X-bit labs

Asus P5K Mainboard: Youngest Member of Asus Family on Intel P35 Express Chipset

Category: Mainboards

by Doors4ever

[ 06/15/2007 | 03:29 PM ]

We would like to check out the advantages and drawbacks of a solution that may become the most popular product of H2 2007 thanks to the new Intel P35 Express chipset, affordable price and good consumer features. Please meet Asus P5K!

Table of contents:

• Asus Mainboard Family on Intel P35 Express Chipset
  
• Package and Accessories
  
• PCB Layout
  
• Asus P5K Specification
  
• BIOS Setup
  
• Practical Experiments
  
• Conclusion
  

Before we move on to discussing the mainboard based on Intel P35 Express chipset let’s take a quick look at its main competitors.

Intel X38 chipset is a flagship solution in the line-up, and that is its main disadvantage. The mainboards based on it will evidently feature a bunch of useful and not very useful additional functions, be equipped with numerous onboard controllers, be shipped in luxurious packages with rich accessories bundles, which will obviously result in high price. A few years ago we could hope that some second-tier maker would design a mainboard on the top-of-the-line chipset that wouldn’t be overloaded with excessive features and would sell at reasonable price. Now we can certainly hope for that but cannot really count on it anymore. Smaller mainboard makers prefer not to deal with flagship core logic sets. Moreover, we haven’t seen anything truly remarkable from smaller mainboard makers for a while now. As for the advantages of Intel X38 over P35, the former will support two full-speed PCI Express x16 slots from PCI Express 2.0 revision. Advanced users will obviously be pleased with it, but these advantages will hardly mean anything for the mainstream majority.

Intel G33, Intel Q35 and Intel G35 chipsets feature integrated graphics cores with different potential. They are more than enough for office type of work, but will not cope with contemporary gaming. Those users who are not into games of any kind but care more about the computational power of the system will also be disappointed. Mainboards like that are usually designed in microATX form-factor and feature minimal options for overclocking and system fine tuning. You will be able to overclock your CPU on a mainboard like that, but you shouldn’t hope to get maximum performance.

As a result, it looks like P35 Express chipset appears the best overclocker’s choice out of the entire new Intel line-up. The chipset will fully support Intel processors with 333 (1333) MHz bus that are due this summer. Moreover, it will support efficient CPU and memory overclocking and will ensure that you get the most for your buck. Of course, if the mainboard allows it.