Two top contenders from Asus go head to head

WE DECIDED to take some Asus boards on a ride and we did it just before the Yule. The boards we had in our hands are the top the current offerings from Asus and we had the best 975X board that it had available and decided to compare it to Asus P965 board. You can see this as an overclocking and chipset manifest as much as a competition between two Asus products.

We also have to say that there is a big price difference between these two products. The first board that we tested is called P5W DH Deluxe and is the top offering from the Asus 975X. This is the chipset with loads of features but in our case it didn't want to run 1066 memory, but it would do up to 950MHz just fine. The P5W DH Deluxe is Quad core and Core 2 Duo ready and has four memory slots for up to 8GB of memory. The Northbridge is cooled by heat pipe and the board has two PCIe 16X slots, three PCI and two PCIe 1X slots.

Asus P5W DH Deluxe box

If you use two graphics cards as Crossfire is supported the cards will run at PCIe 8X mode but this won't affect the performance by much. The board has some nice features such as Dual Gigabit x Marvell 88E8053 Gigabit LAN, eS-ATA, Dolby digital live 5.1 support in the chipset and some nice toys such as Asus EZ-Backup. The board supports CPUs with 800 MHz or 1066 MHz FSB. It features ASUS 8-Phase Power Design. Realtek ALC882M takes care of the audio and you have 5.1 connectors, optical or SPDIF on board.

The board even comes with a remote and a wireless LAN antenna as the Wlan is also here. The board has three different Storage controllers and all together they provide six S-ATA II ports and two IDE. The Intel ICH7R Southbridge provides support for one UltraDMA 100/66/33 and three Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s with Matrix Storage Technology with RAID 0, 1, 5 support. The second controller, a Jmicron JMB363 provides the support for one UltraDMA 133/100/66 and one External Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s (ASUS S-ATA-on-the-Go) and one Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s with RAID 0, 1 and JBOD support. The third controller is the Silicon Image 4723 Hardware RAID controller with ASUS EZ-Backup support. This one supports two Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s with RAID 0, 1 support.

The board has two PS2 ports, Com port, S/PDIF optical audio, FireWire and eS-ATA, four USB 2.0 and two 1 Gbit lan cards, 5.1 audio and mini Wi-fi card with an antenna connector. The board uses AMI BIOS which has some nice features for overclocking. We had some success trying but the memory simply didn't want to run at 1066 settings whatever we tried. DDR2 950 MHz was the best we could do. This great package costs around €180 in etail.

The second board we compared was Asus P5B-E powered with the newer P965 chipset. The board supports Quad core and Core 2 Duo CPUs and all the older Pentium 4s that can fit in socket 775. the board supports FSB 533, 800 or 1066 and can support up to 8GB of DDR2 800 or slower memory.

Asus P5W DH Deluxe overclocking

It has a single PCIe x16 slot so no Crossfire here, three PCI slots and two PCIe x1 slots. The chipset is passively cooled and the board looks plain yellow. There is nothing fancy about the visual aspect of the board. Southbridge provides support for six S-ATA 3.0 Gb/s ports with Intel Matrix Storage marchitecture and support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. The Micron JMB363 P-ATA and S-ATA controller provides the support for an additional UDMA 133 controller, one internal and one external S-ATA II port. Asus uses Attansic L1 PCI-E Gigabit LAN controller. ADI provides 8-channel High Definition Audio while the VIA VT6307 takes care of two firewire ports. The board supports up to ten USB 2.0. The board has total of seven S-ATA connectors which should be enough for just about anyone.

Asus provides bunch of overclocking tools with the boards as well and you can increase the frequency in 1MHZ steps and you can play with CPU and memory voltages.

The back panel includes two PS2 ports, one parallel port, one Spdif Coax and Optical, one eS-ATA, one Firewire 1394, one LAN RJ45 port four USB 2.0 and 8 Channel audio connectors. The board costs around €125 at press time.

Due to the timing issue we brought you the overclocking numbers just from 975X board but the other board could overclock just as much.

Asus P5W DH Deluxe board

Benchmarketing
We used:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, 2x 2.67GHz, 266MHz FSB, 4MB Cache
Corsair Dominator TWIN2X1024-8500 at 5-5-5-15 at 800 MHz
Leadtek Winfast PX8800 Geforce 8800 GTS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Akasa EVO AK 922 Blue Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's
OCZ 700W GameXstream power supply

Quake 4	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	218.8	208.8	192.5	146.1
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	218.9	207.0	192.2	145.5
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	270.5	252.4	214.6	148.4
?	?	?	?	?
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x1024	1600x1200	2048x1536
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	199.8	180.0	150.3	101.2
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	200.6	180.0	150.1	101.5
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	241.9	198.8	153.9	101.5
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	173	139	108	73
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	179	141	105	73
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	185	141	105	73
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X	1024x768	1280x960	1600x1200	2048x1536
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	116	83	59	37
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	114	80	56	34
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	116	80	56	34
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	3DMark 03	Game2	Game3	Game4
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	28334	240.0	176.5	157.5
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	28335	240.2	176.6	157.4
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	29113	240.5	178.2	157.5
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	CPU Score ?	CPU Test 1 ?	CPU Test 2
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	1688	187.4	30.1	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	1677	187.5	29.7	30.8
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	2163	243.7	37.9	30.8
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Vertex Shader	Pixel Shader 2.0
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	5098.1	11879.7	96.6	421.7
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	5098.0	11878.3	96.2	421.6
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	5098.1	11874.7	96.2	421.8
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	3DMark 05	Game1	Game2	Game2
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	14642	58.2	43.2	80.0
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	14713	58.8	43.4	79.9
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	15960	71.4	44.9	81.2
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	CPU Score ?	CPU Test 1 ?	CPU Test 2
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	9937	5.1	8.5	64.8
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	9905	5.1	8.5	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	12556	6.5	10.8	30.8
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05	Single Texturinng	Multi Textur.	Pixel Shader	VS/VS complex
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	5150.2	11861.1	387.8	124.1/96.8
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	5150.2	11892.7	387.8	124.1/96.8
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	5150.2	11895.1	387.8	124.2/96.8
?	?	?	?	?
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06	3DMark 06	?	?
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	8547	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	8554	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	9008	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
SM2.0 Test	Score	GT1	GT2
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	3717	30.642	31.300	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	3727	30.694	31.415
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	3748	30.916	31.542
?	?	?	?	?
HDR/SM3.0 Test	Score	HDR1	HDR2
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	3742	33.951	40.526	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	3726	34.021	40.505
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	3736	34.156	40.556
?	?	?	?	?
CPU Test	Score	CPU1	CPU2
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	2343	0.734	1.197	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	2338	0.742	1.179
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	2978	0.938	1.513
?	?	?	?	?
PC Mark 2005	CPU	Memory	HDD	Total
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	6827	5636	5848	7272
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	6809	5702	5705	7288
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	8642	7479	5715	8541
?	?	?	?	?
Sandra 2007	CPU	Memory	Multimedia
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	24833/17107	5638/5636	146740/79671
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	24742/17091	5696/5694	146569/79584	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	31743/21910	7619/7619	188011/102073	?
?	?	?	?	?
Sciencemark 2.0	Molecular	Primordia	Cryptography	Stream
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	1302.83	1361.27	1256.91	1511.22
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	1291.01	1362.63	1261.54	1489.44
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	1670.48	1725.56	1619.70	2000.06
?	?	?	?	?
Sciencemark 2.0	Memory bandwidth	Memory	Blas / flops	Total
Asus P5B-E +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2667MHz	5156.03	1568.22	2060.42	1504.26
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	5222.13	1659.73	2063.63	1511.03
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	7058.43	2184.54	2649.63	1951.83
?	?	?	?	?
Super_Pi	calculation 8MB	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	03m 56s	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	03m 04s	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
Paint.NET effect Frosted glass on 10MPixel picture	min:sec	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	00:44	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	00:34	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
Audio Encoding wav_700MB to mp3	encode min:sec	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	01:29	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	01:09	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
Dr. DivX .mov 720p_115MB to .divx	encode min:sec	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	02:40	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe +8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	02:04	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
AutoGK .vob_1GB to .avi	encode min:sec	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	13:31	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	10:35	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
Windows Media Encoder 9 .avi_321MB to .wmv	encode min:sec	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	22:54	?	?	?
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	17:56	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
Cinebench 9.5	Rendering 1 CPU	Rendering 2 CPUs	C4D Shadring
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	0:49	0:26	532
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	0:38	0:20	668
?	?	?	?	?
Cinebench 9.5	OpenGL SW-L	OpenGL HW-L	OpenGL speedup
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 2670MHz	2140	6667	12.52 times
Asus P5W DH Deluxe+8800GT Leadtek +Dominator 2GB -- CPU 3421MHz	2753	8889	13.01 times

In Quake 4 the Asus P5W DH Deluxe with 975 chipset ends up slightly slower than the Asus P5B-E P965 board, but we are only talking about a marginal difference. Then we tried to overclock the Core 2 Duo E6700 and we reached 3.42 GHz with Akasa's stock cooler. This resulted in a 50fps performance increase at 10x7 and 45fps difference at 12x10 CPU limited resolutions. You don't get much at 20x15 just a few frames as these are graphically limited resolutions.

In Quake 4 with effects on the Asus P5W DH Deluxe is slightly faster but just by a hair. Again if you overclock to 3.4 GHz you will gain around 40fps at 10x7 and 19fps at 12x10.

The Asus P5W DH Deluxe is faster in FEAR by as much as six frames at 10x7. It is tight at 20x15 and slower at 16x12 but nothing to worry much about. The overclocked CPU scores faster just at 10x7 and even then it runs just six frames faster.

The Asus P5B-E is faster by up to three frames in FEAR with 4X FSAA and 16X Aniso and even the overclocked Asus P5W DH Deluxe scores slower than the P5B-E at these settings. For some reason the 975 scores slower in this graphics intensive test.

We got almost identical scores in 3Dmark03 and the overclocked CPU scored just 700 marks higer. The Asus P5B-E has a slightly better CPU score and runs the second CPU test game faster while P5W DH Deluxe is faster in the first game. We call it just about even here.

The overclocked CPU gained a lot in CPU testing and runs game one of CPU test 55fps faster which is a lot. The Asus P5W DH Deluxe is slightly faster in 3Dmark05 by around 70 points and the overclocked CPU runs 1250 marks faster. The 975X board is surprisingly slightly slower in CPU tests but overall it wins. The overclocked CPU is more than thirty percent faster than the non overclocked one.

3Dmark06 runs slightly faster on the Asus P5W DH Deluxe but just by a few points. Overclocking will get you to 9000+ in this test or some 450 marks faster. The CPU test is slightly faster on Asus P5B-E.

PCmark05 is slightly faster on P5W DH Deluxe as the memory runs faster but the hard drive runs a bit slower. The Asus P5B-E wins the CPU test while the Overclocked Conroe dominates the test.

Asus P5W DH Deluxe overclocking system

Sciencemark 2.0 is slightly faster on the 975X board while the 965 run some of the tests including the memory one faster.

We tested the following scores only on the Asus P5W DH Deluxe and Super Pi runs in at 52 seconds or 28 percent faster. This is the expected ratio as we overclocked the CPU by 27.85 percent.

We played with the Paint.NET Frosted glass effect on a 10MPixel picture and again the overclocked Conroe runs 29 percent faster, getting the job done ten seconds quicket.

Next up is audio encoding of a big 700MB WAV file to MP3 and again the overclocked baby does the job 20 seconds faster. The same ratio comes out for Dr. DivX .mov720p_115MB to divx encoding. The overclocked CPU does the job 36 seconds faster.

Asus P5W DH Deluxe overclocking

We also tried to encode a 1GB VOB file to AVI in Auto GK. The overclocked CPU does the job almost three minutes faster, again around the 28 percent magical number.

Windows Media Encoder 9 encodes a 321MB AVI to WMV almost five minutes faster which is a major difference and Cinebench 9.5 is also noticeably faster.

In Short
It really is a tough call to pick one board above the other. The Asus P5W DH Deluxe is powered by the 975X chipset, it runs fast and has a super duper package including a remote but it costs some €50 more. In fact, the only thing we didn't like about this board is the lousy memory overclocking scores.

The Asus P5B-E is powered with the newer P965 chipset. It is a better memory overclocker but it is not as fancy as the deluxe 975X board. It's still is a good buy but some people will want to avoid it as it has only one PCIe graphic slot, so you won't be able to run Crossfire or SLI on this one whereas the 975X can. This might be a dealbreaker for some and the package is not as good either. Still, it's 50 or 60 Euro cheaper so you might want to consider it.

When it comes to overclocking both boards are great performers and the Core 2 Duo jumps from 2667MHz to 3424MHz which is a noticeable difference. All the performance scores jump by around twenty eight percent. Both boards are a good buy but the nForce 680i is starting to look like the future chipset of choice. Asus is working on the a new 965 chipset based overclocking board but this one still has to hit the market. That'll arrive in 2007 and we will be there to tell you all about it. ?

Reviewed and tested by Sanjin Rados and Fuad Abazovic