Going Green? Which motherboard company is more efficient, ASUS or Gigabyte?

Conclusion

So, in the end, who is the winner? I would have to say first off that the winner is the consumer. Less power being used means less money flying out the door to the utility company, and that is a good thing for the pocketbook, especially with gas prices headed the direction they are. I would also say that the environment is a winner. I am not going to get all politically correct. In fact, no matter what your view is, you would have to admit that using less power is a good thing. Just the fact that we are even talking about this subject is a good thing. We have a responsibility to take care of the earth, and this certainly can help. I applaud both Asus and Gigabyte for there desire to decrease the power used by personal computing.

Both boards are great performers, so anyone looking to build a system built around either of these boards will be happy. But as we said in the beginning of this article, now that the performance gap has decreased between boards and chipsets, there are other things that will come in to play. Overclocking is a big one, but power saving is also a major concern for people today. That being said, the Asus certainly offers a wider range of flexibility for the user. The Asus board also provides the greatest amount of power saving between these two boards.

Wondering what happened between ASUS and Gigabyte? Well, ASUS sued Gigabyte for defamatory and false accusations at the end of May 2008. A couple weeks later it was reported that Gigabyte was going to apologize. Our testing shows that the apology was indeed needed as the ASUS board is more efficient!

Legit Bottom Line: If one of the major factors in your motherboard purchase is to have a great board that gives great power saving features, then the Asus P5E3 Premium (and certainly other Asus boards with the EPU feature) will be a great choice for your rig.