Computer Reviews

There is a huge range of options when buying motherboards these days. All the big manufacturers have one for you to choose from, and there are new companies joining the game as well.

When you are actually picking a board, you can limit your options fairly easily. First, decide on what chip you are going to get. Apparently AMD is better for games and Intel better for office apps. I’m really not a huge upgrader myself, my computer has only received upgrades for parts that have failed in the last 3 years.

I think most of the fast chips are fine, and I look for good value for money. I’m happy with last years chip, especially seeing as there is more information around on stuff people have already had for a while.

Anyways, if you plan on an Intel this LGA775 board will support all Intel chips including the new Dual-Core models and Extreme Edition.

Here is a listing of the main features…

• Socket 775
• Supports up to 8GB of memory
• PCI-e 16x, 4x and 1x slots and 1 PCI slot
• 2 SATA controllers (RAID 0, 1 and 5 available on one of them)
• Firewire, USB 2.0 and network

This motherboard features the Intel 955X Express ICH7R Northbridge. The only other option out there would be the nVidia nForce 4 SLI Chipset, which is the only option if you want to SLI your graphics cards.

New 7800 series nVidia graphics cards offer so much of a performance increase over the 6800 that they even rival a 6800 pair.

The Asus P5WD2 Premium is well placed as the flagship model in the Asus range. It has a huge range of extras, leaving nothing wanting, except perhaps for a wireless solution.

Memory bandwidth has increased over older models. You can use up to 8GB of DDR2 memory. The front side bus supports up to 1066MHz. All cooling is done passively, so there are no little fans to add to the noise of your system. RAID 5 capability means that you can have 4 hard drives, losing the capacity of only 1 of them for that extra security.

There is a full compliment of SATA ports including a SATA port for an external SATA drive. There is also firewire, 2 network ports and USB 2.0. There is video out, the external SATA at the back, as well as the 6 audio plugs.

The audio is very good and gives many options for what you can change.

The functionality of the WiFi is not that great, and a seperate card is recommended. There is an video tuner which doesn’t work too great, so you couldn’t rely on the board to do that work for you.

Overall the board delivers a great package. Everything you could need is there. Despite the not so great WiFi and video tuning, this board does the trick for those looking for a true top of the line, fully featured board.

Pros

• Has everything you could need
• Great audio
• Many SATA options

Cons

• Poor WiFi
• Not-so-great video tuner