ASUS P6T software features

ASUS Express Gate

Express Gate is one of our favorite features unique to ASUS motherboards. Tired of waiting a minute or more to boot up your system just so you can browse the Internet? Perhaps you want to get online real quick so you can browse the local showings for the latest movie or check the weather? With Express Gate, you can load up the internet within seconds, use Skype to make phone calls with friends around the world, view photos, or use the built-in chat utility for instant messaging.

In the past ASUS Express Gate has consisted of a built-in flash memory chip that is integrated on the motherboard itself; residing on this flash memory chip is a custom Linux distribution from Splashtop (this is the system ASUS uses on the P6T Deluxe for instance), although to cut costs ASUS has elected not to include the built-in flash chip. Instead on the vanilla P6T Express Gate now resides on your system hard drive. This means that Express Gate must be installed by the end user before it can be used.

As you can imagine, performance of Express Gate suffers as a result. Booting up the Splashtop browser took about 15 seconds with a 150GB Western Digital Raptor HDD and Core i7-920. In the past we’ve found the built-in hardware solution takes about 5 seconds to perform the same procedure. 15 seconds is still a lot better than waiting 40+ seconds for Windows XP/Vista to boot up though.

The Splashtop browser itself is pretty good, while you can’t open multiple windows at once it does supports features like tabbed browsing and it can save all your passwords if you’d like. The browser supports Adobe Flash natively as well. Resolutions supported range from 800x600 up to 1440x1050, making max resolution support arguably one of the bigger limitations of Splashtop, particularly if you have a 24” or greater monitor.


Besides the built-in browser, Express Gate also has programs for games, chat, Skype, and viewing photos. The photo program is just that, a small application for viewing photos stored on your hard drive or external storage, while the chat program supports AIM, Google Talk, Tencent QQ (popular in China), Yahoo Instant Messenger, and MSN. The games program actually is nothing more than an extension of the browser, taking you to DeviceVM’s game page where you can play a pretty decent selection of casual online games.

Overall we really like the Express Gate feature, even if it is a little slower to initially boot up on the P6T than the hardware-based solution found on previous ASUS motherboards we’ve tested. Fortunately once you boot up the apps all load rather quickly, the OS itself is rather lightweight and you can easily scroll back and forth among open programs. A small red dot at the bottom of the main Express Gate navigation menu lets you know which programs are currently open.

Express Gate loads automatically every time you boot your PC. This Express Gate splash page can be used to launch any of the aforementioned programs, load BIOS, or boot into the main OS. By default if the user doesn’t respond the motherboard will automatically boot into the OS after 10 seconds of inactivity, so technically Express Gate adds 10 seconds to the overall system boot time unless you manually select “load the OS” by hand each time on boot up, or you adjust the Express Gate OS timer within BIOS, with settings ranging from 1 second up to 30 seconds. You can also disable Express Gate entirely from within BIOS.

Once inside Express Gate you can also restart your PC, turn off system, or boot into the main OS.

ASUS TurboV

TurboV is ASUS’ new Windows-based utility for overclocking. The program can be used to adjust clock speeds, voltages, and other settings all from within Windows. This is handy if you’re a little intimidated by overclocking via system BIOS, and the TurboV settings provided directly correspond to what ASUS also provides in BIOS.

Base clock speeds are adjustable in 1MHz increments ranging from 100-250MHz. As you go higher on the scale the slide goes from green to yellow and finally to red. This gives you a very rough outline of just how far you may be pushing things when OC’ing with green being safest while red obviously indicates the most aggressive settings. TurboV also provides CPU voltage options up to 1.7V, DRAM voltages up to 1.9V and QPI voltage up to 1.7V.

If you’d like to fine tune settings even further, TurboV also has an advanced mode which can be opened by clicking the “more settings” button. Here you’ll find options for adjusting chipset voltages, PCIe voltages, and CPU PLL voltages. ASUS also includes options for tweaking DRAM reference voltages on each of the board’s three memory channels as well.

Finally, you can setup and save custom OC profiles with TurboV as well.


The only feature missing from TurboV is hardware monitoring, but as most ASUS loyalists should know by now the company provides PC Probe software for this. With PC Probe II you can monitor CPU and motherboard temperature as well as voltages.

We do think TurboV should show you before/after clock speeds though. As it stands now you’ll have to whip out the calculator to figure out how far you’re actually OC’ing the processor with TurboV.

ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit)

EPU is energy-saving feature ASUS has included with all of their latest motherboards. With EPU the motherboard can dynamically turn on and off power phases as needed depending on workload. Say for instance you’re browsing the internet, or idling at the Windows desktop. Under this environment you don’t need to run all eight power phases on your motherboard. EPU can turn off phases to conserve power.

The P6T supports ASUS’ newer 6-engine EPU. In addition to dynamically adjusting power phases and CPU voltage on the fly, this utility can be used to conserve power of the entire system. ASUS mentions other system components such as the CPU, VGA card, memory, chipset, hard drive(s), and CPU/system cooling. You can actually see the fans spin down at the more aggressive power saving settings. Of course you’ll also need an ASUS video card that’s EPU-6 certified in order to fully take advantage of this latter feature.


With EPU-6 ASUS provides four basic power profiles: Turbo, High Performance, Medium Power Saving, and High Power Saving modes. Finally there’s an auto mode setting that will dynamically adjust amongst the four modes depending on system usage.


Under each of the four power modes you can go in and manually tweak power profiles. Under the High Power Saving mode setting for instance you may not want to shut down your hard drive at all; this can be adjusted however you’d like. Or you may not want the motherboard to lower your chipset voltage. You can even adjust how far EPU-6 underclocks your CPU or undervolts. With the Turbo Mode setting, you can actually use EPU-6 to overclock your processor, and thus use more power. EPU isn’t compatible with TurboV however, so you will have to choose which program you’d rather run since they can’t be open simultaneously.