Celebrities and athletes have great sway over how and what we buy. Cars that win NASCAR races peak consumer interest. Gear that we see experts and athletes use on TV generates far more interest than run-of-the-mill hardware.
So for people who want a board optimized for a badass gamer like Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, it makes sense to buy his Fatal1ty P67 Professional motherboard.
The Fatal1ty P67 Professional has support for up to three ATI cards or two Nvidia graphic cards.
Obviously, Fatal1ty didn’t buy a motherboard company. The board is actually made and supported by the Asus spin-off, Asrock. Once known as a budget board company, Asrock these days certainly hasn’t been churning out budget products. Given Fatal1ty’s influence, it’s no surprise that the Professional targets devoted gamers. It supports up to three ATI GPUs in CrossFireX mode and Nvidia in SLI mode—but, alas, there’s no tri-SLI support courtesy of an nForce 200 chip like we saw in the Gigabyte P67A-UD7 board we reviewed last month.
The Professional features a tunable USB 2.0 mouse port.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing features of the board is its Fatal1ty USB 2.0 mouse port that allows you to tune the polling rate from 125Hz to 1,000Hz (Fatal1ty, BTW, prefers a 500Hz poll rate). It’s a cool feature for folks who really need to tune their mouse to match a particular game’s frame rate. For Joe 12-pack playing pickup games of Call of Duty: Black Ops, we wouldn’t expect miracles. More troubling: We tried several top-flight gaming mice, including a SteelSeries iKari, CM Storm twin-laser Sentinel Advance, and a Microsoft SideWinder, and none of the mice—which incidentally feature adjustable DPI rates—would work with the port.
The port did, however, work with an older, non-adjustable Razer Pro and a $6 Dell mouse.
In another first, the Fatal1ty P67 Professional features the Etron USB 3.0 host controller chip, instead of the NEC (now Renesas) chip we’ve seen in other boards. Etron promises higher throughput, but does it deliver? Yes and no. Using a very fast OCZ Enyo USB 3.0 drive as our target, the Etron chip was faster than boards that use just the NEC controller. But boards such as Gigabyte’s P67A-UD7, using the NEC+VIA combo, offered slightly better performance. Expect more on this in the future.
The Etron controller is truly faster than a standard NEC’s USB 3.0 host controller.
In pure performance, the Fatal1ty board hangs right there with other P67 offerings from the top-tier board makers. Like those, the Professional boots fine with 3TB partitions, thanks to its UEFI. The UEFI interface is OK—although you’ll have to make your tweaks with a background image of Fatal1ty glaring at you the whole time. It’s on par with MSI’s UEFI interface, but both trail behind Asus’s super-polished UEFI interface.
Overclocking was also fine—when done from the UEFI. We had less luck with the included OC utility, which would occasionally blue-screen from simply dialing up the multiplier for the 2600K part to 4.5GHz. The same overclock from the BIOS gave us no issues.
There’s some nice trim on the board, including a POST indicator and surface- mounted controls.
And while it’s not a problem per se, it’s a bit odd that the board features a parallel ATA port and floppy port in this day and age. We don’t know why Asrock bothered to waste real estate on these legacy ports.
Overall, the Fatal1ty is a solid board that offers a ton of features for the money. As we said, Asrock has traditionally been associated with budget and ultra- budget boards, but this should make other board makers take notice.
$250, www.asrock.com
Good USB 3.0 speed; tunable mouse port.
Special mouse port doesn’t work with some mice.
| Fatal1ty Professional Series | Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | Asus P8P67 Deluxe | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCMark Vantage 64-bit Overall | 11,326 | 10,556 | 11,250 |
| Everest Ultimate MEM Copy (MB/s) | 21,382 | 21,324 | 25,128 |
| SiSoft Sandra RMA Bandwidth (GB/s) | 15.7 | 15.6 | 15.7 |
| 3DMark Vantage Overall | 15,188 | 14,471 | 14,845 |
| Valve Particle Test (fps) | 179 | 178 | 180 |
| Resident Evil 5 low-res (fps) | 132.5 | 131.3 | 132 |
| HAWX low-res (fps) | 243 | 234 | 244 |
| HD Tune Pro Sustained Read (MB/s) Marvell 6Gb/s Controller | 233 | 237 | 208 |
| HD Tune Pro Burst Marvell (MB/s) | 171 | 174 | 157 |
| HD Tune Pro Sustained Read (MB/s) Intel 6Gb/s Controller | 264.7 | 267.1 | 256.7 |
| HD Tune Pro Burst Intel (MB/s) | 178 | 191.2 | 170 |
| HD Tune USB 3.0 (MB/s) | 177 | 180 | 155.6 |
For our tests, we used a 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K, an EVGA GeForce GTX 285, 4GB of DDR3/1333, a Western Digital Raptor 150, and Windows 7 Professional. SLI compliance was tested with two GeForce GTX 580 cards. For USB 3.0 performance, we used an OCZ Enyo, and for SATA 6Gb/s, we used a Crucial C300 SSD.
newegg911
April 13, 2011 at 7:24pm
I've heard that Asrock boards are better than they used to be, but I still wouldn't trust the brand for a high end mobo. (People used to call them ASSrock for a reason.)
Talcum X
April 10, 2011 at 3:52am
Not another Fata1ty?!?!? NOOOOO. When can we get away from this naming convention. I'm so sick of seeing it. I thought they had gone away, but now....UGH!
marosy
April 08, 2011 at 6:10am
Gordon, did you really test the USB 3.0 ports? If you did, then you would know, that the Etron driver has a lot of issues. For instance, just by installing a webcam into the USB3.0 you can get a BSOD.
Currently it is not compatible with a lot of USB 2.0 devices.
I urge the reviewers to have more responsability when reviewing products.
topcat2021
April 07, 2011 at 10:13am
This is a pretty MOBO but it looks too much like a 1986 Buick Regal sitting on a used car lot with new paint, 24 inch rims and tires with a couple of racing stickers thrown in to attract the "kids" therefore selling a 500 dollar car for 4000 dollars because it looks cool.
praetor_alpha
April 07, 2011 at 9:54am
I'm still confused: which one of those 8 USB ports is the special mouse one?
rich5665
April 07, 2011 at 5:54am
Are those PS/2 Ports? Does anyone really still use PS/2 anymore? Parallel ATA and Floppy support to boot; Awesome now I can upgrade the P4 in the back of my closet! I really don't understand why those ports haven't disappeared by now.
AKap64
April 06, 2011 at 8:25pm
YES! IDE Connector, now I dont have to buy a new hard drive!
Can we please kill that damn interface?
//Sarcasm
RUSENSITIVESWEETNESS
April 06, 2011 at 2:57pm
The guy plays video games and that makes him an engineer? Really?
No, thanks. Not biting.
MattyMattMatt
April 06, 2011 at 1:55pm
I used to hate ASRock but they have quickly become on of my favourite motherboard companies. The Extreme series is great for both AM3 and 1155. Giving you the same feature as board 20-50 bucks more expensive.
The 870 Extreme3 is amazing and routinely offered at 10-20 below retail, making it an even better deal. 8/8 CF for 90? STEAL. Similarly the P67 Extreme4 sells for 150-160 and also offers 8/8 CF or SLI. STEAL.
They've turned around their whole process. No longer are they unreliable horrendous looking boards. They now play in the big leagues and they are beating their prices with ease.
Neufeldt2002
April 06, 2011 at 12:19pm
Personnally I buy a board based on the specs and the reviews it generates. To buy a board based on the name fatality is lame. I have seen many products with this name that just don't measure up, Asrock is a budget company and this board will reflect that.
aaronj2906
April 06, 2011 at 11:01am
This board has 3 (x16/0 or x8/x8, x4) slot config (NewEgg).
The UD7, by comparision: 4 (x16/x16/0/0 or x8/x8/x8/x8)
Assuming a comparative between the two (ignoring all else) Choose wisely...
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