When the LGA1156 Lynnfield Processor launched, we touched on the basics of the reference DP55KG Extreme Series Motherboard. At launch, it was the standard and the board to beat as we’ve reviewed other comparable P55 motherboards along the way. Essentially, if another platform can’t emulate, match, or improve upon its performance, we really aren’t interested.
Preliminary performance based on its primary BIOS wasn’t weak at all. In fact, since then, it’s received a couple more BIOS updates that fixed a few issues we didn’t encounter in testing, but others have come across. Considering the countless variables, what we’re more interested in is how it measures up to the current crop of boards now that the P55 market has matured. Besides, there’s more to the DP55KG than meets the eye.
Features and Specifications
As with pretty much every P55 motherboard we’ve tested, the Intel DP55KG is full featured ATX solution packed with lots of expansion possibilities.
It supports any LGA1156 Processor as well as the latest DDR3 memory up to 1600MHz. This will generally offer enough overclocking options for the avid enthusiast. You can add up to 16GB worth of memory if needed. Just make sure it’s quality made RAM and you’ll be very happy with the results.
Naturally, the board supports Nvidia SLI and ATI CrossfireX graphics card configurations. Dual card configuration follows the rest of the pack operating in x8 by x8 interface. Any performance penalties will only be visible at the upper most insane resolutions.
As for expansion, you’ll find a PCIE 2.0 x4 slot, two PCIE 2.0 x1 slots, and two PCI slots. This is complimented by a total of 10 SATA ports (2 eSATA), 13 USB 2.0 ports, two Firewire ports (1 internal and 1 external), internal IR Receiver/Emitter, and of course, integrated Bluetooth.
The audio solutions on most of the various P55 platforms are Realtek. Here, you’ll find another Integrated ALC889 Realtek HD Codec. It supports up to 10-channels. That’s 7.1 + 2 independent multi-streaming.
A new welcomed feature is the BIOS recovery button found on the back of the board. If the system fails to boot like when overclocking, simply press the button in and reboot. The motherboard will load fail safe settings so that you can select working ones in the BIOS. Then you depress the button again via the BIOS message and hit the reset button.
First Impressions of the Kingsberg
Very few people realize that the DP55KG Extreme Motherboard is actually pretty exciting. Sure, you see the Skull moniker at the bottom of the board, but do you know what it does? We’ll show in a bit.
You’ll notice that the board has quite a bit of unused real estate. That’s because there’s a lot of extra space without the need for the old school Northbridge chipset or any of the components that supported it. Everything is all Southbridge.
The theme used here is jet black with a mysterious alien like Skull. It kind of reminds you of the skulls seen on the walls of many Myan and Incan drawings. Remember the Skull Trail board and its cool looking glyphs? It basically follows suit and fits nicely with the theme.
Overall, the board is pretty modest in terms of flashy heat sinks or cooling. The blue PWM heat sinks look very similar to past revisions. And, the south bridge heat sink is a very basic aluminum passive version. It would’ve been nice to see something a little more intense heat sinks to match the more “Extreme” theme.
Taking a Closer Look
There are a couple odd things we’d like to point out. The first is that the Boot LED is located just between the CPU socket and primary PCIE slot. The issue here is that it will undoubtedly be blocked by large CPU coolers and video cards. There is also a vertical USB port between the CPU socket and I/O ports on the back. Perhaps it’s there for descrete bootable USB flash drives.
At the bottom of the board, you can see a SATA input power port. Normally, you’d see a 4-pin Molex port to help provide auxilliary power to the graphics slots. Intel engineers opted to use a SATA power connector instead. This is pretty cool since you often have plenty of SATA cables left over on the PSU. Pretty slick thinking here.
Alright, we’ve covered the specs, shown you the board, and listed the important points that need testing. Let’s, cover the test system first.
Test Configurations and BIOS
The only board in our possession that matches the DP55KG similarly in specs, expansion, and price is the GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD5. There are a few others on hand, but they don’t offer the same features comparison.
As with what I’ve come to expect with any Intel motherboard, installation was superbly uneventful. The XMP memory settings worked fine on any random modules used. Even the Back to BIOS button worked like a charm during testing. It really is nice not having to mess with any internal switches, buttons, or jumpers.
Here’s the spiel on what we’ll be testing with today:
- Intel Core i7 870 Lynnfield Processor
- Intel DP55KG Extreme Motherboard
- GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD5 Motherboard
- Corsair Dominator 1600MHz 4GB DDR3 Dual Channel Memory Kit
- Kingston 64GB V+SSDNow
- Zotac Geforce GTX295 Graphics Card
- Antec PC850 Power Supply
Of course, Windows Vista is still our operating system of choice till we get around to a mandatory changeover of all of our test systems here over at Futurelooks.
As far as benchmarks go, in order to answer the questions needed for you to make an educated decision on whether this is the board for you, we continued testing with SiSOFT SANDRA, Cinebench R10, PCMark Vantage, 3DMark Vantage, Crysis, and RightMark Audio. Let’s get to work!
SANDRA CPU Benchmarks
It’s a flip-flop in favor of both boards here under SANDRA’s big arm. Neither platform is able to out do the other by any great margin. What matters here is that the DP55KG offers an equally strong arm in handling the test.
Memory Bandwidth
Ah, the one thing that continues to bend program after program to the will of Intel: Memory Bandwidth. The integrated memory controllers inside the Lynnfield offers excellent peformance to any system. The two champions here make great use of Dominator memory and flex that potential offering about 19.8 GB/s. Again, any differences in performance are statistically insignificant.
Cinebench R10
Cinebench’s heavy rendering test seems to favor the DP55KG on the average. Not by much mind you, but just enough to respect it as a fully capable platform and still a leader in its own right.
PCMark Vantage
To see the DP55KG lead some of the tests here is no surprise. The newer BIOS seems to give the platform a little more life. PCMark seems more tuned to measure a motherboard’s productivity by taxing its full feature resources. Intel’s platforms often seem well suited for this role.
3DMark Vantage
The tables turn a bit when pushing the systems’ CPU and graphics resoursces. The P55-UD5 seems a bit more agile when pushing graphic peformance which is more evident in the next test.
Crysis
It’s not leading by a lot and I’m not completely sure what all makes the P55-UD5 capable of the little extra boost. One thing that probably does help is the UD5 does offer a bit more aggressive Bus Clock performance similar to that of many ASUS boards.
RightMark Audio Testing
This time around, I decided to test the integrated audio’s 48KHz, 96KHz, and 192KHz settings. Oddly, RMAA only shows 48KHz Sampling even though the settings were applied. What’s more important is that the results improved each time.
The Dolby friendly Codec does a pretty good job of producing some decent audio. The results is a seeminly rich, yet clear experience when throwing in an HD movie with all the DTS bells and whistles. Music isn’t too shabby either offering a decent amount of volume and no audible distortion.
Video games sounded very clear, minus the deep earth shattering bass you can get from discrete audio cards like the uber ASUS Essence STX. That’s kind of the breaks with integrated audio these days. There’s only so much that can be done with an inexpensive Codec. Perhaps, we’ll see newer, better Codecs on the next generation platform.
Motherboard Operations
Besides audio, one of the things that can sway your decision from motherboard A over motherboard B is the IO performance. Here’s what we found out…
Obviously my SATA scores aren’t all that impressive. That’s because the objective is to test that the functions work and compare them to other platforms mainly to look for any controller issues. The scores do haul some back side when benchmarking the Kingston V+ Series SSD.
You’ll be happy to know that the DP55KG’s Bluetooth works nicely. Simply connect the thin black wire that comes bundled with the motherboard and go. The lead is right next to the SATA ports, so you can’t miss it. Of course, this isn’t as cool as the GIGABYTE’s ability to use your cellphone as a security token to unlock your system when you’re in range of your system.
Overclocking: Take Two
There are two ways to overclock the DP55KG. There’s always the more technical BIOS way, which isn’t difficult to figure out thanks to its design. Or, you can use the Intel Desktop Control Center software.
IDCC has matured since it first came out during the Intel X48 and 5400 Chipsets. It was pretty nice right out of the gate, but works easier than ever now that P55 is here. The program offers everything from frequency changes to voltage manipulation. You can even mess with the memory timings.
Ultimately, the motherboard easily overclocked the processor to 190MHz CPU Bus Clock. That pushes either of the Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 Processors to 4.2GHz. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the settings to get 195-200MHz BClk stable which would’ve put it in contention with the P55-UD5.
Final Thoughts
Overclocking is one of the easiest things to do with P55 Motherboard. While the board’s components can affect the end result, it’s the BIOS that ultimately carries the weight of the action. Perhaps, the next BIOS update will provide the stability to make that happen since many of the other boards like the P55-UD5 can reach 200 to 220MHz. This would really make the Extreme more “Extreme”.
The board’s overall productivity seems a bit more polished versus some of the other P55 boards we’ve tested. That can come in handy if you’re a Mediaphile who needs the feature. One trait I noticed about the Intel DP55KG Motherboard is that it either works flawlessly with your BIOS configurations, or not. There’s seemingly no middle ground when it comes to stability. Thankfully, the BIOS recovery feature comes to the rescue if needed.
Speaking of media, it’s more apparent how the board interacts with the Audio drivers. The experience isn’t too shabby given that it only uses a Realtek Codec. I think you’ll be pleased with its performance if you decide to try it out. Keep in mind though that integrated audio very rarely compares to the performance of a $50 plus discrete audio card.
Can we recommend the Intel DP55KG Motherboard? Sure, we can. It comes with the standard Intel original 3 Year Warranty. And, having witnessed the motherboard team’s efforts in person, they are definitely quick to work out any unforseen issues with BIOS fixes. It may not be the best overclocking platform available, but it’s obviously one of the best, very well tuned motherboards for any Lynnfield processor.
Pros
- Slick jet black Skull theme
- Great software and BIOS support
- Overclocks Lynnfields to 4GHz plus
- IDCC Software works great
- Top notch stability
- Innovative BIOS recovery button
- BIOS can disable that bright white LED
Cons
- Doesn’t overclock as high as some cheaper boards
- Theme seems a little empty this time
- Bright white LED is…
Overall Rating: 9.0/10.0
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Intel DP55KG “Kingsberg” Extreme Series Motherboard Photo Gallery
