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

 by Gary Key on January 16, 2006 12:05 AM EST
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ASUS P5WD2-E: Features

Asus designed a generally well laid out board with all major connections easily reached. The board is lacking most clearance issues and was very easy to install in a mid-size ATX case. The board layout is very similar to that of the P5WD2 Premium but differs with the additional SATA RAID and single PATA ports in place of the dual PATA ports along with the new PCI slot arrangement.

The DIMM module slots' color coordination is correct for dual channel setup. The memory modules are simple to install with a full size video card placed in the first PCI Express x16 slot. The power plug placement favors standard ATX case design and the power cable management is very good. The floppy drive port connector and 4-pin 12v EZ-Pug are conveniently located on the edge of the board along with the 24 pin ATX power connector.

The Intel ICH7R IDE port connector is located on the edge of the board and did not present any connection issues in our mid-size ATX case.

The Intel SATA II ports are conveniently located below the ICH7R chipset and above the primary IDE connector. The SATA II ports feature the new clamp and latch design. Asus did not include the new cable designs in their accessory kit, which greatly enhance the security of the SATA connections. The SATA II ports are color coded for primary and secondary operation. We found the SATA 1 and 3 ports were partially blocked when utilizing the NVIDIA 7800GTX cards in both PCI-E x16 slots.

The Marvell 88SE6141 PATA port connector and Marvell 88SE6141 SATA II RAID port connectors are located to the left of the bios chip. The Intel USB connector, IEEE1394a connectors, chassis panel, and Com1 serial port are located along the left edge of the board. The CMOS reset is a traditional jumper design located above the bios chip.

The board comes with (2) physical PCI Express x16 slots, (1) PCI-E x1 slot, (1) PCI-E x4 slot, and (3) PCI 2.3 slots. The layout of this design offers a very good balance of slots and allows for numerous add-in peripheral cards.

We did not have any issues installing an ATI X850 Crossfire Edition setup in the two x16 PCI Express slots. This configuration will physically render the PCI-E x4 and the first PCI slot useless. We did not have any issues utilizing either slot with video cards containing single slot cooling systems.

Returning to the CPU socket area, we find an ample amount of room for alternative cooling solutions. We utilized the stock Intel heat sink but also verified several aftermarket cooling systems such as the Thermaltake Big Typhoon would fit in this area during our tests. However, due to the large MCH heatsink, installation of large heatsink cooling solutions could be problematic.

The Northbridge and Southbridge chipsets are passively cooled with heatsinks that do not interfere with any installed peripherals. In fact this system kept the chipsets cool enough that additional chipset voltage was not a factor in our overclocking tests. Asus places the eight-pin 12v auxiliary power connector at the top of the CPU socket area but out of the way of most aftermarket cooling solutions.

The rear panel contains the standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, parallel port, LAN ports, and 4 USB ports. Located below the parallel port and to the right of the PS/2 ports are the Coaxial S/PDIF, Optical S/PDIF, and external SATA II ports. The LAN (RJ-45) ports each have two LED indicators representing Activity and Speed of the connection. The audio panel consists of 6 ports that can be configured for 2, 4, 6, and 8-channel audio connections.

The bios options are abundant on the Asus P5WD2-E, with memory voltage to 2.4v, and an extensive range of chipset, bus, and vCore voltage adjustments. Memory ratios are limited compared to the nForce4 Intel Edition boards but Asus did manage to offer enough settings to make the board competitive. The board fully supports manual memory timing adjustments or allows for an Auto setting that will set the memory to the SPD settings. You have the ability to overclock the system utilizing the AI Overclock profiles that have preset percentages or to use the AI N.O.S. feature that will dynamically overclock the system based upon system loads. The ASUS Ai Booster Utility Precision Tweaker software pictured above allows control over certain system settings within Windows.

Basic Features: Asus P5WD2-E Premium ASUS P5WD2-E: Overclocking
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  • Dfere - Thursday, May 18, 2006 - link

    Just bought this and I am having a problem even getting this to post. Fans boot and HD starts to boot. No video image, monitor resets and then blanks.

    I stripped out unnecesary components- still no joy.

    I have an Thermaltake XaserIII 480 with adapter and EZ 4 plug molex connected.
    SATA 1 Port using WD 80 gig HD
    Pentium D 805 w/ stock heatsink.
    Inno3d 6200 TC video in 1st PCI 16 slot.

    2X1 Gig PNY memory in Black series of slots.

    I will be trying to use only one stock of memory, and then will be taking MB out of case and trying to boot on non-conducitve surface. Anyone else got advice?

  • TechJunkie - Friday, March 3, 2006 - link

    I've had it now for almost a week and have started noticing problems. Many forums are now littered with complaints, mainly aimed at the Marvell issue.

    I mistakenly had set up my system the first time with the Intel chipset and using "Standard IDE"... system worked fine other than the issue with the Marvell. Benchmarks ran fine and 3DMark06 looked great.

    I then reinstalled the OS, this time doing the PITA F6 procedure and set up the drives on the Intel controller using RAID (but didn't actually set up a RAID, simply wanted the AHCI with the ability to in the future set up RAID).

    This morning I tried to run the 3DMark06 benchmark and while it ran to completion, the graphics screen seemed all corrupted throughout...I'm thinking power problem but it didn't have this issue last go around. Can setting up the drives differently have caused this from a power perspective or is this just one of the possibly many things wrong with this board?

    I am wondering if I should RMA it back to zipzoom and get the Intel board, which has always been my choice, except this time the extra SATAII ports provided by the Marvell persuaded me to give ASUS a shot...ironic, isn't it!

    In your opinion, based on what you know, will the issues with this board be resolved by BIOS/driver updates? It is a PITA to take my rig apart to swap out the motherboard but I will bite the bullet and get the Intel 975X board if this board can't be fixed via BIOS/driver updates.

  • medic91b2 - Monday, February 6, 2006 - link

    I've had this m/b for a few week's and I have to say that it has many bug's in it. As far as i know, no one has gotten the marvell sata driver's to work and on the intel side people have gotten many mixed result's. I gave up trying to make a raid on this board. Asus support is nowere to be found, I think if any one want's to rate it then yhey should test all of the components of the board

  • Gary Key - Saturday, February 11, 2006 - link

    quote:
    I've had this m/b for a few week's and I have to say that it has many bug's in it. As far as i know, no one has gotten the marvell sata driver's to work and on the intel side people have gotten many mixed result's. I gave up trying to make a raid on this board. Asus support is nowere to be found, I think if any one want's to rate it then yhey should test all of the components of the board


    Email me and I will provide you with an updated bios that solves the USB issue and voltage spikes. I still have not had an issue with the Marvell RAID setup and two Raptors.

  • Zucker2k - Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - link

    Gary,
    Could you please e-mail me the updated bios? email: qommonsense@gmail.com. Thanks.
    Richard.

  • Joepublic2 - Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - link

    As far as the motherboard goes, it looks pretty good. NB/SB are passively cooled, the layout is good and the MOSFETs are heatsinked (I've heard of problems with the voltage regulators on cheaper intel boards failing, often because they got too hot). I like how Anandtech's motherboard articles are very critical and mention things that other sites seem to glaze over, such as if the board's voltage regulator is three, four or eight phase.

    quote:
    considering this processors penchant for electricity


    should read "processor's"

  • Gary Key - Thursday, January 19, 2006 - link

    quote:
    should read "processor's"


    It is corrected. I had it marked on the final edit but missed it before publication, excuse the Homer moment please. :-) It is a good board but we felt like Asus did not go all the way on it and should have considering the price point. Although the board is not in retail yet we were somewhat disappointed with the bios also. Asus is working on a new release at this time and we hope to be able to test it in the next roundup.

  • ghg - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    Hi

    When may we expect the ANANDTECH 975x shootout ?

    BR

    Gary G.

  • Gary Key - Monday, January 23, 2006 - link

    quote:
    When may we expect the ANANDTECH 975x shootout ?


    We should be finished in about three weeks. We have two additional boards in house and another two on their way. We will also have an overclocking shoot out with the Presler and Cedar Mill chips.

  • ghg - Friday, March 3, 2006 - link

    Hi

    Any news about the 975x shootout ?

    BR

    Gary G.
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