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Although features such as ATI CrossFire and Core 2 processor support suggest that the P5W DH Deluxe could be the ultimate gaming platform, there is more to this motherboard. With technologies such as LCD TVs taking off quite rapidly, the demand for HTPCs (Home Theater Personal Computers) is also increasing quite dramatically. ASUS hopes that features such as the DH Remote, WiFi-AP and MP3-In, will become handy then, making the P5W DH Deluxe more than a motherboard for gamers.
Other impressive board features include a total of seven Serial ATAII ports, including an external one. The Realtek ALC882M High Definition Audio 8-channel Codec is another welcomed edition to the P5W DH Deluxe. There is on-board WiFi-AP, as well as dual Marvell Gigabit LAN controllers. Capping off the boards connectivity are two Firewire ports and eight USB 2.0 ports.
As was to be expected on a high-end ASUS motherboard, the P5W DH Deluxe comes in a rather impressive packaging that almost makes you feel you are getting your money's worth. The physical design, cooling and layout of the P5W DH Deluxe is also very impressive and given the chance, there is really nothing I would change. The 8-phase power circuitry is cooled via a large array of copper fins which are connected to the northbridge chip via a heatpipe.
Actually, the northbridge is connected to the copper fins where the heat is then dispersed through the rear of the case. The typical black ASUS PCB board looks quite good, as do the numerous color coded connectors scattered across the board. The color coded connectors make installation a breeze and I am sure novice users will really appreciate their presence.
Moving on, ASUS has included a feature which they call EZ-Backup; this feature is designed to help secure the data on your hard drives through the SATAII interface and RAID0. The controller chip actually comes from Silicon Image and is a member of their SteelVine storage series. The version featured on the P5W DH Deluxe is the Sil4723 which supports just two hard drives. The Sil4723 is a bridge chip rather than a controller, notice how the ICH7R only offers three SATAII ports on the P5W DH Deluxe. This is because one of the ports is bridged to the Sil4723 chip, which then splits it into two ports for the EZ-Backup feature. Everything is hardware driven, meaning complex software is not required. ASUS has also included the JMicron JMB363 controller which supports an additional two SATAII ports, one of which is mounted on the I/O panel.
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Although I was quite impressed with the P5WD2-E Premium, the former ASUS 975X heavyweight, I feel the P5W DH Deluxe is a more solid product. The biggest improvement comes from the upgraded cooling system which I have found to be highly effective. The board design itself is also cleaner, and the updated features and processor support could be excuse enough for the new model. Another design improvement includes the PCI Express x16 expansion slot placement. Rather than featuring a single space between these two slots, ASUS has placed a PCIe x1 and PCI slot between the dual graphics ports.
Performance-wise the P5W DH Deluxe did well, matching the Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 every step of the way. Clearly the Intel 975X and P965 chipsets are very evenly matched in terms of performance. However, when it comes to overclocking, the P5W DH Deluxe completely blows the Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 out of the water. While the 965P-DQ6 was limited to a 300MHz FSB using the Core 2 Duo E6700 processor, the P5W DH Deluxe went all the way to a comfortable 366MHz FSB. This resulted in a total clock frequency of 3.66GHz using nothing more than a $50 after market HSF (Thermalright XP-120).
In fact, overclocking with the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe seemed almost too easy, as I found there were very few settings that required changes to achieve the 366MHz FSB. There has been countless posting of users reaching a 400MHz FSB and beyond with the P5W DH Deluxe. However most appear to have been using processors with lower clock multipliers, such as the E6300.
I love this thing and havent even begun to tap all the things it can do. If you have the mutimedia version of windows xp your really set.