Asus P5WD2-E Premium: Intel 975X for the Enthusiast

Final Words

The Asus P5WD2-E Premium is a very good solution for the Intel Enthusiast looking for a well designed and manufactured board with numerous options. The ability to fully utilize up to three PCI based cards is definitely a plus as the current market for PCI-E based peripherals is minimal. The performance of the board was outstanding in all testing phases and stability, while very good overall, could be improved with BIOS updates.

While not completely detrimental to our overall opinion of the board, we did run into a couple of nagging issues. Our Microsoft 2000 and 4000 USB keyboards were not properly detected at post several times, which generated a keyboard error. This did not occur with an older Microsoft Digital Media keyboard or several Logitech models.

We witnessed small CPU voltage spikes when overclocking our dual core processors. As an example, the 955EE processor was set to 1.4625V for the maximum FSB overclock testing and would vary from 1.44V up to 1.49V while testing. Although our memory would run completely stable at 2.1V with the 3-2-2-8 settings at DDR2-667, we had to increase the memory voltage to 2.25V at the same range settings when overclocking the 840EE or 955EE. The 7800GTX 512MB card used in the 955EE testing phase required the use of the 12V 4-pin Ezplug in order for the card to remain stable during the 3DMark tests.

These issues did not occur on the Asus P5WDG2-WS or Gigabyte GA-G1 975X boards. We have to wonder why Asus did not include their excellent 8-phase voltage regulator power design that can significantly lower operating temperatures while reducing input ripple current and output ripple voltages. In fact, both of our Intel EE processors ran on average about 6 degrees C higher than on the Asus P5WDG2-WS and 3 degrees C higher than on the Gigabyte board. We believe that the 8-phase solution would have addressed some of the voltage and temperature issues that we witnessed while improving its overclocking performance even further. While the board's overall stability is very good, we feel like Asus has some minor work to do on the BIOS at this time.

With that said, let's move on to our performance opinions regarding this board.

In the video area, the inclusion of two physical PCI Express x16 slots that fully supports x8 bandwidth operation for two graphics cards is an important step for Intel with this chipset. The board fully supports ATI CrossFire mode in our internal testing. We are still waiting on the X1800XT MasterCard to arrive for further CrossFire testing, but we did not notice any issues with the X850XT CrossFire solution and 5.13 driver set.

In the on-board audio area, this board has an excellent implementation of the Realtek ALC882M High Definition Audio Codec. The software provided has Jack-Sensing, S/PDIF Out support, interrupt capability, and Dolby Master Studio support. The ALC882M will encode digital audio contents to real-time Dolby Digital streams for pass through via the S/PDIF ports to an AC-3 decoder for playback. The audio output of this codec in the music, video, and gaming areas is very good while performance in certain games has improved tremendously with the R1.29 driver release. If you plan on playing on-line action type titles, we highly suggest a dedicated sound card at this time, but the onboard capabilities of the ALC882M will satisfy the majority of users.

In the storage area, the Asus board offers a wide variety of storage options with additional SATA RAID ports. The board fully offers Intel's excellent Matrix RAID system and offers Hot Swap, NCQ, and 3Gb/s capability. Asus supplements the Intel SATA II capability with the Marvell 88SE6141 SATA II chipset featuring support for Hot Swap, NCQ, and 3Gb/s operation along with an external SATA II port. The board offers the standard eight Intel USB ports and two IEEE 1394a ports utilizing the TI TSB43AB22A chipset. However, we still believe that Firewire 800 should have been offered on the Asus P5WD2-E board, since it is their premium offering.

In the performance area, the Asus P5WD2-E consistently offered excellent performance while exceeding the other solutions at various times. Asus offers their HyperPath3 BIOS option that effectively reduces memory latencies even further on the Intel 975X chipset. The board's performance with the 955EE CPU was excellent and is an indication of a well engineered solution. While we are very satisfied with the overall performance of the board, we feel like it is not as polished as the P5WDG2-WS or as stable at the extreme edge as the Gigabyte GA-G1 975X.

The Asus P5WD2-E Premium is a very good board that could have been excellent with the inclusion of their 8-phase voltage regulator solution and some further BIOS improvements. While we are very confident that Asus will address the BIOS issues, we are left wondering what could have been with this board. We will hold our final opinion on this board until we complete testing on other 975X based solutions. In the meantime, the game is definitely afoot.