A different chipset from Intel who evidently seem to be somewhat dissatisfied with the 10 roughly chipsets they've released before year. The P45 is actually a cut-down, lower-priced version from the high-end X48 chipset-based discussion boards. It's also set that they are the last socket-775 chipset before release of the excitedly awaited Nehalem range at the conclusion of the year.
What exactly makes the P45 a lot better than its predecessor, the P35? First of all, the P45 ups the leading side bus to no more than 1, 600Mhz over a P35's 1, 333MHz, which gives overclockers a somewhat more headroom to play by means of. It also boasts PCI-Express a couple of. 0 support for twofold the graphics bandwidth and even supports Intel's 45nm-based processors, the most recent, more efficient and slightly better Core 2 chips. This features the ICHlO southbridge far too, which includes a 10GB ethernet controller together with built-in wireless support, whilst dropping the aging PS/2 and also LPT ports.
Asus has a reputation as one of the more innovative companies available in the market - the Eee to be a testament to that - of which this latest PSQ Deluxe isn't an exception. The board on its own is well laid-out, using the usual, aesthetically pleasing dark colored PCB. And, strangely, we had no slicing-our-fingers-into-salami problems together with the cooling fins as everyone installed the CPU cooling fan. One of Asus's far more brilliant innovations (actually forget the Eee) needs to be the power and reset buttons included in the motherboard itself - immensely handy in the test-bench overclocker or for anybody who is just having teething problems.
Fight the Power
As well as the P45 chipset, Asus has crammed its EPU-Six Engine to the PsQ Deluxe. This power-saving system monitors the ability draw of the design, graphics card, memory, chipset hard disk drives and CPU fan, as well as adjusts them automatically regarding different application environments. So if you are simply browsing the total it switches to Energy-Saving application, but when you boot up Crysis it's going to go into Turbo application. The settings can be adjusted around the fly, and it even informs you how many milligrams of carbon monoxide you aren't going to pumping into the natural environment. Asus claims it can easily significantly save on electricity bills, which is likely to please some polar teddy bears.
On top of the power-saving features, Asus has incorporated its Splashtop Instant-On operating-system into the motherboard. Some of those ‘ why did no one think of this before? ’ ideas, the Splashtop is really a bespoke Linux installation that enables access to the internet through the customized version of Opera, chat with Skype plus a basic photo browser. It is quite underpowered, but when you are desperate for a brief map or cinema circumstances it's immeasurably handy. It is also getting rolled out around its entire mobo range, stored on a chip on the high-end and offering HIGH-DEFINITION installation via support CD to the rest.
The Splashtop software is built onto the motherboard inside the deluxe. With its own specialist 512MB of RAM there's you don't need to worry about not to be able to get on the Net after you fry your hard disk. ASUS is also touting this as a possible energy-saving feature, as users will be unlikely to leave their PCs running as long as they know the web will boot in a matter of seconds.
Although it's a fantastic bit of software, it still needs a little polish - it didn't detect our microsoft rabbit and we were left tabbing within the various menus. A BIOS up-date should fix that, and given time we could see an evolved rendition of Splashtop revolutionize just how we use PCs.
From the Odds
So energy-saving and innovation in a single, but how does the particular P45 platform perform? All of us tested it against Intel's P35 and also X38 chipsets, as very well as Nvidia's 790i chipset, as well as performance was surprisingly underwhelming. It isn't that it's bad, it is just unimpressive. The biggest surprise recommendations that the P35 outperformed typically the P45 slightly on RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY and processor tests - although this may be down to early individual issues. But impressively for any board at this price, 3D performance was in reality only slightly behind ASUS's holier-than-though still hideously expensive 790i-based Striker II. And that is without any overclocking.
In comparison with the X38 we noticed significant improvements throughout the board, which is shocking when you consider that Intel was touting it to be a high-end chipset barely last year. Even the P35 managed to outdo the X38. Hopefully the Nehalem won't undergo so many mind-bogglingly pointless iterations, but that does appear to be Intel's penchant du jour.
It's also worth bearing in mind that although the P45 chipset can handle DDR3 RAM, the P5Q Elegant only supports DDR2. All motherboard manufacturers acquire released their P45 boards inside a range from stripped-down expense plan to fully-featured expensive, and also the P5Q Deluxe sits more on the value end of this spectrum, so no DDR3 for all of us. Although given the ridiculous prices and minimal performance gain from DDR3, it hardly seems worthwhile.
If you've got some sort of P35-based board it's not likely worth upgrading at offer. But if you've have anything less, and you're following a solid, competent motherboard with plenty of handy features, the P5Q Deluxe is without a doubt worth considering.
