Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 Intel H55 Clarkdale mainboard review - SiSoft Sandra 2009
Bluetooth 15 Feb 2010

The Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3, Biostar TH55XE, ASRock H55M Pro, ASUS P7H55-M Pro and ECS H55H-CM are all paired up with Kingston 2 X 2048M DDR3-2000. The processor used is the Core i5-661 processor clocked at 3.33GHz. The Intel Core i5-661 comes with an DX10 integrated graphics clocked at 900MHz. System driver used is Intel GMA HD 8.15.10.1968.

Before we go on, we measure the BCLK of the 5 boards and all 4 uses different timings. Below is the the default clock detected on the board and the memory timing it uses to run the test :

Gigabyte H55M-USB3 : 133.3 x 25, C9-9-9-27-1T, DDR3-1333
Biostar TH55XE : 137.3MHz x 25, C9-9-9-27-1T DDR3-1333
ASUS P7H55-M Pro : 133.8MHz x 25, C8-9-9-24-1T DDR3-1333
ASRock H55M Pro : 138.0MHz x 25, C8-9-9-24-1T DDR3-1333
ECS H55H-CM : 133.0MHz x 25, C9-9-9-24-2T DDR3-1333
ASRock M3A785GMH/128 : 260MHz x 13, C6-6-6-15-2T, DDR3-1040

SiSoft Sandra 2009

In this test, we compare the board against 4 other H55 boards and a AMD 785G board running an AMD Phenom II X3 710 clocked at 3.33GHz. We wanted to see if the Intel's new Clarkdale performance pit against the AMD processor running on a 785G board. The board used is a ASRock M3A785GMH/128M we reviewed last year on OCWorkbench.

First, we check out the Processor Arithmetic scores of SiSoft Sandra 2009.

From the chart, we can clearly see that the difference in performance of the 5 boards. The Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 being clocked at 133.3Mhz on the dot stands to lose out a bit to the other boards which tuned up their BIOS for performance advantage. In this test, it scored 33.13 for Whetstone and 42.52 for Drystone.

When compared to the ASRock M3A785GMH/128M, the Intel Core i5-661 based systems are clearly leading the way.

In the processor multimedia department, the same situation seems to affect the 4 Clarkdale boards. The 5 boards perform similarly but the differences are largely due to clock speed and ram timings. We again see that the scores are very close to the ECS H55H-CM in Double x4 and Float x8 tests.

Surprisingly, the Phenom II X3 710 running on the ASRock M3A785GMH/128M is on par and even perform way better the Int x16 test.

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