Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi AP with DDR3 review by Bit_Tech

[Babrbarossa]

This review offers a clear idea of the lack of performance advantages provided by ddr3 to date. It also demonstrates that the power consumption is only lowered by 2% by comparing it to the virtually identical P5K and P5K3 boards running DDR2. In the end they give the board a 7/10

DDR3

A few days ago we took a first look at the DDR2 version of the P5K Deluxe and found it to be a stacked in features but (currently) expensive and ultimately lacking in performance over P965. Is DDR3 any faster and worth the investment? Well, the P5K3 Deluxe is essentially the same board as the P5K Deluxe but with DDR3 support.


Conclusion

The board is slower in almost every single test with "faster" DDR3. We're still waiting on AMD (drivers) and CrossFire as well, not that we'd recommend CrossFire through an x4 slot, however.


Apart from the ton of features and excellent stability, the board doesn't offer any spectacular performance and is far more expensive than the competition, or even other Asus boards. You'd be far better off investing in anything DDR2, rather than forcing yourself down and extremely expensive upgrade path. It will allow some future proofing, but by that time in 12-18 months, you might as well upgrade the motherboard with a newer chipset which will undoubtedly support faster DDR3 modules and newer features as well.

It's a really weird situation because it's genuinely a really good board, but there's absolutely no reason to buy it. Get the P5K Deluxe or something P965 or nForce 680i (LT) SLI instead... oh and a ton of performance DDR2, a large monitor, a better graphics card and perhaps a new car or apartment as well. You know, the same kind of money you would have spent on the P5K3 Deluxe and DDR3.

It you're after CrossFire support to match a couple of Radeon HD 2900 XTs you've just bought (I'm assuming you run Vista here) and are dying for an updated chipset rather than the antique 975X, then you've either got to settle for the DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200 T2R/G, or wait until September for X38. However, X38 will also be DDR3, sooo I'd just buy the DFI...

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[Deathspawner]

That's odd. I have the same board and was actually finding it to be faster than a DDR2 board. I am going to have to verify all my testing prior to publishing a review, but with the P5K3 at DDR3-1066 5-5-5, Super Pi 8M was 7 seconds faster than eVGA 680i with DDR2-1066 5-5-5.

There were more differences than just that, but that's the only one that sticks out. Now I am questioning myself after that review.

[Babrbarossa]

I'd trust your own results- the Board works in mysterious ways ;-)

[Deathspawner]

This is true, but I am still skeptical. It wouldn't be the first time I had results that were completely wrong.

[Babrbarossa]

Well if you don't tell anyone, I won't