Asus P5Q Luxury.

Just another chipset from Intel who evidently look like somewhat dissatisfied with the 10 and perhaps chipsets they've released historically year. The P45 is simply a cut-down, lower-priced version with the high-end X48 chipset-based decks. It's also set to generally be the last socket-775 chipset till the release of the consistently awaited Nehalem range by the end of the year.
Just what exactly makes the P45 compatible with its predecessor, the P35? To begin with, the P45 ups front side side bus to no more than 1, 600Mhz over any P35's 1, 333MHz, which gives overclockers a little more headroom to play along with. It also boasts PCI-Express a pair of. 0 support for instances the graphics bandwidth and additionally supports Intel's 45nm-based processors, the newest, more efficient and slightly much better Core 2 chips. That features the ICHlO southbridge too, which includes a 10GB ethernet controller and even built-in wireless support, although dropping the aging PS/2 together with LPT ports.
Asus has a reputation as one of the more innovative companies in the marketplace - the Eee being a testament to that - this kind of latest PSQ Deluxe is not an exception. The board again is well laid-out, with all the usual, aesthetically pleasing ebony PCB. And, strangely, we'd no slicing-our-fingers-into-salami problems when using the cooling fins as all of us installed the CPU cooling fan. One of Asus's far more brilliant innovations (actually forget the Eee) must be the power and reset buttons that are part of the motherboard itself - immensely handy for those test-bench overclocker or when you're just having teething concerns.
Fight the Power
Along with the P45 chipset, Asus has crammed its EPU-Six Engine on the PsQ Deluxe. This power-saving system monitors the facility draw of the chip, graphics card, memory, chipset computer drives and CPU fan, plus adjusts them automatically for different application environments. So when you are simply browsing the web it switches to Energy-Saving form, but when you boot up Crysis it will go into Turbo form. The settings can be adjusted on the fly, and it even tells you how many milligrams of carbon monoxide you just aren't pumping into the air flow. Asus claims it can significantly save on electricity bills, which is likely to please some polar offers.
On top of the power-saving features, Asus has incorporated its Splashtop Instant-On computer into the motherboard. A kind of ‘ why did no one consider this before? ’ ideas, the Splashtop is actually a bespoke Linux installation that enables access to the internet from a customized version of Flock, chat with Skype and a basic photo browser. It is really quite underpowered, but if you find yourself desperate for a effective map or cinema instances it's immeasurably handy. It could be getting rolled out across its entire mobo range, stored on a chip at the high-end and offering HIGHER installation via support CD to the rest.
The Splashtop software is created onto the motherboard in the deluxe. With its own committed 512MB of RAM there's you don't worry about not being able to get on the Net any time you fry your hard cd. ASUS is also touting this as an energy-saving feature, as users will be unlikely to leave their PCs running once they know the web will boot in just seconds.
Although it's a great bit of software, it still requires a little polish - it failed to detect our microsoft mouse button and we were left tabbing within the various menus. A BIOS update should fix that, and given time we're able to see an evolved adaptation of Splashtop revolutionize the way we use PCs.
Up against the Odds
So energy-saving and innovation per, but how does the P45 platform perform? Most people tested it against Intel's P35 and X38 chipsets, as perfectly as Nvidia's 790i chipset, plus performance was surprisingly underwhelming. It's actually not that it's bad, it is really just unimpressive. The biggest surprise recommendations that the P35 outperformed any P45 slightly on RAM MEMORY and processor tests - although may be down to early driver issues. But impressively for your board at this price, 3D performance was in fact only slightly behind ASUS's holier-than-though though hideously expensive 790i-based Striker II. That is without any overclocking.
When compared to the the X38 we noticed significant improvements across the board, which is shocking if you think about that Intel was touting it for a high-end chipset barely a year ago. Even the P35 were able to outdo the X38. Hopefully the Nehalem won't endure so many mind-bogglingly pointless iterations, but that does are generally Intel's penchant du jour.
It's also worth allowing for that although the P45 chipset aids DDR3 RAM, the P5Q Deluxe only supports DDR2. All motherboard manufacturers get released their P45 boards inside of a range from stripped-down resources to fully-featured expensive, as well as P5Q Deluxe sits more towards the value end of typically the spectrum, so no DDR3 for many people. Although given the ridiculous prices and minimal performance gain from DDR3, it hardly seems of great benefit.
If you've got some P35-based board it's probably not worth upgrading at latest. But if you've received anything less, and you're from solid, competent motherboard with numerous handy features, the P5Q Deluxe will probably be worth considering.