Asus P5W64-WS Professional Motherboard

For our first gaming test, we benchmarked all of the test systems using a custom single-player Quake 4 timedemo. Here, we installed the v1.2 patch which is SMP capable, cranked the resolution down to 640 x 480, and configured the game to run at its "Low-Quality" graphics setting. Although Quake 4 typically taxes today's high-end GPUs, when it's configured at these minimal settings it too is more CPU and memory-bound than anything else.

Benchmarks with Quake 4 v1.2: Low Quality OpenGL Gaming Performance

Quake 4

id Software, in conjunction with developer Raven, recently released the latest addition to the wildly popular Quake franchise, Quake 4. Quake 4 is based upon an updated and slightly modified version of the Doom 3 engine, and as such, performance characteristics between the two titles are very similar.  Like Doom 3, Quake 4 is also an OpenGL game that uses extremely high-detailed textures and a ton of dynamic lighting and shadows, but unlike Doom3, Quake 4 features some outdoor environments as well.

It smells like the P5W DH, it walks like a P5W DH and runs like a P5W DH, but we all know it's very different under the hood. The P5W64 WS is right on top of its more mainstream targeted sibling here in our low res Quake 4 CPU tests. Both Asus boards are able to edge out Intel's own offering ever so slightly as well.