Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP

Verdict: The ultimate overclockers' motherboard, but you'll need deep pockets.

Although the P35 chipset can support the latest DDR3 memory and overclocks like a beast, Intel has positioned it as a mainstream product. The new X38 chipset - which replaces the aging and non-competitive 975X - is Intel's new high-end chipset, and the company's attempt to draw gamers away from Nvidia's SLI. In real terms, this means that X38 motherboards should perform better, overclock further and run CrossFire faster than P35 motherboards. While the P35 chipset provides 16 PCI-E lanes for the primary graphics card slot and only four lanes for the secondary graphics card, the X38 chipset, like Nvidia's nForce 680i, provides 16 PCI-E lanes for both graphics card slots, plus a third PCI-E slot with eight lanes. The two primary slots are PCI-E 2.0-compatible, which will work with your current PCI-E 1.1 card as normal, but will give a PCI-E 2.0 graphics card twice as much bandwidth. Quite what you're supposed to do with the third slot is beyond us - although ATI and Nvidia have made various proclamations about using a third graphics card for physics calculations, no products have been forthcoming.

Like the P35, the X38 chipset is paired with the ICH9 or ICH9R Southbridge. The X38 Northbridge supports both DDR2 and DDR3 memory (but not at the same time). So while this X38-based board goes the DDR3 route, Asus has confirmed that its first Republic of Gamers X38 board, the Maximus Formula, will be a DDR2 board.

The X38 chipset's other new feature is XMP, which, in a typical display of IT industry illiteracy, stands for Extreme Memory Profiles. This works in much the same way as the EPP profiles used by Nvidia's SLI memory, storing additional information about the RAM's capabilities, which is then transmitted to the BIOS in an effort to make overclocking easier. Considering how long Intel has taken to bring the X38 chipset to market (975X was released in late 2005), it's disappointing that the only tangible difference between it and the P35 chipset is more PCI-E lanes and a few ideas borrowed from Nvidia.

That said, a motherboard isn't solely about its chipset: the P5E3 has to stand on its own merits for it to be worth buying. As already mentioned, it supports DDR3 memory and up to two graphics cards in CrossFire. Unfortunately, and contrary to pre-release rumours, it doesn't support two graphics cards in SLI, so you'll have to buy an nForce 680i SLI motherboard for this. If you decide to settle for CrossFire and use cards with dual-slot coolers, you'll lose access to one of the two PCI slots and one of the two 1x PCI-E slots.

However, you're unlikely to need two PCI slots, as the P5E3 has on-board WiFi and two Gigabit LAN ports. Asus has been integrating 802.11b/g WiFi into its high-end motherboards for a couple of years, but this is the first board we've seen that's compliant with the latest Draft 2 spec of 802.11n. It has two antennas that work together in MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) mode to improve signal strength, and therefore performance and reliability. As 802.11n is compatible with older 802.11b and g standards, it should work with any suitable router. You'll also find 8-channel Intel HD Audio integrated into the motherboard, complete with a full set of analogue and digital outputs.

Despite an abundance of slots, the P5E3 has a very clean layout. The single EIDE and six S-ATA II ports are near the middle of the front edge, so unlike the P5KC, the board won't be straddled by extra long I/O cables. Similarly, the other ports and sockets, such as the ATX and EPS12V power plugs, are neatly positioned on the edges of the PCB.

The only major problem with the layout is the high number of heatsinks and heatpipes that snake across the surface of the PCB. As the X38 Northbridge produces so much more waste heat than the P35, Asus has screwed its heatsink in place and secured it using a retention plate on the underside of the board; this is the first time that we've seen a Northbridge cooler attached this way. The heatsink on the Southbridge is also screwed down, and linked to the Northbridge by a single heatpipe. The heat from the two chipsets is then dissipated by a bank of heatsinks, which also try to dispose of the heat generated by the 8-phase VRM circuitry dotted around the CPU socket. Although this means that the CPU socket is surrounded on all sides by heatsinks and heatpipes, they're far less intrusive than the cooling system attached to the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP. This not only means that it's easier to fit a heatsink to the P5E3 than the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP, but also that the airflow to the CPU HSF isn't interfered with as much.

Performance

As Intel officially describes the X38 as a 'performance' chipset, it's fair to expect it to outperform 'mainstream' P35 chipset motherboards. In games, Intel's performance label for the X38 certainly seems appropriate, as Supreme Commander ran noticeably faster on the P5E3 than on P35-based LGA775 motherboards. However, in the 2007 version of our Media Benchmarks, the P35-based Asus motherboards proved to be a tough act for the P5E3 to follow. It scored well enough in the image editing and video encoding tests, but significantly lagged behind in the I/O-intensive multitasking test. In this test, it should have scored close to 1,000, but instead scored 814. The reason for this isn't clear, although interestingly, another Asus motherboard reviewed this issue, the P5KC, also scored poorly in the multitasking test until we received a last-minute BIOS update from Asus. As such, we can only hope that Asus will be able to perform a similar trick with the P5E3 in a future BIOS update.

However, it's during overclocking that the P5E3 and its X38 chipset really have a chance to shine. Its first challenge was to overclock our test CPU, a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6750, to its air-cooled maximum of 3.66GHz. It managed this easily, requiring only a bump to the CPU vcore in the BIOS.

With that settled, we dropped the CPU multiplier from 8 to 6, allowing us to determine the maximum stable FSB without having to worry about pushing the CPU too far. Good overclocking P35 motherboards top out at around 500MHz FSB, so this is the first setting we tried with the P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP. Emboldened by not having to touch the voltages to get it working at 500MHz, we then upped the ante to 509MHz - the highest stable FSB that any motherboard we've reviewed has achieved so far. As we said with the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP, 'we were expecting a catastrophic failure, a small fire or possibly a portal to Satan's front door to open in our Labs'. We were more than a little surprised when the P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP breezed past 509MHz, finally capping out at an astounding 540MHz. This overclock is simply stunning, and well beyond the capabilities of any P35 or nForce 680i SLI motherboard. If you're a hardcore overclocker with a water-cooling kit or phase-change cooler, the P5E3 is a serious contender.

Conclusion

While the P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP's stock performance was mixed, this is more than likely due to the early BIOS with which our test sample was supplied, rather than a design fault or problem with the X38 chipset. This was substantiated by the competitive performance in two of the three benchmark tests, and its great gaming performance.

In contrast to the mediocre stock speeds, the P5E3 is an absolute beast when overclocked, and is capable of pushing the FSB to unprecedented speeds. However, this aspect has to be tempered by the ridiculously high price: £230 for a single-CPU-socket motherboard is daylight robbery, especially as you'll shell out £300 for the DDR3 to go in it. That said, the P5E3 clearly demonstrates that the X38 has great potential, and it has certainly whetted our appetites for the forthcoming and significantly cheaper Asus Maximus.

• AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition - Processors
• Shuttle XPC SX48P2 Deluxe - Desktop PCs
• SilverStone Raven - Peripherals
• Raptor Gaming M3 Platinum - Peripherals
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 - Processors
• ATI Radeon HD 4670 - Graphics cards
• DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS - Motherboards