ASUS P5B Deluxe - Review

[[ Ba0o ]]

ASUS P5B Deluxe Motherboard Review

Introduction: All aboard the Core 2â„¢ Express!

As dawns the age of Core 2â„¢ and Quad-Coreâ„¢, the world calls for a motherboard to harness this raw power and set aside the primitive machines. The single Cores are soon to be run over by the overwhelming force of the multi-Core processors, and traded for a few measly bucks, enough to cover the trip to your nearest computer store. As the world watches in distress, who will take the challenge and bring forth the hardware to suffice to the needs of this awesome technology and harness its true potential? Or have our prayers already been answered?

It’s none other than ASUS that has come to the rescue with yet another tour de force to save the day and that too without a sidekick. With the unparalleled expertise and skill in the required domain, ASUS has penetrated the P965 market with a bang, setting new standards with its newest entry, the P5B – Deluxe.

Nothing gets those pheromones flowing than the sight of a motherboard that has its model number coupled with the word “Deluxe�. Personally, I like to think of the ASUS P5B – Deluxe as the ultimate traveling package equipped with state-of-the-art technology to provide amazingly swift and impeccable service making the ride an altogether unforgettable experience, not to mention the in-flight entertainment. It is the equivalent of traveling in the most luxurious airline in the world and converting it into a SR-71 Blackbird by just a click of a button or as ASUS puts it “Adjust peed as you wish!�

Let’s stop it with the analogies and get on with the review shall we.

Spoiler: Here’s a sneak-peak




Visuals: Judge not a book by its cover

(courtesy: ASUS)

Let’s start off with the visuals first. The box isn’t too “out-of-the-box� so to say, as it follows the same standard format as have the previous motherboards except some minor changes to the color-scheme. The GreenASUS logo at the front signifies that the motherboard and the packaging are recyclable and manufactured with environmental friendly material as per the vision of ASUS. Upon opening the box, true grandeur is bestowed upon you with all its glory.

The color-coded design of the P5B – Deluxe is in accord with the previous models which not only serves as eye candy but also adds to the distinctive class of the board that differentiates it from the rest. The main circuitry is mounted on a chocolate-brown PCB which helps display the different areas on the motherboard distinguishable by the colored plastic work.

Another newly added feature worth mentioning would be the ASUS LED at the bottom of the PCB that reminds you of the power state for the motherboard by the two distinct colors. Blue would indicate that the system is in sleep/soft-off mode while the RED indicates the off position.

Board Design: The Hip bone is connected to the…

Indeed true craftsmanship of this motherboard of immaculate design can only be experienced through the eyes of a professional. Fear not my young partisan, we are here to help. For the true ASUS aficionados there’s nothing new to see here, as the motherboard is more or less in line with the previous “Deluxe� models catering to the AMD platforms.

To Power this beast you’ll require a power supply with a 24-pin ATX power connector and either a four or an eight-pin auxiliary power connector. The Power plug has been cleverly placed at the top left end of the board to abstain from any unnecessary wiring flooding the board.

The ASUS trademark passive cooling solution is at display in the form of the effective heatpipe cooling for the Northbridge. The heatpipe connect to fins mounted on some of the voltage components just behind the CPU. This helps accumulate the heat generated at the far back of your casing for easy discharge.

The Southbridge is adequately mounted just in front of the auxiliary PCI-Express x16 slot, cooled by the standard passive heat sink that serves its purpose modestly but nevertheless flawlessly.

Placing the CPU distant from any built-in cooling or the DIMM slots allows for the ultimate of water cooling or other massive solutions as they are not obstructed with the above mentioned modules.


But the true masterpiece is the 8-power design for the CPU that promises atleast 15°C (59°F) less heat generation, a quieter system and more importantly giving way to more stability under heavy-loading to suffice to the needs of us over-clockers.

Taking a closer look at the expansion slots, we find that ASUS has provided two PCI-Express x16 slots while the auxiliary (represented by the black color) can attain actual speeds of 1x, 2x or 4x. There are three additional legacy PCI 2.2 slots available and one PCI-Express x1 slot at the bottom.

With the current configuration, setting up a dual-slot graphic card (for that extra oomph) would kill off the use for either the PCI slot or the PCI-Express x1 slot, depending on the choice for the placement of your card. Though the use of the PCI-Express x1 slot is bound to become widespread in the near future, but according to the seemingly rare pertinent hardware accessories currently available in the market it was wise of ASUS not to provide an extra slot for now. Nevertheless, it’s a treat for all those still hanging on to their old Sound cards and TV tuners due to the three PCI 2.2 slots available to choose from.

Albeit the design is flawless in scores of aspects but the CMOS jumper seems to be misplaced on this motherboard as in order to remove the jumper, the graphic card would have to be removed first, and nobody likes extra hassle.



The SATA ports have been increased to a whooping 8 in total, 6 of which are conveniently placed under the Southbridge creating no obstruction for those massive graphic cards while a JMicron JMB363 controller adds an additional internal port, as well as one eSATA port. The motherboard also comes equipped with a single IDE port; more of a bid farewell to the technology nearing its end.
The SATA ports new configuration is perfectly placed just below the Southbridge causing no hindrance for those heavy-duty graphic cards whilst shortening the data cable distance too.

To top it off, both the Intel and the JMicron powered connectors support RAID in modes 0, 1, 5 and 10 with Intel Matrix Storage Technology.



Now comes the interesting part i.e. the 4 DIMM ports. These DDR2 ports give you the freedom to elevate your memory needs to an incredible 8 GB. Yes, I say again, 8 GB. If this isn’t future-proofing, I don’t know what is. The DDR2 can attain a speed as high as 800MHz for all the demanding applications for the present age.
The recommended DIMM modules to use are the Kingston® HyperX® PC2-8500 Ready modules that have been over-clocked to 1066 MHz by default.

While you marvel at those huge memory silos, let me stop you for a moment and point out a minor defect here. The extended hinges of these ports when not in use are prone to touch the back end of your graphic card (in the primary PCI-Express x16 slot). Though a minute little defect, but may aggravate some.


I know most of you are more dying to get a glimpse of the back of this baby, and that is exactly what I’ll do next.

Starting from the top to the bottom, we have our standard PS2 and Serial keyboard and mouse ports, the external SATA and the IEEE1394a ports come next following the six mini-headphone connectors to take care of all your Audio needs (ADI – 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC). The motherboard also provides connectivity to your external home theater system via the coaxial S/PDIF-out jack. Last but not the least reside the two RJ45 ports (Dual Gigabit LAN) and the 4 USB ports

Add-ons and Accessories: Bling Bling!

Ah yes! Its time to review the goodies. ASUS as always never lets you down in this section. Apart from the pertinent and obligatory items such as the IDE cables, the silver back plate, the Drivers and the Manuals you will find some rather interesting stuff here, though not to the ASUS devotees as there’s really no new edition to the bundle.

The first thing to catch our eye was the small optional fan provided by ASUS to mount on top of the heatpipe fins if necessary. The transparent shell for the fan can also be used to compliment the Power Supply’s LED. Though its recommended not to use the fan incase a cooling solution already exists for your system, as it is bound to mess up the air-flow or might even create a mini-tornado for that matter (don’t mess with the flow people).

(courtesy: ASUS)

Another item worth mentioning here would be the Q-connector pieces that are really a lot of help while installing the LED’s for you casing. Thanks to the Q-connector, you can now finally stop using your mom’s tweezers to do the same job (disclaimer: the Q-connector is not responsible for your other tweezers needs).

AI Life: Performance served with extra dressing

Ever wonder who would win if Superman and Batman were to get into a fight. Well let’s see; Superman has laser-vision, can defy gravity and has super-speed, super-breath, super-hearing and ofcourse invulnerability. While Batman has that grappling-hook and some other assorted items. Hmmmm, that’s a tough one indeed.
Well if you’ve sensed the sarcasm I’ll carry on with my point. In these days of fierce competition a motherboard is measured not only by the high-performance hardware that it supports, but also by all the other gizmos and gadgets it provides that add value to the overall experience. This is the domain where ASUS truly dominates over all its rivals and always will due to its unparalleled expertise in understanding customer needs and providing superior quality solutions.

Following is the glimpse of some of the features that truly depict the aforesaid claim of the company.

This motherboard supports the latest Intel® Core™2 processors in LGA775 package. With new Intel® Core™ microarchitecture technology and 1066 / 800 MHz FSB, Intel® Core™2 processor is one of the most powerful and energy efficient CPU in the world.

The Intel® P965 Express Chipset is the latest chipset designed to support maximum 8GB dual-channel DDR2 800/667/533 architecture, 1066/800 FSB (front-side-bus), PCI Express x16 graphics and multi-core CPU. It especially includes Intel® Fast Memory Access Technology that significantly optimizes the use of available memory bandwidth and reduces the latency of the memory accesses.

To balance both system performance and quietness, AI Gear allows users to choose from profiles to adjust CPU frequency and vCore voltage, minimizing system noise and power consumption. Users can real-time change the mode under operating system to suit their needs.

This feature detects repetitive and stationary noises like computer fans, air conditioners, and other background noises then eliminates it in the incoming audio stream while recording.

The bundled Superbeam Array Microphone receives only the sound coming from the reception cone and ignores the sound coming from other directions. This mechanism eliminates a large number of interferences including neighboring speakers and reverberations. It also uses advanced de-reverberation techniques to reduce echo and minimize its effect on the speech engine. This feature can enhance speech-centric application like Skype, online game, video conference and recording.

Stack Cool 2 is a fan-less and zero-noise cooling solution offered exclusively by ASUS. It effectively transfers heat generated by the critical components to the other side of the specially designed PCB (printed circuit board) for effective heat dissipation.

Over clocking: Take it into Hyper-Drive

Applications such as 3D games and video editing demand a huge chunk of system resource. Inject "nitrous oxide" into your CPU! The patented AI NOSâ„¢ (Non-delay Overclocking System) technology intelligently detects system load and automatically boosts performance for the most demanding tasks. Unlike other dynamic overclocking techniques, AI NOSâ„¢ reacts much faster to satisfy your unending need for speeds.

This latest technology, PEG (PCI Express Graphics) Link Mode, is a unique feature that enables users to boost graphics card performance for superior video quality. PEG Link allows users to raise GPU and VGA memory throughput via the motherboard BIOS the same way system bus and memory bus are tweaked. PEG Link Mode enables powerful video performance on DX8 and DX9 applications. ASUS engineers carefully fine-tuned the parameters for every single PCI-Express card to provide system stability during high-speed graphics operation.

It offers ways to raise system performance inch-by-inch and step-by-step to achieve maximum performance! This is about getting the most out of your machine and taking pride in your customized computer.
vDIMM - Take control of how much power is going into the memory modules. This motherboard gives you 13-step voltage control to the DIMM.
vCore - Find out "exactly" how much power your CPU needs. Fine-tune it with 0.00625 volts at a time!
SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection) allows
- FSB tuning from 100MHz up to 650MHz at 1MHz increment
- Memory tuning from 533MHz up to 1066MHz at 1MHz increment
- PCI Express frequency tuning from 100MHz up to 150MHz at 1MHz increment

BIOS Features

Tis time for the kiddies to make way for the true enthusiasts. The motherboard provides a well-rounded BIOS to take care of all your tweaking and over-clocking needs.


Below seen image is the main area where all the over-clockers are bound to spend their time toying with all the possibilities that this motherboard has to offer due to the flexible design.

The BIOS provides the un-experienced users with some predefined settings in the AI-Tuning tab.

The DDR speed settings help you boost your memory needs to a whooping 1600MHz though as known to most of the over-clockers out there, these sppeds are infact the memory ratios that are dependant on the FSB or CPU Frequency.

The CPU VCore Voltage is flexible enough to be elevated to 1.5125V.

The FSB can be adjusted between 1.2V to 1.45V.

Benchmarks: Bring it on!




Stock Settings

SiSoftware Sandra: SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

3DMark 2006: 3DMark06 is the latest and hottest version of the very popular 3DMark series. By combining full DirectX®9.0c support including HDR, SM3.0, SM2.0, new CPU tests and more, 3DMark06 continues the legacy of being industry standard benchmark.

Company of Heroes: Company of Heroes is of the few games that truly take advantage of the Dual Core processors due to the huge amount of calculations required for all those vector-mappings and hence served as a good test subject for our motherboard.

FEAR: The P5B-Deluxe takes the lead yet again while running one of the most demanding FPS games in the market.

Oblivion: Though the lead not so considerable is evident once again.

Over Clocked

CPU-Z: CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system.

PCMark®05: PCMark reliably and easily measures the performance of your PCand determines its strengths and weaknesses. The P5B-Deluxe wins this one by a land-slide.

Super Pi SSE2: The program calcualtes the value of pi upto 4,294,960,000 decimal digits. This record is probably he current world record of pi. The program performs 4.2 billion calcualtions. The motherboard scores an amazing 15 in the following test while its rial bites the dust.

(*The lower the Score, the better the Performance)

HDTach v3.0 on RAID-0: HDTach tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device (hard drive, flash drive, removable drive, etc). All drive technologies such as SCSI, IDE/ATA, 1394, USB, SATA and RAID are supported.

Conclusion

Aforesaid review may never suffice to truly depict the grandeur that we experienced by getting the opportunity to test the P5B Deluxe. The motherboard proved to be a pioneer amongst all the P965 compatible boards taking the lead by a land-slide.
The P5B Deluxe is set for ultimate performance out of the box whilst providing unmatched flexibility for the enthusiast to take it to higher levels. The board itself is a haven for over-clocking featuring passive-cooling innovations like StackCool 2. Throughout the testing period, the board was stable as a rock and never let us down in any aspect. It outmatched its rivals in performance and is meant for a long-term support.
I recommend getting a P5B Deluxe with a lower/mid ranged Core2 processor (if you're short of cash) as this board will take your processor to the next level with ease. Due to its support for Quad Core too, you can quite easily upgrade your system as per your needs when required.

Performance: 9.1/10
Stability: 9.3/10
Innovation: 8.9/10

Overall: 9.1/10

The ASUS P5B Deluxe recieves the WCCF Enthusiast Award for extreme OverClocking performance.



Special thanks to ASUS and Shingtech technologies for providing out the samples for reviewing

[Click here to post your comments and feedback]