Power Consumption and Conclusions
Editor’s Note: There are obviously some concerns about reviews on the 2nd Gen Intel Core processor platform, in particular motherboards based on the Cougar Point chipset, aka P67/H67. On January 31st, Intel announced that it had found a bug in its chipset that could cause issues with SATA channels disconnecting and has issued a recall on all or most parts. As a result, the majority of the Sandy Bridge based processors and P67/H67 motherboards have been pulled from online and retail sales.
You might wonder then why we are posting a review of such a product. In short, though we are disappointed that the products are not currently on the market for sale, the fact is that we have never seen these failure issues and the performance and features of the products still properly represents the capabilities it will offer when they return to the channel in March or April. We have several platform reviews finished or in the pipeline and we plan on publishing all of them for informational purposes to our readers – that is always our goal anyway.
But, expect to see this note of warning on every one of them.
Power consumption
During power consumption testing, the P67H2-A was the most power hungry board in the group by more than 20 watts under load most likely due to the Lucid Hydra chip. I’m not sure if the increase was entirely due to the inclusion of the Hydra core, but all the other features on this board were consistent with ASUS and Gigabyte’s offerings.
Performance
In the performance arena, we were highly impressed with how the P67H2-A handled our suite of benchmarks and overclocking results. The consistency we saw between all three of the P67 boards we tested indicated that this was a solid chipset to form a good motherboard around, and ECS took advantage of every feature it offered and added their own little twist by including Lucid’s Hydra Core technology. Once Intel releases the revised P67 chipset that fixes the SATA 3GB/s issues and vendors are able to add them to their new P67-based motherboards, we should finally see the performance capabilities come to fruition with their Sandy Bridge processors and P67 chipset.
Features
ECS’s new flagship P67 board really positions them well to provide enthusiasts another option besides ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI for their high-performance needs. The P67H2-A gives power users all the overclocking, power enhancements, and graphics support they are looking for from today’s motherboards. They also threw in USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, and support for the latest DDR3 2133 memory to ensure the latest standards and technologies are readily available to be incorporated into any high-end PC.
Pricing and Availability
As of Feb. 20, the ECS P67H2-A was not available at any online reseller because of Intel’s recall on all P67-based motherboards. Hopefully we’ll be able to see this board on the market again ;ate this quarter or in the early part of the second quarter of this year.
Final Thoughts
We’d like to thank our friends at ECS for providing the P67H2-A for our review today. ECS really listened to gamers and the enthusiast community when they designed the P67H2-A. Users wanted the ability to use GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA together so they wouldn’t have to buy new graphics cards for SLI or CrossfireX so ECS added Hydra Core technology. We proved the Lucid Hydra chip performed brilliantly in 3DMark Vantage and I’m sure it will work well with supported games too. The black PCB combined with the black and silver heatsinks really make this board look edgy and impressive. Overall, the P67H2-A earns PC Perspective’s Silver Award for its originality, available graphics options, and gorgeous layout and design.
Strengths
- Decent overclocker
- Three PCIe slots with SLI/CrossfireX support
- Hydra Core technology to combine different vendor GPUs
- Excellent bundle of accessories
Weaknesses
- Higher than usual power consumption results
- Will be at a higher price point than other P67 offerings due to addition of Hydra Core and extra SATA 6GB/s bay device
