P5E3 DELUXE AND P5E3 PREMIUM WIFI-AP @n EDITION - Review

[vX.DreDge]

Review: P5E3 DELUXE AND P5E3 PREMIUM WIFI-AP @n EDITION
By:Shahid "vX.Dredge" Aziz

Today we are going to look at two of the most identical boards from none other than the ASUS itself;The P5E3 Deluxe and P5E3 Premium Wifi @n Editions.

Just a couple of weeks back I was really having fun with the Striker II Extreme the 790i Ultra based ROG board from ASUS, it literally blew me away by its tremendous overclocking capabilities and striking looks, and It really deserved to be right there on top. Until now I was more than happy to declare the Striker II Extreme “the everything board that you can have,” but ASUS on the other hand had something else in mind.

ASUS sent us two of the latest Intel chipset based boards (X38 and X48), Both of the boards belong to the Lifestyle brand of ASUS and are truly identical boards, you cannot differentiate one board from other just by looking at them,


The X38 and X48 details:

With the launch of the Core2 Dou based processors, Intel already made its inroads in the enthusiasts market, they not only performed exceptionally well, but also they were miles ahead of anything AMD had to offer.

To make things even more interesting they launched arguably the best chipset that their processors can possibly have, thus initiated the making of a complete echo system around their own architecture. If you put the Intel’s LARABBE to it, than there is hardly any room for any third party hardware in it.

The X38 chipset from Intel Supports every LGA 775 processor and is considered by many as the fastest performing chip with exceptional processor and memory overclocking potential. So why X48.

Nvidia launched the 790i Ultra chipset and officially supported 1600 FSB system bus, whereas Intel on the other hand didn’t officially support FSB 1600 on X38 although certain boards based on the X38 chipset from Intel managed to pass that with ease. The X48 makes Intel official supporter for FSB 1600, other than this there is nothing particularly different between the two, if you need to find something really different between the two than probably a new die can be one and that’s about it.
Here is what it looks like

Lets take a look at the Block Diagram and you would know that they are really identical chipsets.

X38 Block Diagram


X48 Block Diagram

The Boards themselves:

The AI Lifestyle of ASUS was initiated around the idea that every board that has AI associated to it, should both perform and pack features that are required by any individual, who has the capacity to exploit the resources in a PC. With the passage of time, the AI Lifestyle matured and today they have every means to attract both the end user who cares about nothing but basic computer needs and for those who demand everything from PC when it comes down to number crunching game, where every benchmark score counts to pleasure and satisfaction.

The boards that we have today are no exception; both of them deliver what they claim and are capable enough to shatter every benchmark champion out there.

The P5E3 Deluxe being the elder brother of the two is based on the X38 chipset and reviews around the world has proved that this is probably the best implementation of the X38 chipset that any motherboard manufacturer can do. The P5E3 Premium on the other hand packs the latest Intel chipset the X48 and is yet to prove its metal, but judging by the performance that P5E3 Deluxe holds, I feel really comfortable in saying that this surely will perform exactly the same as its elder brother if not better.

One thing to be kept in mind, both the X38 and the X48 are nearly identical chipsets with almost every thing in common, except for the fact that the later one officially supports 1600 FSB based Intel processors.

Lets look at the both the boards specification before we jump into the benchmarks

You can easily judge just by looking at the specifications that both of the boards pack almost exactly the same sets of features and are identical in every aspect.

Layout:

As I mentioned before, both P5E3 deluxe and premium have the same looks and are the most identical boards I have seen. The boxes the boards come in are the trademark black for the AI series and there is no difference between both the boxes at all except the logo for the Chipset on the front of the box that they come in.

Box for P5E3 deluxe


Box for P5E3 Premium

Moving forward, we see that both the boards are exactly the same and there is literally no difference at all. Judge by yourself.

P5E3 deluxe


P5E3 Premium

Closer Look:

ASUS has always been known for its fantastic board layouts and these are no exception. Both of the boards accommodate a wealth of features and yet there seems to be a lot of room for everything, at first glance you would probably fear that due to overwhelming metal around the CPU area, it would be difficult for any CPU cooler to be installed, but when you take a closer look, you would most instantly understand that the Cooling system for the chipset is most appropriate and very strategically placed, you will not feel any difficulties while moving around the CPU area trying to install a huge cooler.

P5E3 Deluxe Cooling system


Exact duplicate-the P5E3 Premium

The heat spreading system for both the boards are well thought, not only it serves the purpose well but also looks very stunning as well.

The Heat pipe system is connected from the CPU area to all the way down at the south bridge, thus spreading heat from the whole mother board.

P5E3 Deluxe


P5E3 Premium

Gone are the days when people had some serious issues with the ram bands and power connectors, people at ASUS are hard at work to make things as simple as they possibly can, you can easily dig deep into the system to plug in any cable you would want, without any hustle.

P5E3 Deluxe


P5E3 Premium

Just like P5E3 deluxe, the premium version of the board also has SATA1 and SATA2 ports placed upright on the board, which makes it really easy to attach or detach any hard drive from it.

one slight problem that I noticed was with the other sata ports, if you have a long VGA card like that of 8800 GTX then you would be in trouble finding the appropriate port as all the other ports are at 90 degree to the board and would come rite underneath the card itself, thus making things slight difficult.

P5E3 Deluxe


P5E3 Premium

Both of the boards support ATI crossfire Technology, it can easily be done by placing crossfire enabled cards in the first (blue) and the third (black) PCI-E slots. Other Expansion slots are as follows:

P5E3 Deluxe
-PCI x1
-PCI Slot
-PCI-Express x16 (x16 Electrical)
-PCI x1
-PCI-Express x16 (x16 Electrical)
-PCI Slot
-PCI-Express x16 (x4 Electrical)

P5E3 Premium
-PCI Slot
-PCI-Express x16 (x16 Electrical)
-PCI x1
-PCI-Express x16 (x16 Electrical)
-PCI Slot
-PCI-Express x16 (x4 Electrical)

I/O Back Panel

both of the boards comes with enough expansion slots that you may ever require, and the back panel is not an exception, packed with virtually everything, both the boards can easily accommodate anything you throw at them.

P5E3 Deluxe back Panel


P5E3 Premium back panel

Testbed:

Initial Boot:

Upon booting, the first screen after BIOS information that you are going to get is the ASUS Express gate Screen, both of the Motherboards Support This unique features and I was really impressed by the functionality of the Built in LINUX based web browser and Skype.

If you intend to quickly start web browsing, then there is no need to get into the Operating itself, you can easily do that by Pressing the web Button on the Express Gate screen and you are ready to surf, and on top of it, you do not need to configure your internet connection all over again.

Express gate at your service

lets get down to business

CPU-Z 1.42

Let us first take a looat the P5E3 Deluxe

And now the P5E3 Premium

Benchmarks

3D mark 05

3D mark 06

There is virtually nothing between them, they display the same performance in 3d mark 05 and 06, thus again proving that Both X38 and X48 are really identical

Aquamark 03

Elder Brother the P5E3 Delux edging out just a little

Benchmarks in games

Crysis

COD4-Advance Warfare

Unreal Tournament 3

Sisandra Pro Xii

Arithmatic

Memory Bandwidth

Multicore Efficiency

Processor Multimedia

Cache and Memory

ScienceMark 2

SGEMIM

DGEMIM

Overclocking:

It always makes me feel great when a motherboard not only performs well at stock but when it shines when its overclocked to the max potential, and both the P5e3 deluxe and Premium didn’t fail me.

Reaching a staggering 450 FSB on E6600 with multiplier X6, is not easy for any board, especially when you have minimal cooling solutions at your end. I was able to push both the boards as high as I possibly can and I ended up at this very impressive max FSb of 450 MHz.

Talking about the max overclock that I could extract with both the boards was a success too; E6600 was very comfortable at 3.37 GHz on P5E3 deluxe and 3.34 GHz for the Premium.

Although many of you think that this is not such a high clocks to be happy about, but keep in mind that first this is 65 nm E6600 which faces discontinuation, and not the E8400 that can hit 4ghz at air, and second there were no extra cooling measures taken other than the stock HSF, and an open without closed chassis.


Conclusion:

As I suspected, the P5E3 Premium posses the same performance at its elder brother and is worthy successor of the already very famous P5E3 Deluxe, with the added official support of 1600 FSB.

Packed with enough features, wealth of a bundle and exceptional overclocking potential, both the P5E3 deluxe and the premium version has what it takes to be the champion in their league. ASUS has once again raised the performance bar with products like these and it is this powerful show of technological advancement that makes ASUS what it is today.

Perhaps the only drawback that I can think of is the price of a good DDR3 pair, it’s really shame to see the prices of DDR3 still so high and yet the board manufacturers have such fantastic boards for us to buy.

In the end, I would really like to say if you can afford it, then look no further, both the P5E3 Deluxe and the P5E3 Premium have the potential and have a bright future until Nehalem appears, over whelming impressed by the solid all round performance from both the boards, team at WCCFTECH awards these boards our WCCFTECH Editors Choice Award.

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