ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe: An Early Preview of P45 Express Performance
by Kris Boughton on May 13, 2008 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Initial Thoughts and Recommendations
The ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe definitely has all the makings of one of our favorite boards: a quality design with quality components, an elegant layout with plenty of room for two full-sized graphics cards, DDR3 memory for maximum performance, a robust stock cooling system, and enough onboard features to choke a horse. Although it certainly does not look like it will be our top pick for absolute maximum overclocking or benching, we can hardly fault ASUS. After all, the P5Q3 Deluxe screams mainstream value. ASUS could have a real winner on their hands here as long as they are smart about it and price this board appropriately.
We're not going to lie, though. If you already own an X38 or X48 motherboard there is not much point in moving over to a P45 board. For those of you out there that are still running on last year's P35 and looking for something new, look no further. A move to P45 should be simple and graphics performance should improve thanks to support for the PCIe 2.0 specification and the new 2x8 lane configuration mode. Also, unlike P35, P45 has been tuned with 45nm CPU performance in mind.
Not to rain on Intel's parade, but it's also important to look at the bigger picture. Many users are already running P35 or X38/X48 motherboards, and outside of bragging rights or for new system builds, there's no reason for such users to look at P45 boards right now. We do know that Nehalem will completely change the Intel platform in the next 6-8 months, and if you're already running a quad-core CPU you can almost certainly stave off upgrading motherboards and memory for a while longer. Also keep in mind that SLI support remains exclusive to NVIDIA chipsets (or boards with NVIDIA nForce 100/200 chips like Skulltrail); P45 looks to be a great option for affordable CrossFire systems, but users that prefer SLI are left with the choice of running a GX2 or using an NVIDIA chipset motherboard.
For those of you that are still hesitant to make the move to DDR3, have no fear. ASUS also plans to introduce a DDR2-variant dubbed the P5Q Deluxe that promises to bring nearly all of the same features save support for DDR3 system memory. We plan on bringing you an early look at this board as well so keep your eyes peeled for even more P45 lovin'.
We also expect to have more boards from GIGABYTE, abit, DFI, MSI, and Foxconn in our hands before the end of the month. With many new motherboards due to arrive in the coming months there's sure to be fierce competition for your hard-earned money. Without a doubt, these companies will be working harder than ever to convince you why their product is the very best. In the end, the consumer will be the winner.
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cuti7399 - Thursday, August 14, 2008 - link
is this true?957004 - Thursday, May 22, 2008 - link
so it mean i will no need to buy ASUS x48 MB?Narg - Monday, May 19, 2008 - link
$250 is way too much, especially for a low end chipset board. I just bought a board for $60 that does 100% of what I need for a new Vista-64 machine with Crossfire. The MB pricing has been going through the roof lately.kjboughton - Saturday, May 24, 2008 - link
We've just received an MSRP update direct from ASUS, expect to see this board selling for about $229 with the P5Q (DDR2) variant available for about $209.Nihility - Thursday, May 15, 2008 - link
the instant on technology Asus put on this thing?Some stripped down linux distro as I understand it
Egglick - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - link
After looking things over with the P35 added to the mix, I'm going to be completely honest here -- the P45 at any substantial premium is a load of crap.By my calculations, the performance difference between a P35 and P45 is 2-3% at most, and the majority of the time you're only talking about tenths of a percent.
When you consider that P35 boards are selling for as low as $75 now (with several from Asus going for under $100), you'd have to be nuts to pay $225+ for a difference which is hardly even worth mentioning.
Sure, you can save anywhere from 7-19 watts with the P45 (depending on the application), but you can save twice that by replacing one of your light bulbs with a compact florescent. Spend your money elsewhere.
hpram99 - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - link
"two RJ-45 1000GBps Ethernet ports"Oh my god! I must go out and buy a hundred of these, make a super switch out of them! That's incredible, are they going to do away with SATA now that Asus made Ethernet run 300x faster?
lopri - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - link
Well, actually I wish ASUS (and other board makers) made their board with ONE Intel Gigabit PHY, instead of two or four Marvell PHY. Heck, get rid of that EPU BS while you're at it.hooflung - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - link
I want to get excited. I really do. But as an owner of a Gigabyte P965 DS3 I just can't get aroused. My e4300 still is clocking strong at 3.0ghz. There isn't enough speed to justify going .45nm just to hit 3.8 - 4.0ghz and also having to go to DDR3. Even if they release a DDR2 board its likely is it going to be worth buying a new board or just installing a 'beta' bios on my current setup if I did want to get a .45nm chip.Just seems Intel wants to go out with a bang and also have more unload options for their C2Ds when they switch platforms within the next year.
If I was buying new, I'd be really tempted but good ol' faithful P965 is running 1 year strong on a mild OC 'according to today's standards of OCing.'
Stele - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 - link
[quote]The P5Q3 may report the use of a 16-phase PWM but we know better. [/quote]Do we, really?
[quote]Although ASUS design engineers have added a lot of extra chokes and MOSFETS, the overall capacity of the power delivery circuit remains comparable to their competitors' more modest 8-phase designs.[/quote]
From the review we don't know what components Asus used in its PWM design (MOSFETs, drivers etc) - heck, we don't even know what PWM controller they have there. It could be the same ADP3198 4-phase controller Asus had been using for some time, or it could be a newer, improved one - especially considering that Analog transferred much of its CPU PWM controller range to ON Semiconductor late last year.
We don't have figures from Asus engineers. We also did not examine the circuitry's layout, overally efficiency, transient response, peak and sustained load-handling capabilities ... nothing of the sort, yet we're prepared to come to a positive conclusion regarding the capabilities and quality of the circuitry, and indeed compare it with others. An educated guess, based on some evidence to back it up, would've probably been more appropriate. IMHO it's not exactly fair (or professional) to jump to such a conclusion with merely an assertion without any substantiation to support it. That's expected from readers who can only look at the product and play the armchair general, but not from reviewers who actually have the product and can (and should) do what they can to properly assess it for the benefit of said readers.
As for the rest of the review, it was certainly interesting; however correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that ICH10/R is supposed to bring rather more to the table than just 2 more SATA ports plus AHCI capabilities for the non-R version. For instance, apparently a 10GbE MAC is integrated as well.
However, as with the ICH9's integrated GbE MAC, many manufacturers may balk at having to use specific (particularly, i8256x) Intel PHYs in order to make use of that MAC, since it requires a PHY that supports Intel's GLCI/LCI bus. Instead, manufacturers may choose to provide the usual PCIe/PCI controllers that they've normally been using, to keep inventory and costs under control (such controllers can be used on AMD platform products, for example). Perhaps the same proprietary-PHY issues might plague implementation of ICH10's rumoured Wi-Fi capabilities as well... all in all, then, it does seem that as far as the end user of actual motherboard products is concerned, there would apparently be very little that's new with the ICH10. IMHO, Intel could've added more PCIe lanes, which would probably have been better appreciated.
Speaking of PCIe lanes, that's probably one reason Asus chose to stick with USB for the wireless module. USB does the job well enough - if it ain't broken, why fix it? PCIe x1 is overkill and ICH10 is already in dire shortage of lanes, with 1 going to network (2 for dual-NIC motherboards), 1 or 2 going to PCIe x1 slots and just 4 left to go to the third graphics card x16 slot. With the abundance of USB ports that ICH9 and 10 provide, Asus probably figured that using one for the wireless module can't hurt. And if anything it's probably to do with inventory and ease of design as well, since Asus does make wireless USB adapters - you could use the same basic circuit design and fit it with a motherboard USB connector and external antenna interface - voila, wireless for motherboards.
At least Anandtech did not help perpetuate the unconfirmed (and unlikely) rumour that ICH10 eliminates legacy ports like PS/2, parallel, serial, game/MIDI and so on - since those ports have little to do with the south bridge at all. These legacy ports connect to Super I/O chips, which on modern motherboards is also the H/W monitoring IC, and which in turn connect to the south bridge via the LPC interface. Thus the only way an ICH could completely remove support for legacy ports in current motherboard architectures would be to remove the LPC bus - which would also remove H/W monitoring as well as BIOS, unless it's part of Intel's force-forward plan to move to SPI for BIOS, a la RDRAM and PATA. That still leaves H/W monitoring high and dry though.
On another note, as others here (especially Frumious1) have commented, it would be good to compared Intel chipsets from, say, P965 through P45 to see what improvements P45 brings. Perhaps some useful metrics would be performance tests for memory (read/write/copy/latency/overclockability), CrossFire (x8,x8 on P45 vs x8,x8 using a PCIe switch IC vs 16,x4 etc), disk and USB subsystems (read/write/copy/copy across ports), power consumption. Oh and please have all the tested boards participate in all tests, so that there's a complete comparison across the board.
Admittedly, power consumption is the trickiest of them all because each generation of motherboards have different components and/or different features (e.g. one has FireWire while another doesn't, or one uses a FireWire controller from Agere while another uses one from VIA etc). Perhaps we could try disabling all such external controllers in BIOS and seeing if that makes a difference to power consumption (ie whether the option turns the controllers off or merely disconnects them) then, if turning them off does work, test the boards with all external options disabled. That, at least, minimises variables to board layout and CPU/MCH/ICH/RAM power circuitry subsystems - which would be useful metrics themselves. Just a suggestion!