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Three Core 2 motherboards from Asus

Geoff Gasior
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JUST OVER A YEAR has passed since we last reviewed an LGA775-based motherboard here at TR. Interest in the platform just wasn’t there, but that’s changed since Intel released its Core 2 processors. With Conroe the undisputed king of performance—and more importantly performance per watt—enthusiasts are finally looking at LGA775 motherboards. There are plenty to choose from, too, but only a select few are compatible with Intel’s new chips.

Asus is in the enviable position of having a trio of high-end enthusiast boards primed for the Core 2. More impressively, each board brings something unique to the table. The P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition, for example, is Asus’s first stab at Intel’s new P965 Express chipset. The P5W DH Deluxe relies on an older 975X Express chipset, but it boasts a suite of new “Digital Home” accessories in addition to CrossFire support. For those who prefer their multi-GPU graphics tinted green, there’s the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe, which leverages Nvidia’s nForce4 SLI X16 chipset for what may be the fastest desktop graphics platform around.

Which of Asus’s new Core 2 boards is right for your Conroe build? Is the LGA775 platform even ready for the fickle tastes of enthusiasts migrating from familiar Athlon 64 territory? Read on to find out.

Board specs
The first stop on our tour of Asus’s Core 2 offerings is a comparison of their spec sheets. Here we get a quick glimpse at what each board has to offer before diving into the details.

P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe P5W DH Deluxe
CPU support LGA775-based Celeron, Pentium 4/D, Core 2 processors LGA775-based Celeron, Pentium 4/D, Core 2 processors LGA775-based Celeron, Pentium 4/D, Core 2 processors
North bridge Intel P965 Nvidia nForce4 SLI X16 SPP Intel 975X
South bridge Intel ICH8R Nvidia nForce4 SLI X16 MCP Intel ICH7R
Interconnect DMI (2GB/s) HyperTransport (8GB/sec) DMI (2GB/s)
Expansion slots 2 PCI Express x16
1 PCI Express x1
3 32-bit/33MHz
2 PCI Express x16
1 PCI Express x4
2 PCI Express x1
2 32-bit/33MHz
2 PCI Express x16
2 PCI Express x1
3 32-bit/33MHz
Memory 4 240-pin DIMM sockets
Maximum of 8 GB of DDR2-533/667/800 SDRAM
4 240-pin DIMM sockets
Maximum of 8 GB of DDR2-400/533/667/800 SDRAM
4 240-pin DIMM sockets
Maximum of 8 GB of DDR2-400/533/667/800 SDRAM
Storage I/O Floppy disk
1 channel ATA/133 via
JMicron JMB363
6 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 support
2 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1 support via
JMicron JMB363
Floppy disk
2 channels ATA/133
4 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 support
2 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1 support via SiIicon Image SiI 3132
Floppy disk
1 channel ATA/133
1 channel ATA/133 via JMicron JMB363
3 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 support
2 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1 support via Silicon Image SiI 4723
3 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1 support via JMB363
Audio 8-channel HD audio via ICH8R and Analog Devices AD1988B codec 8-channel audio via nForce4 SLI X16 MCP and Realtek ALC850 codec 8-channel HD audio via ICH7R and Realtek ALC882M codec
Ports 1 PS/2 keyboard
1 PS/2 mouse
1 serial
4
USB 2.0 with headers for 4 more
1 1394a Firewire via Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A with header for 1 more
1 eSATA via JMicron JMB363
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 via Marvell 88E8001
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 via Marvell 88E8056
1 802.11g Wi-Fi via Realtek RTL8187L

1 analog front out
1 analog bass/center out
1 analog rear out
1 analog surround out
1 analog line in
1 analog mic in
1 TOS-Link digital S/PDIF output
1 coaxial digital S/PDIF output

1 PS/2 keyboard
1 PS/2 mouse
1 parallel
4
USB 2.0 with headers for 6 more
Headers for 2 1394a Firewire via Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A
1 eSATA via Silicon Image SiI 3132
2 RJ45 10/100/1000

1 analog front out
1 analog bass/center out
1 analog rear out
1 analog surround out
1 analog line in
1 analog mic in
1 TOS-Link digital S/PDIF output
1 coaxial digital S/PDIF output

1 PS/2 keyboard
1 PS/2 mouse
1 serial
4
USB 2.0 with headers for 4 more
1 1394a Firewire via Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A with header for 1 more
1 eSATA via JMicron JMB363
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 via Marvell 88E8053
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 via Marvell 88E8053
1 802.11g Wi-Fi via Realtek RTL8187L

1 analog front out
1 analog bass/center out
1 analog rear out
1 analog surround out
1 analog line in
1 analog mic in
1 TOS-Link digital S/PDIF output
1 coaxial digital S/PDIF output

BIOS AMI AMI AMI
Bus speeds FSB: 100-650MHz in 1MHz increments
DRAM: 533,667,800,889,1067MHz
PCI-E: 90-150MHz in 1MHz increments
FSB: 266-400MHz in 0.25MHz increments
DRAM: 10-400MHz in 0.25MHz increments
PCI-E: 100-123.4375MHz in 1.5625MHz increments
FSB: 100-450MHz in 1MHz increments
DRAM: 400,533,667,711,800,889,1067MHz
PCI-E: 90-150MHz in 1MHz increments
Bus multipliers CPU: 6x-10x (with Core 2 Duo E6700) LDT: 1x-5x NA
Voltages CPU: auto, 1.225-1.7 in 0.025V increments
DDR: auto, 1.8-2.45V in 0.05V increments
FSB termination: auto, 1.2-1.45V in 0.05V increments
North bridge: auto, 1.25-1.55V in 0.1V increments
South
bridge: auto, 1.5-1.8V in 0.1V increments
ICH: auto, 1.057,1.215V
CPU: auto, 1.225-1.7 in 0.025V increments
DDR: auto, 1.85-2.4V in 0.05V increments

FSB termination: auto, 1.215-1.45V in 0.1V increments
North bridge: auto, 1.4-1.6V in 0.1V increments
South bridge
: auto, 1.5-1.6V in 0.1V increments
CPU: auto, 1.2-1.7 in 0.0125V increments
DDR: auto, 1.8-2.4V in 0.05V increments
FSB termination: auto, 1.2-1.45V in 0.1V increments
MCH: auto, 1.55-1.85V in 0.1V increments
ICH: auto, 1.05-1.2V in 0.15V increments
Monitoring Voltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring Voltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring Voltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring
Fan speed control CPU, system CPU, system CPU, system

The most important thing to take away from the spec sheets is that these boards are based on different core logic chipsets; the P5B and P5W tap Intel’s respective P965 and 975X core logic, while the P5N32-SLI employs Nvidia’s nForce4 SLI X16. Chipsets include the memory controller on the Core 2 platform, so they can have more of an impact on application performance than we’ve seen with Athlon 64 systems. Core logic also defines a basic motherboard feature set, which manufacturers then expand with various auxiliary peripheral chips.

Nvidia’s nForce4 SLI X16 is certainly the most complete chipset of the bunch, integrating support for SLI and enough PCI Express lanes for two full-bandwidth x16 slots. The nForce4 also packs a Gigabit Ethernet controller, two ATA channels, and four Serial ATA RAID ports, so the P5N32-SLI is relatively light on auxiliary peripheral chips. You don’t get support for High Definition Audio, though.

Intel’s 975X chipset does support High Definition Audio, and it boasts compatibility with ATI’s CrossFire GPU teaming scheme. The chipset’s ICH7R south bridge also sports four Serial ATA RAID channels, although on the P5W DH, it’s a little more complicated than that. More on that in a moment.

The starkest difference between the 975X and nForce4 is the former’s lack of integrated Gigabit Ethernet. Intel has yet to include GigE in any of its south bridge chips, and the ICH7R is no exception. That forces Asus to turn to third-party controllers to fill out the P5W DH’s networking suite, and they’ve done well to choose a couple of PCI Express chips from Marvell.

While the 975X Express and nForce4 SLI X16 chipsets have been around for a while, the P5B Deluxe’s P965 Express chipset is all new. That affords it certain luxuries, like six Serial ATA RAID ports via its ICH8R south bridge, but it also takes away a few conveniences. Intel has decided to do away with old-fashioned “parallel” ATA ports on the ICH8R, forcing Asus to employ a JMicron storage controller to take care of ATA support. Intel hasn’t integrated GigE into the ICH8R, either, sending Asus shopping over at Marvell once again. This time they’re apparently on more of a budget, because the P5B Deluxe’s secondary GigE chip is a pokey PCI-based model.

 
The P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition

Manufacturer Asus
Model P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition
Price (Street)
Availability Now

Mainstream?

Intel tags its P965 Express chipset as a mainstream product, yet the P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition is anything but. The first hint that we’re well beyond mainstream territory is the board’s $200 price tag, which is $80 higher than some P965 boards. The second hint is the fact that Asus makes a vanilla P5B that sells for around $150 without all the Deluxe Wifi-AP luxuries.

Building a high-end board based on a mainstream chipset isn’t necessarily a bad idea. After all, the P965 is much fresher than Intel’s high-end 975X chipset; the 975X’s ICH7R south bridge alone is close to 16 months old. Most of the mobo makers we talked to at Computex seemed much more interested in producing enthusiast boards based on the P965, as well.

Considering its wealth of onboard peripherals, the P5B’s layout is actually pretty good. Both power connectors are located along the edges of the board where they won’t create cable clutter that can interfere with airflow. However, putting the auxiliary 12V connector along the top edge of the board could create problems for upside-down cases like Antec’s P180, which positions the power supply below the motherboard. Users may need an extension cable to snake 12V power all the way to the top of the board.

The P5B’s CPU socket is flanked by tallish passive north bridge and VRM coolers, but there’s still plenty of room for larger aftermarket heatsinks. There’s also loads of clearance between the socket and DIMM slots, something we don’t see often on Athlon 64 motherboards.

Asus makes much of the fact that the P5B Deluxe uses a true eight-phase power design, and you can see most of it from this angle. The board has eight discrete power outputs to the CPU, and Asus claims that allows it to deliver more stable power to the processor.

Moving down the board, we run into the P5B’s low-profile south bridge cooler, which provides plenty of clearance for longer graphics cards. Longer cards do come a little too close to the DIMM slot retention tabs for our liking, though. Swapping DIMMs without removing cards from the top PCI Express x16 slot is possible, but it’s not easy if you have stubby fingers.

Fortunately it is easy to get at all six of the board’s ICH8R-powered Serial ATA ports. They’re all neatly clustered at the bottom of the board where not even longer double-wide graphics cards interfere.

The same can’t be said for the internal SATA port connected to the P5B’s auxiliary JMicron storage controller, though. That port is buried just above the top PCI Express X16 slot in one of the worst positions we’ve seen on a motherboard. At least with six south bridge-powered SATA ports, you shouldn’t need to resort to the JMicron controller for much more than its ATA port.

Unfortunately, the controller’s ATA port isn’t without its own issues. We couldn’t get a five-year-old version of Norton Ghost to run from optical drives connected to the controller. A more recent version of Ghost 2005 worked without putting up a fuss, though.

Storage controller nitpicking aside, Asus has been fairly modest with the P5B’s expansion slot layout. The board sports two physical PCI Express x16 slots for those who want to run dual graphics cards, but there’s no provision for CrossFire or SLI GPU teaming. The second x16 slot can be configured with either two or four lanes of bandwidth courtesy of the board’s ICH8R south bridge. Users also get a single x1 slot and three standard PCI slots, which should be enough for most folks. Since there’s no need to run a pair of double-wide graphics cards on a board that doesn’t support CrossFire or SLI, you only have to worry about losing one PCI slot to a double-wide card.

Despite being based on very different chipsets, the port clusters for all three Asus boards are remarkably similar. Parallel ports are snubbed on the P5B in favor of external Serial ATA and coaxial and TOS-Link digital S/PDIF outputs, and that’s just fine with us. We wouldn’t mind a couple of extra USB ports in the mix, though. The P5B can feed up to eight USB ports, but four are only available via onboard headers.

As its Wifi-AP Edition moniker suggests, the P5B is also fitted with an integrated wireless networking controller. The Wi-Fi component is actually a part of the motherboard, so it won’t eat up one of your expansion slots. Asus includes the necessary software to configure the Wi-Fi card as an access point to share your Internet connection with wireless devices, too.

 
The P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe

Manufacturer Asus
Model P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe
Price (Street)
Availability Now

Conroe gets SLI

While the P5B and P5W DH are brand-new designs, the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe is actually an updated version of Asus’s existing P5N32-SLI mobo. The SE version adds support for Core 2 processors, but little else appears to have changed—not that much needed to be changed. Until Nvidia releases its nForce 590 SLI chipset for Intel processors, the nForce4 SLI X16 is the only way to get full-bandwidth multi-GPU graphics with a Core 2 processor.

The P5N32-SLI’s SLI capabilities don’t come with much of a price hike, either. The board costs only $10 more than the P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition, although it can’t match that board’s integrated Wi-Fi component.

Since most of the P5N32-SLI’s features are consolidated in its nForce4 SLI X16 chipset, the board doesn’t have much in the way of extra peripheral chips crowding the landscape. As a result, the P5N32-SLI is largely devoid of annoying layout quirks. Even the power connectors are well-placed along the top and right-hand edges of the board.

Positioning the auxiliary 12V connector along the top edge of the board does complicate matters for upside-down cases. However, since the vast majority of enclosures put the power supply above the motherboard, we’d rather see layouts optimized for that design, especially when the alternative creates unnecessary cable clutter around the CPU socket.

The P5N32-SLI certainly doesn’t need any more crowding around the socket. The board’s land grid array socket is surrounded by passive heatsinks on three sides and a heat pipe on the fourth. All this cooling is necessary given the nForce4 SLI X16’s significant power consumption, but Asus has done a good job of ensuring that the various pipes and radiator fins won’t interfere with larger coolers.

Heatpiped chipset coolers also provide additional cooling for the P5N32-SLI’s VRMs. Like the P5B, the board uses a true eight-phase power design to feed the CPU.

Asus also does a good job of arranging the board’s storage ports to avoid conflict with longer graphics cards. Users have access to all four Serial ATA ports even with longer double-wide cards installed—something not every SLI board can claim. Again, though, clearance between the top PCI Express X16 slot and the DIMM retention tabs is a little tight.

I’m willing to forgive Asus this time around, if only because the P5N32-SLI serves up an extensive array of expansion ports that makes it difficult to provide more clearance. In addition to its pair of PCI Express x16 slots, the board also has two x1 slots, one x4 slot, and a couple of standard PCI slots. That might be a little light on standard PCI for some, but with PCI Express peripherals finally starting to trickle out, it’s a better bet for the long run.

Unfortunately, I can’t let yet another poor Serial ATA port placement escape my ire. The internal SATA port connected to the P5N32-SLI’s auxiliary Silicon Image controller sits at the top of the slot stack, just above the PCI Express x1 slot. Who wants a Serial ATA port up there?

To be fair, the Silicon Image controller might. The chip powers the board’s external Serial ATA connector, and trace length limitations may give Asus few alternatives for the placement of the internal port.

Asus bucks convention with the P5N32-SLI’s port cluster, swapping serial for parallel ports. Firewire doesn’t make the cut, either, but there are headers for two 1394a ports onboard. You also get headers for another six USB ports to complement the four available in the port cluster.

Like the P5B and P5W DH, the P5N32-SLI provides digital S/PDIF output in coaxial and TOS-Link flavors. It’s tempting to chastise Asus for not providing support for digital audio input, either instead of one of the outputs or in addition to them. However, anyone serious enough about audio to require S/PDIF input will probably be running a discrete sound card.

 
The P5W DH Deluxe

Manufacturer Asus
Model P5W DH Deluxe
Price (Street)
Availability Now

Excess for the digital home

Asus launched its Digital Home line of motherboards at Computex, and the P5W DH Deluxe is the first one we’ve had in the labs. At just under $250 online, it’s also the most expensive Core 2 motherboard currently on the market. That’s not terribly surprising, though. After all, the P5W DH is based on Intel’s high-end 975X chipset, and it is bundled with a gratuitous array of extra features and goodies.

The P5W DH also sports a new orange and black color scheme. I’m not sure what that has to do with the digital home, but Halloween is coming up, so perhaps it’s not completely inappropriate.

With more onboard peripherals and auxiliary chips than either of Asus’s other Core 2 boards, the P5W DH is a layout nightmare waiting to happen. Fortunately, Asus has done a reasonably good job of averting disaster. We only have a few things to quibble about, and power plug placement isn’t one of them. Like the P5B and P5N32-SLI, the P5W DH’s power connectors are located along the top and right edges of the board. However, unlike the other two boards, the P5W only has a four-pin connector for its auxiliary 12V line.

The P5W still has an eight-phase power design, though. A passive cooler keeps some of the voltage circuitry cool while also cooling the north bridge chip via a heatpipe. That still leaves plenty of room around the socket for larger heatsinks, although Intel’s LGA775 socket spec probably deserves the credit there. Intel’s heatsink retention holes carve out plenty of space around the CPU socket, allowing for larger coolers that were a virtual necessity with recent NetBurst-based processors.

Asus does a good enough job of arranging most of the P5W DH’s storage ports in the bottom right-hand corner of the board, but how the ports are all connected is a bit of a mess. The ICH7R should have four Serial ATA ports; on the P5W DH, it only has three. The fourth port actually runs to an auxiliary Silicon Image SiI 4723 “storage processor,” which splits it between two auxiliary Serial ATA ports. That creates problems for those looking to run four-drive RAID arrays, especially RAID 10, which actually requires at least four drives. Asus has a solution, but it’s far from elegant. One of the SiI 4723’s SATA ports can be reclaimed by the ICH7R for use in four-drive arrays, but in Intel’s RAID BIOS, the drive appears as an “external disk.” Intel’s RAID management software can’t read the drive’s information, either.

The impetus behind this odd storage arrangement appears to be a feature called EZ-Backup. This gem is supposed to simplify creating and managing RAID arrays, and it comes with appropriately-branded RAID management software for Windows. But get this: you have to change an onboard jumper to define whether EZ-Backup is configured as a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array. Forget, for a moment, the lunacy of associating RAID 0 with anything called EZ-Backup—Better-Backup, maybe. Asus apparently thinks switching jumpers is easier than popping into Intel’s RAID management BIOS. It’s not. If it were, we’d still be changing the front-side bus speed with onboard jumpers.

We’re not quite sure what Asus was thinking with the P5W DH’s PCI Express graphics card retention levers, either. On the P5B and P5N32-SLI, the retention levers stick out of the top of the slot where they don’t interfere with double-wide coolers. The P5W hangs its retention levers out the bottom of the slot, putting them right below heatsinks on Nvidia’s GeForce 7900 GTX and ATI’s Radeon X1900 series graphics cards. Getting either card out of the board takes effort, especially when a system’s installed in a tight enclosure.

Apart from hard-to-reach retention levers, the P5W’s slot stack looks pretty good. PCI Express x16 slots are paired with a couple of x1 slots and three standard PCI slots, giving users plenty of upgrade options for the future while retaining compatibility with existing expansion cards. A double-wide CrossFire configuration still leaves you with two PCI slots and one PCI-E x1, as well.

The P5W DH’s port cluster is identical to that of the P5B, so we won’t linger here long. Note that like the P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition, there’s also an integrated wireless networking riser.

802.11g Wi-Fi is provided by the same riser that we saw on the P5B. This time, however, Asus has hidden a extra Serial ATA port just above the wireless module. This takes the cake for the worst Serial ATA port placement we’ve seen, especially since the port is also backed up against the board’s north bridge heatpipe. That’s the price you pay for external Serial ATA, I suppose.

 

Extras galore
Asus has always provided plenty of extra goodies with its high-end boards, and these latest Deluxe models are no exception.

All three boards come with auxiliary blowers for their chipset and VRM coolers (the P5N32-SLI SE comes with two). These blowers are only supposed to be necessary in systems with limited internal airflow, such as those that are water cooled. The airflow created by standard CPU coolers and chassis exhaust fans should be sufficient otherwise.

For the P5B and P5W DH’s wireless components, Asus also includes a collapsible antenna. Reception isn’t stellar, but it works well enough as long as you’re not trying to set any distance records.

Asus’s most useful extra is actually the simplest. The boards come with little jumper blocks for their front panel, USB, and Firewire headers that allow you to connect individual pins outside the case before plugging the entire block into the onboard header. It’s a lot easier than trying to plug individual pins directly into the board, especially when a system’s already sitting inside an enclosure.

In addition to its more standard extras, Asus has also whipped up a couple of unique goodies for the P5W DH. The first of these is the MP3-In bracket, which can be used to play a portable audio player back through the PC’s speakers even when the system is turned off. It’s a neat trick, and one that the iPod generation might find particularly appealing.

If the MP3-In doesn’t do it for you, perhaps the DH remote will. This tiny little IR remote plugs into one of the board’s USB ports and gives users a decent array of buttons to control media playback, among other things.

The ability to manipulate other things is what makes the remote really useful, though. We’ve seen cheesy remotes bundled with all sorts of hardware, but few offer enough customization options to be truly useful outside one or two applications. Fortunately, the DH remote comes with a simple app that allows users to launch button mapping profiles for different applications. Users can arbitrarily remap six of the remote’s buttons, as well, making the DH remote quite versatile.

 

BIOS features and tweaking software
Enthusiasts have grown accustomed to a copious array of tweaking and overclocking options on the Athlon 64 platform, but do Asus’s latest Core 2 motherboards measure up?

Yes and no. All three boards provide a decent enough array of memory timing options, but only the P5N32-SLI’s BIOS gives users control over the DRAM command rate. There’s also some variance when it comes to support for certain memory bus speeds. The P5B, for example, has memory dividers for DDR2 533, 667, 800, 889, and 1067MHz memory. The P5W DH adds support for 400 and 711MHz memory bus speeds, although we have to question why. Memory bus options are nearly unlimited on the P5N32-SLI, which gives users the freedom to dictate any memory frequency they desire between 10 and 400MHz. The BIOS automatically applies a divider to bring the memory to as close to the target speed as possible, although users aren’t given explicit control over the divider itself or even a list of available dividers.

On the overclocking front, the P5N32-SLI’s front-side bus speed options go up to 400MHz, followed by the P5W DH, whose BIOS hits a ceiling at 450MHz. The P5B is considerably more optimistic, offering front-side bus speeds all the way up to 650MHz.

A 650MHz front-side bus may seem excessive, but it nicely matches the P5B’s ability to manipulate the Core 2 Duo’s processor multiplier. Multiplier control was limited to between 6x and 10x for our E6700 processor, but it appeared to have no problem working in conjunction with the Core 2 Duo’s automatic clock throttling.

The ability to turn down the CPU multiplier has long been a staple of Athlon 64 overclocking, so it’s nice to see something similar available on the P5B. Unfortunately, neither the P5N32-SLI nor the P5W DH offer Core 2 Duo multiplier control, at least not with non-Extreme chips. Asus did just add multiplier control to the P5B with its latest BIOS update, so there’s a possibility similar functionality could be added to the P5N32-SLI or P5W DH BIOSes in the future.

On the fan speed control front, Asus gets high marks for offering temperature-based fan speed control on all three boards. The controls aren’t as granular as we might like; there’s no ability to arbitrarily define target temperatures or fan voltages, for example. Still, the presets do a good job of lowering noise levels at idle and ramping things up under load.

If you prefer to do your tweaking in Windows, Asus has a handful of software apps that offer overclocking and hardware monitoring capabilities.

The P5W DH ships with older versions of PC Probe II and Ai Booster, but the P5B deluxe gets a swanky new version of what Asus is calling its Ai Suite.

Ai Suite cleans up the user interface quite a bit and offers a decent array of fan speed and overclocking tweaks. However, the P5N32-SLI has the most extensive suite of Windows tweaking software at its disposal.

In addition to working with Asus’s own software, the P5N32-SLI is also compatible with nTune, Nvidia’s own Windows tweaking utility. nTune provides an unrivaled amount of control over system voltages fan speeds, bus speeds, and memory timings—or at least it could, if Asus had put the proper hooks in the P5N32-SLI’s BIOS. Unfortunately, most of nTune’s options are greyed out on the P5N32-SLI, leaving users with little more than a taste of what could have been.

nTune’s hardware monitoring app is also handicapped by the P5N32-SLI. Neither system temperatures nor voltages are available for monitoring, and those are the variables one would probably want to keep an eye on the most.

The inability to monitor system temperatures and voltages also hampers nTune’s custom rules wizard, which can automatically invoke system profiles or perform specific tasks based on the system variable thresholds. Asus would do well to ensure that future BIOSes for the P5N32-SLI give users access to all the functionality Nvidia provides for free with nTune.

 

Our testing methods
All tests were run at least twice, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

Processor Core 2 Duo E6700 2.67GHz
System bus 1066MHz (266MHz quad-pumped)
Motherboard Asus P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Bios revision 0505 0801 0303
North bridge Intel P965 Nvidia nForce4 SLI X16 SPP Intel 975X
South bridge Intel ICH8R Nvidia nForce SLI X16 MCP Intel ICH7R
Chipset drivers Chipset 8.0.1.1002
AHCI 6.0.0.1022
ForceWare 6.86 Chipset 8.0.1.1002
AHCI 6.0.0.1022
Memory size 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
CAS latency (CL) 4 4 4
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 4 4 4
RAS precharge (tRP) 4 4 4
Cycle time (tRAS) 12 12 12
Audio codec Integrated ICH8R/AD1988B with 6.0.0.61 drivers Integrated ICH7R/ALC882M with Realtek HD 1.41 drivers Integrated nForce4 SLI X16 MCP/ALC850 with Realtek 3.91 drivers
Graphics GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB PCI-E with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
Hard drive Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB
OS Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 2

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. 2GB of RAM seems to be the new standard for most folks, and Corsair hooked us up with some of its 1GB DIMMs for testing.

All of our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the Medium detail image quality settings, with the exception that the resolution was set to 640×480 in 32-bit color.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

 

Memory performance

With the Core 2 Duo’s memory controller sitting not on the processor die, but inside the chipset, there’s plenty of variation in memory performance between motherboards. The P5N32-SLI comes out on top here with higher scores in the bandwidth tests and a quicker access latency than either Intel-based motherboard. Interestingly, though, the P5B has the best score in Cachemem’s write bandwidth test.

Motherboards and memory controllers don’t always scale gracefully from two to four DIMMs, so we’ve added another pair of memory modules to see how each board performs.

Little changes with four DIMMs installed. The P5N32-SLI is still the quickest board in our memory subsystem tests, followed by the P5W and then the P5B.

 

WorldBench

The P5N32-SLI continues to hold a lead through the WorldBench suite, but only by one point over the P5W DH. Again, the P5B sits at the back of the pack, but only barely.

Gaming

Until we get to Quake 4, gaming performance is pretty consistent across all three motherboards. However, the P5N32-SLI surges to the lead in Quake, leaving the P5W and P5B in its wake. At least some of the P5N32-SLI’s lead may be a result of its faster memory subsystem.

 

High-resolution gaming performance
Our first round of gaming tests was conducted with more modest in-game detail levels and display resolutions, but we’ve cranked things up for a second round. These tests use high resolutions, high detail levels, and anisotropic filtering and antialiasing. We’ve also tested the P5N32-SLI with a pair of 7900 GTXs in SLI, and the P5W DH with a single and CrossFire Radeon X1900 XTX graphics cards. The P5B doesn’t support multi-GPU acceleration, so it’ll have to make do with a single card.

Keep in mind that we’re not out to compare the graphics performance GeForce 7900 GTXs in SLI to that of Radeon X1900 XTXs in CrossFire. Instead, we’re looking for any differences in how the multi-GPU platforms scale from one card to two.

When ATI first released CrossFire, it had a distinct scaling disadvantage when compared with SLI. Since then, CrossFire has narrowed the gap considerably, although you still have to mess with a dongle.

 

Cinebench rendering

There isn’t much to see in Cinebench.

Sphinx speech recognition

However, Sphinx spreads the field a little bit. This test usually favors quicker memory subsystems, but the P5N32-SLI isn’t anywhere close to the lead. The P5W DH and P5B turn in faster performances here.

 

Audio performance

With none of the boards’ core logic chipsets offering hardware-accelerated audio controllers, 3D audio performance is dictated by the software audio drivers associated with each codec. We generally see lower CPU utilization with Analog Devices codecs than we do with those from Realtek, and that bears out here. The P5W DH and P5N32-SLI both use Realtek codec chips, and their CPU utilization is a few ticks higher than that of the P5B, which has an Analog Devices codec. Realtek’s standard definition audio drivers don’t scale up to 32 simultaneous 3D voices, either.

Audio quality
We used an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound card for recording in RightMark’s audio quality tests. Analog output ports were used on all systems. To keep things simple, I’ve translated RightMark’s word-based quality scale to numbers. Higher scores reflect better audio quality, and the scale tops out at 6, which corresponds to an “Excellent” rating in RightMark.

Performance in RightMark Audio Analyzer is all over the map, but if you tally the scores, the P5N32-SLI and P5W DH tie with 30 each, followed by the P5B with 27. Neither board stood out as being particularly good—or poor—in casual listening tests. Like most onboard audio implementations, playback quality was little more than adequate.

 

ATA performance
ATA performance was tested with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ATA/133 hard drive using HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

With the exception of the write speed test, where the P5B has a sizable advantage, these three boards’ ATA performance is similar across the board.

 

Serial ATA performance
Moving to Serial ATA, we tested performance with a Western Digital Raptor WD360GD SATA hard drive. Again, we used HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone test.

Only burst rates vary when we look at Serial ATA performance. Again, the P5B has a big advantage, making me wonder if perhaps the JMicron storage controller that also powers the board’s ATA port has some fancy caching capabilities. It certainly fares better than the P5W DH’s SiI 4723-attached SATA port. That the 4723-powered port is so much slower doesn’t bode well for Asus’s four-drive RAID hack, either.

 

USB performance
Our USB transfer speed tests were conducted with a USB 2.0/Firewire external hard drive enclosure connected to a 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 hard drive. We tested with HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

USB read speeds are pretty close, but the P5N32-SLI has a much faster write speed than either Intel-powered motherboard. Props to Nvidia’s USB controller.

Firewire performance
Our Firewire transfer speed tests were conducted with the same external enclosure and hard drive as our USB transfer speed tests.

Firewire performance is the same on all three boards, as you’d expect from identical Firewire chips.

 

Ethernet performance
We evaluated Ethernet performance using the NTttcp tool from Microsoft’s Windows DDK. The docs say this program “provides the customer with a multi-threaded, asynchronous performance benchmark for measuring achievable data transfer rate.”

We used the following command line options on the server machine:

ntttcps -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

..and the same basic thing on each of our test systems acting as clients:

ntttcpr -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

Our server was a Windows XP Pro system based on Asus’ P5WD2 Premium motherboard with a Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition (800MHz front-side bus, Hyper-Threading enabled) and PCI Express-attached Gigabit Ethernet. A crossover CAT6 cable was used to connect the server to each system.

The boards were tested with jumbo frames disabled.

The P5N32-SLI dominates our Ethernet performance tests not because its throughput is any faster than the competition, but because it consumes far fewer CPU cycles. Not only does the ActiveArmor-accelerated nForce4 GigE controller consume less CPU power than any other chip, the board’s auxiliary Marvell 88E8053 also uses fewer resources than the auxiliary chips on the P5B and P5W DH.

While the P5N32-SLI’s GigE performance is spectacular, the P5B’s PCI-based Marvell 88E8001 is embarrassingly slow and inefficient. The chip manages the slowest throughput of the lot by close to 300Mbps, yet it still consumes more than 25% of CPU time. Thankfully, the P5B has a PCI Express-based 88E8056 to fall back on.

 

Power consumption
We measured system power consumption, sans monitor and speakers, at the wall outlet using a Watts Up power meter. Power consumption was measured at idle and under a load consisting of a multi-threaded Cinebench 2003 render running in parallel with the “rthdribl” high dynamic range lighting demo.

Intel may be hyping performance per watt, but Nvidia apparently didn’t get the memo. The P5N32-SLI consumes much more power than either of the Intel-based boards at idle, and about 15W more under load. That’s particularly notable given the fact that the P5B and P5W DH both have integrated Wi-Fi controllers and additional peripheral chips.

 

Overclocking
Without universal control over the Core 2 Duo’s processor multiplier, it’s hard to eliminate the CPU as a potential overclocking bottleneck. Still, we were able to lower the memory divider on each board to take that variable out of the picture.


A 315MHz front-side bus on the P5N32-SLI


330MHz for the P5W DH


The P5B gets us 320MHz without multiplier modification…

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like our Core 2 Duo E6700 has gobs of overclocking headroom. We were only able to take the chip to 3.3GHz, which is a respectable boost from its stock 2.67GHz speed, but maybe not enough to really challenge these boards. Curiously, the P5N32-SLI would only push the processor to a 315MHz front-side bus; the P5B fared a little better, at least until we started monkeying around with the multiplier.


and a jaw-dropping 430MHz with a 6x CPU multiplier

With the CPU multiplier lowered to 6x, we were able to push the P5B to a whopping 430MHz front-side bus without even so much as extra chipset voltage. That’s more than a 60% boost in front-side bus speed, which should give extreme overclockers plenty of room to play.

As always, keep in mind that overclocking success is never guaranteed. Results can depend as much on the mix of system components as they can on the characteristics of individual samples, and your mileage may vary.

 

Conclusions
Asus’s first batch of Core 2-compatible LGA775 motherboards is most definitely ready for the throngs of enthusiasts looking to jump ship. Honing in on our pick of the litter is considerably more difficult, especially since performance is pretty even between them. Each board does have a unique set of attractive attributes, but those are tempered by at least a few less appealing liabilities.

The P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition, for example, is hampered by the quirky nature of its JMicron ATA controller and the poor performance of one of its Gigabit Ethernet chips. The board also lacks support for both CrossFire and SLI, but it does have dual graphics slots and should work with NVIDIA’s SLI sammich, the GeForce 7950 GX2. If price is an issue, the P5B is also the most affordable board of the bunch, although admittedly not by much. It is the only one with CPU multiplier control for Core 2 Duo processors, though. Don’t forget that it’s also using Intel’s latest chipset, complete with six Serial ATA RAID ports hanging off the south bridge.

For $30 more than the P5B, you could get your hands on the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe and its feature-packed nForce4 SLI X16 chipset. The P5N32-SLI offers the fastest memory subsystem of the bunch, and it also boasts the best performances in our networking and USB tests. SLI is supported, too, but High Definition Audio is not. Power consumption is an issue on this board, as well. Even at idle, the P5N32-SLI SE draws 30 watts more than either the P5B or P5W DH, and those boards have integrated Wi-Fi cards.

That brings us to the P5W DH Deluxe, which at $245 online, is the most expensive board of the lot. However, it’s also the only board with Asus’s unique digital home accessories, including a surprisingly versatile remote. CrossFire support doesn’t hurt, either, but the board’s confusing array of ATA and Serial ATA chips and ports does. EZ-Backup would be much easier to tolerate if it didn’t jack with the ICH7R’s existing Serial ATA ports.

So we’re left with three boards that are both appealing and flawed for very different reasons. Thankfully, all three are easy to recommend, it’s just a question of to whom. For SLI gamers with Gigabit home networks, the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe is the only logical choice. The P5W DH Deluxe, on the other hand, favors deep-pocketed CrossFire fans and those looking to make their PC a media hub. That leaves the P5B Deluxe Wifi-AP Edition, which is best for south bridge Serial ATA RAID junkies and enterprising overclockers. If I had to pick one for my personal workstation, the P5B would be it, but I’d disable that pathetic PCI Gigabit Ethernet controller right away. 

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