sandra
Everest Ultimate
SuperPi 1.5 mod
Prey
F.E.A.R.

Competition:
Asrock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+ (DDR2) + Leadtek 6800GT
Asrock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+ (DDR3) + Leadtek 6800GT
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 + Leadtek 6800GT
Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS4 + Leadtek 6800GT
Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 + Leadtek 6800GT

CPU results

Futuremark PCmark05 Build 1.1.0
PCMark®05 is everything you need to reliably and easily measure the performance of your PC and determine its strengths and weaknesses. With PCMark05, you will be able to select the optimal upgrades for your existing PC, or choose the right new PC that fits your specific needs. This easy-to-use product gives you the same tools and knowledge that virtually every professional tester in the industry uses.

Super PI Modded 1.5
In August 1995, the calculation of pi up to 4,294,960,000 decimal digits was succeeded by using a supercomputer at the University of Tokyo. The program was written by D.Takahashi in collaboration with Dr. Y.Kanada at the computer center. This record should be the current world record. (Details are shown in the windows help.) This record-breaking program was ported to personal computer environment such as Windows NT and Windows 95. In order to calculate 33.55 million digits, it takes within 3 days with Pentium 90 MHz, 40 MB main memory and 340 MB available storage.

Ram results

Futuremark PCmark05 Build 1.1.0
PCMark®05 is everything you need to reliably and easily measure the performance of your PC and determine its strengths and weaknesses. With PCMark05, you will be able to select the optimal upgrades for your existing PC, or choose the right new PC that fits your specific needs. This easy-to-use product gives you the same tools and knowledge that virtually every professional tester in the industry uses.

SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2007 SP1
SiSoftware has announced the availability of Service Release 2 (SR2) for SiSoftware Sandra 2005, the latest version of its award-winning utility. The focus of this service release has been improved support, compatibility and reliability rather than new features. We have been working closely with more hardware vendors than before to be able to bring greater direct support of an increased market share of commodity and server technologies.

Lavalys Everest
Lavalys EVEREST Home Edition is freeware system information, system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for home PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. It offers the world's most accurate system information and diagnostics capabilities, including online features, memory benchmarks, hardware monitoring, and low-level hardware information. EVEREST Home Edition is uniquely available for home users without any charges, based on the freeware license.

HDD results

Futuremark PCmark05 Build 1.1.0
PCMark®05 is everything you need to reliably and easily measure the performance of your PC and determine its strengths and weaknesses. With PCMark05, you will be able to select the optimal upgrades for your existing PC, or choose the right new PC that fits your specific needs. This easy-to-use product gives you the same tools and knowledge that virtually every professional tester in the industry uses.

Simpli Software HD Tach 3
HD Tach will test the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of your attached storage device (hard drive, flash drive, removable drive, etc). All drive technologies such as SCSI, IDE/ATA, 1394, USB, SATA and RAID are supported. Test results from HD Tach can be used to confirm manufacturer specs, analyze your system for proper performance, and compare your performance with others. HD Tach is very easy to use, quick, and presents data in easy to read graphs, including the ability to compare two storage devices on screen at the same time for easy analysis.
Video and Gaming results

Gaming results

Futuremark 3DMark06 Build 1.0.2
3DMark®06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking. A fundamental tool for every company in the PC industry as well as PC users and gamers, 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today. Futuremark's exclusive Online ResultBrowser web service tracks and compares 3DMark06 scores.

Sierra F.E.A.R. Update 1.08
F.E.A.R. ™ (First Encounter Assault Recon) is an intense combat experience with rich atmosphere and a deeply intense paranormal storyline presented entirely in first person. Be the hero in your own spine-tingling epic of action, tension, and terror… and discover the true meaning of F.E.A.R.

3drealms Prey
PREY takes full advantage of the Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ sound card. PREY supports OpenAL hardware acceleration, EAX® ADVANCED HD™ 5.0 features of 4 reverberation effects at once, and uses Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XRAM feature to load audio samples on the cards with 64 megs of RAM.

Power Consumption

We started the testing with a WattsUp Pro meter to measure watts use by the components listed above. And we used a standard digital multimeter to measure the rails of the power supply. To implement a load on the system, we ran Futuremark 3DMark06 at the highest settings with SuperPi and OCCT running in the background.

Overclocking

Now we get to the fun part of the review the part that everyone is waiting for. If you were to ask me would I recommend this board to anyone that plans to overclock I would respond quickly with a hell yes. This is definitely the best overclocking motherboard from Asrock to date.

We began the overclocking process by trying to find the max megahertz from the CPU using the default 9x ratio. We up the voltage to 1.37 in the BIOS on the CPU as well as up the voltage of the MCH and DIMM slots to respectable levels of High and 2.20. We shot straight to 440MHz on the FSB and the board passed with flying colors. The same results happened all the way to 465MHz. This was the last of the stable settings. We are happy to say we were able to get the board to boot and run at 485MHz before it would not post anymore.

Conclusion

The X48TurboTwins has a lot of promise in it. This is by far the best overclocking motherboard from Asrock. After overclocking many Asrock board in the past I did not have my hopes set too high as the results from past experiences were only mediocre. Things can change for Asrock as long as they continue to progress the way they did with this board. The X48TurboTwins may not be purchased by the extreme overclocker but for the individual that don’t wish to pay $300-$400 on a motherboard and still want the things to get them excellent performance should take a look at this board. I have seen many people that go out and spend 50% more and a mainboard and still don’t take it to the levels that we got the X48TurboTwins. My advice is to give this board a chance.

Granted no board comes without its faults and this board has a few. The biggest ones would be the placement of the ATX connector which sits right behind the I/O panel. And also the small passive coolers that are uses to cool the chipsets on the board could be better. The first problem cannot be solved as this is where Asrock decided to place it. The cooling can easy be replaced by various aftermarket solutions. Purchasing anyone of these solutions will still cost less than other X48 and 790I motherboards.

This board is plentiful when it comes to connectivity. This is where Asrock put all the extras that make this board worth buying. Overclocking is one thing but functionality is another and this board has plenty of functionality. With the number of ports it offers one should not run out of ports for a long time.

The BIOS of the X48TurboTwins is pretty basic at best. It gives you just enough options to get an above average overclock. If the board had more memory tweak as well as voltage options I think this board could have gotten our test Intel E8400 close to what the Gigabyte X48 did which was 4400MHz.

I am giving this board the Highly Recommended award for its value and overclocking ability.