ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP @n

[PAGETITLE=Introduction, ASUS P5E3 Premium Features] Although Intel never issued a press release to properly launch their X48 chipset, there are numerous motherboards available at popular e-tailers from the likes of ASUS, DFI, Gigabyte, MSI and of course, Intel themselves. We've had X48 boards in-house for a while now, so there is no better time to relay our experiences and post some reviews! The first board to arrive was the P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP @n from ASUS, an upgrade of sorts to their P5E3 Deluxe. The main difference is the chipset, however, so overall, both are near-identical in almost all regards. From time to time, companies may choose to release a product that serves the sole purpose of keeping the flow of releases constant, regardless of how revolutionary it is. That's what X48 is, essentially. For those unaware, the difference between X38 and X48 is that the latter officially supports processors with a 1600MHz FSB. At this point in time, the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 is the only LGA775 desktop processor to fit that description. You might think that there has to be more to it than that, but there isn't. Even the same Intel chipset drivers can be applied to either X38 or X48, as nothing changes except that small profile. Overall, it's a speed bump, and since most people have reached 400MHz and beyond already, the jump doesn't feel all that exciting. What this should mean, however, is that X48 motherboards will contain the highest binned chipsets to come out of Santa Clara, which could result in better overall overclocks. However, X38 wasn't too much of a lightweight, with people reaching speeds in excess of 2000MHz. Regardless, it's here, it's the 'best' and it perfectly fits the QX9700. That's all you need to know. ASUS P5E3 Premium Features. Like the P5E3 Deluxe before it, the Premium is designed for those who value features over overclocking. In some regards, it could almost be considered a luxury board, given the feature set and $375 US price tag. At that price, it costs around $50 more than the X38-based P5E3 Deluxe. It's the Porsche of motherboards, no question. Keeping in mind that the Premium's lone upgrade is the simple chipset upgrade, I can already not recommend this particular model, unless you really want native 1600MHz FSB support for your brand-new QX9770. Of all the X38/X48 boards available, this is one of the most robust. It has a fantastic layout, offers efficient and passive cooling, offers lots of connectivity and even support for three GPUs in Crossfire mode. One of the largest benefits of the board is the included 802.11n WiFi - a huge bonus for some. It means you don't need a separate add-in card, and keeps things all-in-one. Regarding the design, I have no immediate complaints. I am a fan of the colors ASUS choose to use, and though a simple thing, it looks fantastic once installed into a killer rig. I love darker colors, so it works. I am not a fan of the blue heatsink guards, however. The silver ones used on the Deluxe version of the board look far better. But ASUS had to differentiate the two somehow. Time for a quick trip around the board to see all that's offered! [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Board Layout & Design] One growing trend in motherboard design is the inclusion of horizontally mounted S-ATA ports, allowing you to plug the drives in on the side instead of from the top-down. This is beneficial as it allows you to better keep your cables tidy, plus, it looks better. Like the Deluxe version of the board, this one also uses DDR3 memory. Because of the X48 chipset, the native speed supported is DDR3-1600, which would perfectly match the QX9770 or any overclocked CPU to 400MHz FSB speeds. Unlike ASUS' other gaming-oriented gaming motherboards, this one includes a lone PCI-E 1x slot, due to the onboard WiFi card hogging the top spot. I don't think this will affect too many people though, and even if it does, all PCI-E 1x cards can be plugged into an unused PCI-E 16x without issue. Crossfire is natively supported and can be set up using two or three GPUs. For legacy support, dual PCI slots are included. Other connectivity options line the bottom, such as USB connectors for your chassis. As mentioned earlier, the Premium, like most higher-end motherboards, is passively cooled with the help of a lot of copper. This results in a heavy board, but an efficient one. I still dislike the blue color, but overall it's a fantastic-looking cooler. Almost too good to install, perhaps. On the side is a keyboard PS/2, six USB ports, two e-SATA, S/PDIF outputs, Firewire, dual LAN, audio ports and of course, the WiFi connectors. The P5E3 Premium sticks to it's feature-packed nature with included accessories. There are so many accessories included, that it's actually difficult to fit all back into the box, if for some reason it needs to go there. Besides the usual, the board includes the dual WiFi connectors, two because of the 802.11n technology, two chipset coolers, Q-Connector (makes it easier for chassis connections) and also an add-in port for Firewire and USB. Installing that on top of your chassis USB ports would allow you up to 10 USB ports... likely to be more than enough. Of all the accessories included, the chipset coolers make no sense to me. I couldn't find a way to actually connect those to the chipset heatsink, and to me, it's pointless to include them. Even with big overclocks, the massive cooler keeps rather cool overall, so even if they did fit, they'd have little use. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Checking out the BIOS] Though not touted as an overclocking board, the P5E3 Premium is filled to the brim with such options in the BIOS. To some, it might even prove overwhelming. I'll admit that I don't care about overclocking to the extent that I'll spend hours in front of the PC tweaking all the various options, but it's nice to know that they are there, for those who are passionate about it. The skies the limit, as they say. The options feel almost endless, and the voltage allowances are asinine as usual, allowing upwards of 1.7000V for the CPU, 2.78V for the CPU PLL and another 2.78V for the DDR3 (stock is 1.5v). Truly, ASUS expects people to overclock with this board, whether they brag about the capabilities or not. One benefit that their gaming and enthusiast motherboards have over this one is the loading of the hardware monitoring page. For some reason, this page loads slow on all of the P5E boards I've used in the past, which can be frustrating sometimes. On the Maximus Extreme, for example, it loads instantaneously, which would be nice here (especially if you want to quickly check temps to make sure the CPU heatsink is on right). This page also lacks a lot of what I'd like to see, such as current voltages for secondary components, such as the northbridge, DRAM, CPU PLL and et cetera. I believe ASUS deliberately omits these because it's not so much an overclocking-focused board, but having them included would have been nice. Most BIOS' are not that different from board to board, and most screens are there to allow you to alter mundane things, such as enabling a floppy drive. For those interested, I'll finish off this page with a slew of screenshots taken from around the BIOS. On the next page, we'll take care of our testing methodology, and following that, testing! [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Test Machine Specs & Methodology] At Techgage, we strive to make sure our results are as accurate as possible. Our testing is rigorous, and sometimes exhaustive, but we feel the effort is worth it. In an attempt to leave no question unanswered, this page contains not only our testbed specifications, but also a fully-detailed look at how we conduct our testing. If there is a bit of information that we've omitted, or you wish to throw off recommendations or suggest changes, please feel free to shoot us an e-mail or post in our forums. When preparing our testbeds for any type of performance testing, we follow these guidelines: The OS installation is left as basic as possible, with important updates applied. Required drivers from the motherboard CD-Rom are installed. Non-critical applications are omitted. We do not install a virus scanner, firewall or any other security application. Scrap files from previous testing are cleaned up; recycle bin / trash is emptied. Internet is disabled via software driver. Computer has proper airflow and room temperature of 80°F or less. Hard-drives affected by testing are defragged with Diskeeper 2008 prior to each fresh run. No hardware during our performance reviews is changed during testing, except for the product-type being reviewed, of course. Our current configuration is as follows: Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 3.0GHz Motherboard: ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP @n (Intel X48-based) Compared Motherboards ASUS Maximus Extreme (X38-based) ASUS Rampage Formula (X48-based) Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 (X48-based) Intel DX48BT2 (X48-based) Memory: OCZ 2GB DDR3-1600 Titanium - Intel XMP Edition (DDR3-1333 7-7-7-15 1.9V) DDR2-1066 5-5-5-15 2.1V for DDR2 boards. Video: ASUS 9800GTX 512MB (NVIDIA 174.35) Sound: Onboard HD Audio. Storage: Seagate 7200.10 320GB x 2. Power Supply: Corsair HX620W Chassis: Antec P182 Mid-Tower Etcetera: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. Cooling: Corsair Nautilus 500 For our testing, we use Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. We chose to stick to a 64-bit Windows because throughout the past year of usage, we find it to be much more stable than the 32-bit counterpart. Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Windows is up to date via Windows Update (as of April 10, 2008). Before testing begins, the screensaver and all power-related options are disabled. Welcome Center and UAC is disabled. A recent NVIDIA driver for the 9-series is used (174.35). Once we set up our OS', nothing changes unless we revamp our entire methodology, which doesn't happen too often...

ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi-AP @n

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Rob Williams