Bearlake: MSI P35 Platinum, ASUS P5K/P5K3 Deluxe, GIGABYTE P35-DQ6

Everest Ultimate Edition	OCZ Flex XLC 9200 @ 800MHz, 6-6-6-15	Corsair XMS3 @ 800MHZ, 6-6-6-15
Memory Read (MB/s)	6043	6490
Memory Write (MB/s)	4864	4775
Memory Latency (ns)	86.0	76.1

	Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6	MSI P35 Platinum	Gigabyte P35-DQ6	ASUS P5K Deluxe	ASUS P5K3 Deluxe
wPrime 32MB (s)	29.890	29.625	29.609	30.594	29.687
SuperPiMod 1.5 (4M)	1:45.406	1:41.484	1:42.265	1:42.797	1:39.984
3DMark06	11844	11143	11137	11070	11109
Max FSB (MHz, Orthos stable)	478	460	500	495	485

DDR3
Of course the big attraction for P35 is twofold: Support for 45nm processors and on some boards, DDR3. To begin with, DDR3 will be much like DDR2 – that is slower than the preceding technology due to high CAS latency. Over time this should be solved by bumping up the clock speed of the sticks, with 1333MHz variants set to hit the shelves soon. Advantageously, DDR3 should consume less power – an 800MHz stick sucking around 20 percent less than an equivalent DDR2 stick (as it runs on a default 1.5V instead of 1.8V). Also an advantage is an eight-bit prefetch buffer, double that of DDR2. This functions as a sort of cache, allowing DDR3 to fetch data more quickly under certain situations.



DD3 is still 240-pin, but is notched differently so you don’t go shoving it into your old boards, hacksaw-type activities excluded.

The DDR3 we were supplied with came from Corsair and was clocked at 1066MHz at 7-7-7-21. These ugly timings prevented us from performing an apples-to-apples comparison with DDR2, simply because every DDR2 board we tested didn’t offer a CAS 7 option. Given that we clock down our OCZ Flex 9200 to 800MHz 4-4-4-12 for standard testing (the higher speeds left for our overclocking tests), we dumped the DDR3 down to a lower speed in the hope of reaching a lower CAS rating – and succeeded at 800MHz, 6-6-6-15 with little fuss. Matching our DDR2 to the same specs, the DDR3 wins out as you can see above, except in the write stakes. Until DDR3 hits lower CAS timings though, DDR2 will maintain performance dominance, with manufacturers suggesting DDR3 won’t hit mainstream until it reaches 1600MHz. As it stands AMD doesn’t plan to support it in its next chipset, so just like DDR2 it will be a while before the new standard catches on.

Final words
P35 really offers little to the consumer at the moment over 965 except for futureproofing. If you haven’t made the jump to Core 2 Duo though, then these are definitely the ones to get.