Asus P5Q Elite.

Just one more chipset from Intel who evidently seems to be somewhat dissatisfied with the 10 and maybe chipsets they've released previously year. The P45 is defined as a cut-down, lower-priced version on the high-end X48 chipset-based panels. It's also set being the last socket-775 chipset so that the release of the impatiently awaited Nehalem range right at the end of the year.
So what on earth makes the P45 much better than its predecessor, the P35? For starters, the P45 ups the front side bus to at most 1, 600Mhz over the particular P35's 1, 333MHz, which experts claim gives overclockers a somewhat more headroom to play along with. It also boasts PCI-Express step 2. 0 support for 2 times the graphics bandwidth and even supports Intel's 45nm-based processors, the modern, more efficient and slightly stronger Core 2 chips. The item features the ICHlO southbridge far too, which includes a 10GB ethernet controller and additionally built-in wireless support, though dropping the aging PS/2 not to mention LPT ports.
Asus has a reputation as one of the more innovative companies on the market - the Eee to be a testament to that - of which this latest PSQ Deluxe is very little exception. The board alone is well laid-out, while using the usual, aesthetically pleasing african american PCB. And, strangely, there were no slicing-our-fingers-into-salami problems with all the cooling fins as all of us installed the CPU lover. One of Asus's additional brilliant innovations (actually forget the Eee) really needs to be the power and reset buttons already a part of the motherboard itself - immensely handy in the test-bench overclocker or for everybody who is just having teething problems.
Fight the Power
Beyond just the P45 chipset, Asus has crammed its EPU-Six Engine into your PsQ Deluxe. This power-saving system monitors the facility draw of the processor chip, graphics card, memory, chipset computer drives and CPU fan, in addition to adjusts them automatically for the purpose of different application environments. So for anyone who is simply browsing the world-wide-web it switches to Energy-Saving function, but when you boot up Crysis it'll go into Turbo function. The settings can be adjusted about the fly, and it even tells you how many milligrams of carbon monoxide you aren't going to pumping into the surroundings. Asus claims it are able to significantly save on electricity bills, which is likely to be able to please some polar contains.
On top of the particular power-saving features, Asus has incorporated its Splashtop Instant-On main system into the motherboard. A type of ‘ why did no one consider this before? ’ ideas, the Splashtop is usually a bespoke Linux installation that enables access to the internet through the customized version of Safari, chat with Skype along with a basic photo browser. It truly is quite underpowered, but if you're desperate for a fast map or cinema instances it's immeasurably handy. It is equally getting rolled out along its entire mobo array, stored on a chip in the high-end and offering HIGH-DEFINITION installation via support CD around the rest.
The Splashtop software is made onto the motherboard within the deluxe. With its own dedicated 512MB of RAM there's no requirement to worry about not having the ability to get on the Net if you fry your hard disk. ASUS is also touting this being an energy-saving feature, as users will be not as likely to leave their PCs running as long as they know the web will boot inside of seconds.
Although it's an excellent bit of software, it still needs a little polish - it failed to detect our microsoft mouse button and we were left tabbing across the various menus. A BIOS revise should fix that, and given time we could see an evolved edition of Splashtop revolutionize the way in which we use PCs.
Resistant to the Odds
So energy-saving and innovation available as one, but how does typically the P45 platform perform? Most of us tested it against Intel's P35 not to mention X38 chipsets, as very well as Nvidia's 790i chipset, in addition to performance was surprisingly underwhelming. It may not be that it's bad, it truly is just unimpressive. The biggest surprise the following is that the P35 outperformed the particular P45 slightly on RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY and processor tests - although this is down to early taxi driver issues. But impressively for just a board at this value, 3D performance was actually only slightly behind ASUS's holier-than-though however hideously expensive 790i-based Striker II. That is without any overclocking.
When compared with the X38 we noticed significant improvements over the board, which is shocking if you think about that Intel was touting it to be a high-end chipset barely a year ago. Even the P35 were able to outdo the X38. Hopefully the Nehalem won't experience so many mind-bogglingly useless iterations, but that does look like Intel's penchant du jour.
It's also worth considering that although the P45 chipset sustains DDR3 RAM, the P5Q Luxurious only supports DDR2. All motherboard manufacturers need released their P45 boards within a range from stripped-down price range to fully-featured expensive, along with the P5Q Deluxe sits more for the value end of your spectrum, so no DDR3 for people like us. Although given the ridiculous prices and minimal efficiency gain from DDR3, it hardly seems more than worth it.
If you've got a new P35-based board it's maybe not worth upgrading at found. But if you've found anything less, and you're from solid, competent motherboard with many handy features, the P5Q Deluxe will probably be worth considering.