ASUS P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP review by TechGage

[Babrbarossa]

Rob Williams of TechGage finally got his hands on a p35 motherboard and has put it through some trials. There is a comparison against the evga 680i and the Badaxe 2, but I didn't see any numbers mentioned to show exactly what setups were used on each, and with the ddr3 in the p35, it's apples to oranges, but good to see anyway. This board is the cadillac of p35s right now which is evident when you look at the copper jungle-gym that is the chipset, and the plethora of slots.

As far as overclocking goes, this board also performed well in that regard also. I managed a stable DDR3-1500 8-8-8 overclock with the Kingston DDR3-1375 kit, and also a 3.6GHz overclock with the E6600, although that was not 100% stable. For FSB, this board seemed quite stable up to 475FSB. If you are not afraid of voltage, you should have no problem achieving some nice overclocks with this board.

For the $250 price tag, this board offers quite a bit to the consumer. As I mentioned, I did not have another board for comparison, but I was very impressed with my experience. The P5K3 Deluxe packs in great functionality, many useful software and BIOS features, WiFi built-in and a lot of overclocking headroom. If you are in the market for a P35 DDR3 board, I wouldn't hesitate recommending this one. I am going to award the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP an eight out of ten alongside our Editors Choice award.




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[Deathspawner]

Each motherboard used the exact same hardware, except for the memory of course. The P5K3 used Kingstons DDR3-1375 kit while the DDR2 boards used OCZs NVIDIA 7200 kit, which I mentioned here:

• DDR2 memory is run at DDR2-800 speeds with 4-4-4-12-2T timings at 1.9v
• DDR3 memory is run at DDR3-1066 speeds with 6-6-6-15-2T timings at 1.6v

I do agree it's foolish to not have an apples to apples comparison, but I've had a lack of time lately, so it was difficult to do. A P5K review will be coming up in the next week or so, which will give the ability to compare DDR2 to DDR3 directly, even though it's been done already elsewhere

[Babrbarossa]

I wouldn't say foolish ;-) certainly better than a stand-alone test. Was the e6600 used at 2.4GHz for the other motherboards as well?

[Deathspawner]

Aye, it was 2.4GHz all around. Because the CPU used a 1066FSB, it used the same multipliers and FSB on all the boards. Once Penryn launches with a 1333FSB, will be a little more difficult to keep it at 2.4GHz like the rest.