Asus P5Q Deluxe - P45 Chipset with DDR2

Performance Summary: The Asus P5Q Deluxe performed well throughout our testing. In the synthetic SANDRA benchmarks, the board posted slightly lower scores than a comparably equipped X48-based system, but that didn't hold the P5Q back in the majority of our real-world application tests.  In PCMark Vantage the P5Q put up some solid performance numbers, and it finished neck and neck with or slightly ahead of the X48 in our 3D rendering and encoding tests. It was only in the gaming tests that the P45-based Asus P5Q Deluxe trailed by a few percentage points.

Although we didn't receive a full retail-ready Asus P5Q Deluxe for testing purposes, we're still confident in drawing a few conclusions here.  Even though there is still some obvious BIOS tuning work to do, the P45-based P5Q Deluxe's performance at this early stage was very good and we had no problems with instability to speak of.  Overclocking was also quick and painless, power consumption was relatively low, and the chipset ran nice and cool.  Taking all of these characteristics into consideration, we can't help but like the P45 and suspect it is going to be as popular as last year's P35.

Asus particular implementation of the chipset on the P5Q Deluxe was also good.  The board is loaded with useful features like Express Gate, integrated power and reset switches, and quality passive cooling.  The board's layout is also good for the most part, with the only potential issue being the placement of the first two expansion slots directly in line with the DIMM slots.  We won't know final "street" prices for a few weeks, but expect pricing for this board to fall somewhere in between high-end P35's and mid-range X38 / X48 based offerings (Update: ASUS has informed us that the MSRP for this board will be $209).  All in all, the P45 and P5Q Deluxe are not revolutionary, but its performance and features are sure to entice the mainstream crowd.