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Review: ASUSTeK P5W DH i975X mainboard

by HEXUS Staff on 14 August 2006, 08:46

Tags: ASUSTeK P5W DH, ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qagi3

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Specifications


Board feature

Implementation

Name

ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe

Chipset

Intel 975X northbridge and Intel ICH7R southbridge

CPU support

All Intel LGA775 processors
Including Intel Core 2 Duo/Extreme

RAM

DDR2 533/667/800
8GiB total, 4 slots

Graphics Support

PCI Express:
2 physical PEG x16 slots (ATI CrossFire support. 2x x8 lanes)

PCI Express

2 x PCIe x1

PCI Conventional

3 x PCI

Networking

2 x Marvell 88E8053 PCIe Gigabit with “AI NET2” wireless 54Mbps LAN.

FireWire

2 x FW400; one onboard header and one on I/O

Audio

Realtek ALC882M; HD Audio, 8-channel (7.1)
Jack-sensing, optical TosLink and coaxial digital out

USB

ICH7R southbridge
8 port USB2.0; 4 on I/O panel + 2x 2-port headers

Disks

3 SATA300, RAID0,1,5 (Intel ICH7R)

1 SATA300 External (I/O panel), 1 SATA300, RAID0,1,JBOD (JMicron controller)

2 SATA300, RAID0,1. Also supports RAID 10 in conjunction with the Intel ICH7R southbridge (Silicon image 4723 controller)

1 x ATA100 (Intel ICH7R), 1 x ATA133 (JMicron controller)

Despite the introduction of the new P965 chipset family, the 975X remains the enthusiast board of choice with its most notable features being support for CrossFire multi-GPU support.

What's interesting is that ASUS refers to this motherboard as the P5W Digital Home yet it uses the regular ICH7R southbridge and not the DH variant designed for better power-saving via Intel's Energy Lake technology. However, the good, old ICH7R supports RAID5, so it's a case of features swings and roundabouts.

ASUS has also chosen Realtek's ALC882M audio codec that supports a total of 10 channels (7.1 + 2) run in conjunction with the board's high-definition audio. It's a decent choice on a high-end motherboard.

Not all i975X motherboards are equal. The P5W DH boasts the necessary hardware modification for Core 2 Duo compatibility. Other i975Xs may not.