BIOS

Workstation PCs normally aren’t overclocked, as they are used for mission critical-applications in business environments where reliability and stability takes precedence. They are usually equipped with the fastest and most expensive processors available, and other high-dollar specialty hardware (like NVIDIA Quattro and AMD FireGL video cards designed for 3D modeling) depending on the specific tasks they’ll specialize in.

ASUS not only has marketed the P5E64 WS Evolution for those who demand the ultimate in the latest technology, expandability, reliability and power for workstation applications who are building their own workstation rig. They are also marketing the board for serious enthusiasts and power users who routinely perform workstation tasks that may also may prefer to overclock their system. So ASUS has included the ability to overclock the P5E64 WS Evolution if they choose to do so. And as always, they’ve provided an almost dizzying array of options and tweaks to push the Evolution as far as your expertise, hardware configuration and level of comfort permits.

No matter how extensive and powerful BIOS settings are, they aren’t much good if have trouble finding them or trying to figure out what’s what. Fortunately, the P5E64 WS Evolution’s AMI (American Megatrends) BIOS is well thought-out and organized. Access to basic and advanced overclocking settings are where you’d expect them to be, rather than all over the place as with some high-end enthusiast motherboards. At the same time, the most commonly accessed settings are also organized so that you don’t have to go menu-hopping in unlikely places to find what you need.

One cool feature of the P5E64 WS Evolution is its support for Intel’s X.M.P.—Extreme Memory Profiles platform. In addition to JDEC-standard frequencies (used as for fail-safe default booting), X.M.P. RAM modules contain multiple overclocked SPD profiles certified by Intel and the memory vendor. When used on X.M.P.-ready motherboards like the P5E64 WS Evolution, these profiles can be loaded in the BIOS for an instant performance boost.

For example, if you look at the X.M.P. screenshots, you’ll see that the OCZ 1600MHz DDR3 sticks I installed have two performance profiles. Profile #1 was created by Intel, and has 8-8-8-28-1N timings @1.80V. OCZ’s profile (Profile #2) utilizes much tighter 7-6-6-28-1N timings @1.90V. Some applications will benefit from the tighter timings of Profile #2 while others will perform better with the looser timings of Profile #1.

What X.M.P. gives you then, is the ability to experiment with and find the profile that will improve performance for the applications that you use the most (or those that you want to give a performance boost to) a lot quicker than the trial-and-error method of manually adjusting the timings, without throwing stability out the window. That makes it a great feature for novice overclockers and even experienced users who would just rather get a nice bump in performance without having to fiddle with settings, so they can get on with using and enjoying their system. And because it’s done through the BIOS rather than a software overclocking utility under Windows, you’ll get better, more reliable results. Advanced users still have the option of manually tweaking individual memory settings for even more performance.

The timings of X.M.P. profiles are by no means as aggressive as those a more experienced overclocker would achieve manually to reach the maximum stable overclock for the RAM. Nor will they yield as much of a performance increase. Still, it’s free horsepower for your rig that’s easily (and safely) obtainable, so why not take advantage of it?

ASUS Precision Tweaker 2 not only allows incremental adjustments (0.02v) for the most common (and potentially damaging) voltage settings for more flexibility in overclocking, but those settings are color-coded when you manually type them in (or adjust them with the “+” and “-“ keys) to let you know when you’re approaching the “danger zone.” The FSB voltage can reach 1.50v maximum. DRAM voltage 2.78v; CPU, CPU PLL and North Bridge 2.30v, 2.78v and 2.21v respectively, while the South Bridge tops out at 1.20v. Not as much as some enthusiast motherboards designed from the ground up for extreme overclocking, but enough to help crank out some impressive results with the right processor—and cooling.

The Evolution’s descriptions of selected BIOS settings are a bit more informative than on most motherboards. Whether making certain selections can potentially help or hurt stability, or possibly increase your chances of a successfully overclock, you’ll be advised accordingly. And in the event that something does go wrong, in most cases you won’t have to reach for the RTC Clear jumper. Simply turning off the system, waiting a bit, and turning it back on is enough to clear the Evolution's head, allowing you to boot, and enter the CMOS to correct the problem settings; or to continue with the factory defaults loaded. If you’re really gone too far, there’s always the CrashFree BIOS 3 feature that allows you to recover from a corrupted BIOS using either the BIOS file on the Support DVD, or one loaded onto a USB flash drive.

ASUS EZ-Flash 2 spares you the hassle of having to create a DOS-based boot floppy for updating the BIOS. EZ Flash 2 can be invoked at boot-time by pressing <Alt><F2> when prompted, or accessed directly through the BIOS. Once loaded, EZ Flash 2 can access the BIOS update file on just about any readable medium recognized as a boot device, from 3.5” floppies to CD discs and USB flash drives (the Windows NTFS file system is not supported under EZ-Flash 2).

Rounding out the BIOS is O.C. Profile, which allows you to save two BIOS configuration profiles not only to the BIOS for recall and application, but to a USB thumb drive to restore your favorite settings, making it easier to restore once the board is back from an RMA. Or you can use it to set up multiple, identically configured Evolution boards, provided the BIOS versions are also the same.

Although your success with overclocking will vary depending on your specific hardware configuration, should you choose to overclock the ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution, you’ll undoubtedly find it more than up to the task.

Benchmarks

Hardware:

Software:

NVIDIA’s Release 174.74 beta drivers were used for the ASUS EN8800 GTS TOP video card. All game benchmarks were run with 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering at the native 1680x1050 resolution of the monitor. All visual effects for game benchmarks are set to maximum except where noted. If DirectX 10-specific visual effects and settings are available, they are enabled as well. Vsync was also disabled.

For RAID performance benchmarks, Volume Write-Back Cache on the RAID arrays were enabled using Intel’s Matrix Storage Console and Marvell’s RAID utility to maximize disk performance. For network throughput performance measured with Iometer, Jumbo Frames on the Ready NAS NV+ and the onboard NICs on the P5E64 WS Evolution and P5K PRO were disabled. Since the recommended procedure of matching frame sizes when enabling Jumbo Frames would not be possible with either motherboard or the NAS due to the variations in the frame sizes of their NICs and how they are calculated, Jumbo Frames were turned off for consistency. Unless otherwise stated, all scores recorded are the average benchmark score.

As with all benchmarks, synthetic or real-world, your results will vary depending on the specific hardware that you use.

Let's go over the synthetic benchmarks first.

Cinebench

Maxon Cinebench Release 10 is a test suite based on CINEMA 4D, used by studios and production houses worldwide for rendering and creating 3D content—a workstation-class application that should be a perfect candidate for the ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution. Cinebench measures graphic card and CPU 3D rendering performance on multiple and multi-core processors for 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista.

Here, we see that the Intel X.M.P.-enhanced DDR3 memory and optimizations of the X48 chipset, gives the Evolution a measurable advantage over the P5K PRO, particularly on the Multiple CPU Render Test.

EVEREST Ultimate Edition

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is a full-featured and versatile hardware monitoring, diagnostic and benchmarking tool designed to analyze your PC and help maximize it for performance. The 1378 Beta had to be used, as the official 1330 Build doesn't recognize the Intel MCH X48 chipset of the ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution. First, the Memory and CPU benchmarks: 

That the P5E64 WS Evolution outperforms the P5K PRO in the Memory Benchmark, shouldn't be a surprise. Whatever you've probably heard or read about the price-performance ratio of DDR3 vs. DDR2, in synthetic benchmarks, DDR3 is clearly the winner (at least with this particular synthetic benchmark). Things are pretty much even on the CPU Benchmark, as they should be with the same processor used in both motherboards. CPU PhotoWorxx is a different story, however. According to Lavalys:

This integer benchmark performs different common tasks used during digital photo processing (my emphasis). It performs the following tasks on a very large RGB image:

· Fill

· Flip

· Rotate90R (rotate 90 degrees CW)

· Rotate90L (rotate 90 degrees CCW)

· Random (fill the image with random coloured pixels)

· RGB2BW (colour to black & white conversion)

· Difference

· Crop [EVEREST Version 2.10 and later]

This benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem (my emphasis). Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than 2 processing threads used. For example, on a 8-way Pentium III Xeon system the 8 processing threads will be "fighting" over the memory, creating a serious bottleneck that would lead to as low scores as a 2-way or 4-way similar processor based system could achieve.

 

CPU PhotoWorxx test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.

In an application for which a workstation would be configured and optimized for—in this instance, digital photo and image processing/editing—the CPU PhotoWorxx test shows the P5E64 WS Evolution's DDR3 memory and more efficient X48 chipset as the clear-cut winner over the P5K PRO's DDR2 memory and P35 chipset.

EVEREST’s disk read benchmarks were performed on the primary bootable array. Since EVEREST’s disk write benchmarks are destructive, I added two additional Western Digital WD740 Raptor drives in a RAID 0 array to the P5E64 WS Evolution exclusively for the write benchmarks.

The scores are pretty much even between the two boards. On the Buffered Write test however, the P5K PRO pulls ahead of the P5E64 WS Evolution by a good amount. Looking at the CPU Utilization graph, we can see why: CPU Utilization was 6% higher on the P5E64 WS Evolution for the Buffered Write Test, than the P5K PRO.