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ASUS P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi-AP Edition Motherboard Review :: P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi-AP Edition Features
With the release of the Core 2 series CPUs, Intel has moved back into the performance lead with their processors. The complete lineup ranges from the mainstream to the high-end of the pricing and performance spectrum. The 965 chipset fully supports the CPUs including the X6800 Extreme and the E6700 CPUs. It should be interesting when Intel releases their Quad Core CPUs later this year whether the 965 will be supported.  CPU Socket  Memory slots DDR2 memory has now been adopted by both CPU vendors with AMD releasing their AM2 platform earlier this year. DDR2 memory has higher latency than DDR memory, but has higher operating frequencies, allowing a higher memory bandwidth for the chipset. The 965 chipset supports DDR2 400/533/667/800 MHz memory, giving a maximum of 6.4GB of memory bandwidth to the chipset. DDR2 1067MHz is supported by the P5B Deluxe. The P5B Deluxe sported 4 DIMM slots, giving a maximum of 8GB of memory supported when a 64-bit OS is installed.  Expansion slots  PCI Express x16  PCI Express x16 lock Multiple graphics card support is important for high end motherboards. Intel added support for ATI's Crossfire Multi-GPU solution into their 975X chipset. The 965 chipset supports Crossfire splitting the 16 PCI Express lanes found on most motherboards into two x8 lanes. ASUS chose to provide two full-length PCI Express slots but split them into x16 and x4 lanes. Some early reviewers using this motherboard couldn't get Crossfire running. ASUS has updated their BIOS to fix an issue with Prescott CPUs and Crossfire and it should work now. ASUS decided to offer three PCI slots, allowing the user flexibility when using expansion devices, as PCI Express devices are few and far between. A single PCI Express x1 slot rounds out the device expansion.  6 SATA ports  FDD controller  PATA controller  Jmicron SATA controller SATA hard disk drives are the norm for systems today. ASUS outfitted the P5B Deluxe with 6 SATA ports, the maximum that the ICH8R NorthBridge supports. SATA provides up to 3 Gb/second of hard disk transfer rate, much higher than Parallel ATA drives. ICH8R supports RAID 0, 0+1, 10 modes. A 7th SATA port is on the board, controlled by a JMicron SATA controller. A 8th SATA port is on the rear I/O panel. A single PATA port and a FDD port rounds out the drive support on the P5B Deluxe.  SoundMax Audio drivers   Onboard sound on the P5B Deluxe is provided by a ADI SoundMAX HD Audio CODEC. SoundMAX was a popular choice for motherboard manufacturers in early 925X boards, mostly overtaken today by REALTEK in terms of market share. High Definition Audio was the replacement for the AC'97 audio standard that's been around forever. Features of HDA include: simultaneous multiple audio streams, 7.1 surround sound and S/PDIF support natively.  Wi-Fi AP  Rear IO  Marvell LAN controller The Rear IO includes a card for the Wi-Fi-AP Solo LAN Adapter soldered on the board. There is a PS/2 keyboard and mouse port for the standard keyboard and mouse. Today, most mice and keyboards use the USB interface. ASUS included four USB 2.0 ports on the rear for USB devices. Two RJ-45 jacks for multiple LAN connections are present, controlled by a Marvell PC I Express (88E8056) and a Marvell PCI LAN controller (88E8001). A Firewire port is atop the external SATA (eSATA) port. 6 audio jacks provide 7.1 surround support with S/PDIF In and Out jacks rounding out the rear IO. Contents:
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