In both cases – in the nominal mode as well as during overclocking, the boards performed at very close speeds. However, you can notice that Gigabyte solution is a little faster than Asus almost in every test. There is a logical explanation to this fact: while the CPU really worked at its nominal frequency on the Asus board, Gigabyte mainboard set higher base frequency (136.7 MHz instead of 133 MHz), as we have seen from the BIOS screenshots above. As a result, all connected frequencies, such as CPU and memory, also were higher. For example, with 22x multiplier the CPU frequency on Asus board was 2.93 GHz, while on Gigabyte board – 3.0 GHz. No wonder that Gigabyte turned out ahead of Asus. Not too much, by only 2%, but ahead.
Gigabyte mainboards do not play quite fairly by raising the base clock. However, this micro-overclocking is absolutely harmless for the CPU, memory and the entire system as a whole, so there is no reason to give it up. Just change the “Base Clock (BCLK)” parameter in the BIOS from Disabled to Enabled, i.e. allow changing the base clock frequency, and set it to 133 MHz, and Gigabyte mainboards will play by the rules and use 133 MHz or any other base clock you choose. The results of our performance comparison during overclocking confirm that. In really equal testing conditions the boards perform almost the same. Asus board is faster by about 0.5%, which is negligible.
The conclusion from our performance comparisons is that in equal operational conditions both mainboards perform similarly. Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 is not any slower than Asus P7P55D Deluxe during overclocking, although it used to be an issue with Gigabyte problems a while back. In nominal mode Asus is even a little slower, but only because Gigabyte mainboard uses slightly higher frequencies. Now it would be interesting to compare the power consumption of both boards.