While Intel P67 motherboards are on everyone's back order list, the only other game in town is AMD's 890FX or Intel's previous generation platform - the Intel P55 Express.

As you saw in the preceding benchmark charts, the Intel Core i5 CPU and Intel P55 chipset are for the most part equivalently paced against AMD quad-core Phenom II X4 processors and the AMD 890FX chipset. The problem in choosing one or the other is the feature sets on motherboards have ballooned so exponentially that there's a lot more to consider than benchmark figures alone...

This brings us to the ASUS P7P55D Premium. This motherboard is for the most part a good Intel socket 1156 Core i5 platform - it comes with features the average user needs and many the overclocker would love to have. The board itself is well built and well laid out.

A bit of extra engineering goes into the P7P55D Premium to try and differentiate it from the mass of P55 motherboards long in the market. For example, ASUS boost the CPU power phases to 32 - decreasing VRM heat by spreading it out over more components and improving board power efficiency as unused power phases can be disabled, potentially lengthening component lifespan. The memory gets a 3 phase power supply and controls that enable significant over-volting.

Beyond that, ASUS include operating system independent tools like ASUS ExpressGate which allow a limited set of functionality very quickly; for example access to the internet when Windows has crashed. Fan Xpert makes it possible to control the speed of CPU and chassis fans, so manual fan speed controllers need not be bought. The list goes on and on...

That's not to say P7P55D Premium is the perfect embodiment of a motherboard however. PCSTATS is particularly unimpressed by ASUS utilizing physical USB 3.0 ports on a board that does not actually support anything other than USB 2.0. Nor are we happy that the one eSATA port is relegated to a bracket that must cannibalize an existing internal SATA jack. A single PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot running at x16 mode is to be expected, support for x8/x8 mode for Crossfire/SLI is typical, but not ideal either.

With dual channels of DDR3 memory running at speeds up to DDR3-2133, some extra frills like Firewire, SATA III, dual 1GbE networking and the like, it's really the special overclocking controls where the ASUS attempts to differentiate itself. If overclocking is the name of your game, these tools and software based overclocking features may very well slant the table in this boards favour.

The benchmark results were, expectantly, flat among the different Intel P55 platforms PCSTATS tested. This is what to expect from identical chipsets tested with identical hardware. The ASUS P7P55D Premium motherboard performs at stock like the next - we all know this. Where the ASUS P7P55D Premium motherboard shines is in its overclocking options and endless list of features that we were only able to scratch the surface of.

As far as overclocking, PCSTATS managed to overclock the board's BCLK to a modest 200MHz. Overclocking is luck of the draw and voltage options are not something we typically mess around with, so you may be able to reach much higher levels, possibly at the expense of some hardware if you're too aggressive. TurboV Evo provides a whole set of overclocking and over-volting tools for the folks who like to overclock within the Windows environment, rather than the BIOS. The TurboV Evo remote is a neat tool to augment this, but it's really not necessary either.

Bottom line, the ASUS P7P55D Premium is a solid motherboard by benchmark results most certainly, by overclocking tools and features for sure... but PCSTATS doesn't think it's a great buy at this point in time. Having tested a few of the P7P55D's different flavours, we'd opt for the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro instead. That platform is better bang for your P55 + Core i5 buck.

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