Thoughts
Intel's 900-series of chipsets have instigated one of the biggest changes in motherboard thinking in the last 10 years. Out goes AGP, DDR-I (on most boards) and, to some extent, PATA and PCI. Intel's taken note of bandwidth limitations inherent in a traditional motherboard's design and decided to rectify them in one go. Such a broad range of changes has reflected in mediocre Socket-T performance. Our benchmarks have shown that an price equivalent AMD Athlon 64 setup is faster, and in gaming much faster, than Intel's new premium package.It was inevitable that ASUS would release full retail motherboards for both Grantsdale (i915P) and Alderwood (i925X) chipsets. ASUS' design approach revolves around stacking as many value-adding features as is possible, and both boards utilise near-identical feature sets. The specifications' list is damn impressive, with triple RAID, dual Gigabit LAN, high-quality audio and FireWire800 heading the list. There's no doubt that ASUS had done a good job, features-wise.
What's difficult to understand is just how ASUS wants to position both premium boards. The company has waved some PAT-like magic, called Hyper Path 2, on both boards, which results in very similar benchmark performance. The P5GD2 Premium, using the inferior Grantsdale chipset, retails for around £30 lower than the P5AD2 Premium's £185 asking price. Why, then, if features and benchmark performance are indistinguishable, would one opt for the more expensive board?. That's a question that ASUS will have to answer.
There's also a question mark over both boards' overclocking potential. My testing showed that PCI Express-related problems hindered overclocking above 240MHz FSB. That suggests a non-working PCIe lock; not good news for any enthusiast. We hope ASUS manages to implement a true working lock in the very near future, as the platform seriously needs it.
Intel's 900-series of chipsets attempt to modernise motherboard design from almost every angle. The cost of such modernisation is mediocre speed and, perhaps, limited overclockability. ASUS has done a good job in releasing a couple of boards that are packed to the rafters with useful features, from dual Gigabit LAN to integrated WiFi. Given the P5GD2 Premium's P5AD2 Alderwood-matching performance, it has to be the pick of the two. So if you absolutely want to run the latest cutting-edge kit, it's a good a choice as any. My reservations, however, lie more with Intel's chipset than with ASUS' efforts.
- ASUS P5GD2 Premium i915P
- ASUS P5AD2 Premium i925X
