Thoughts
ASUS has effectively made its i925X-based P5AD2 Premium board redundant with the newer P5AD2-E Premium. The latter carries all the feature nicities of the former but adds in support for 266MHz FSB CPUs. As described, not only is this beneficial from a complete processor support point of view, it also allows the enthusiast to be safe in the knowledge that 200MHz FSB Pentium 4s, which is the vast majority of Intel Pentium 4 chips out there, can be overclocked by at least 33% before the motherboard becomes the limiting factor.Our quick overclocking test highlighted that 300MHz FSB isn't out of the question with better cooling, so, being an moderate enthusiast myself, I can't see the benefits of any i925X over the i925XE chipset other than, perhaps, price. Being a premium ASUS motherboard, the P5AD2-E Premium weighs in at around £170 all told. However, it must be noted that 925XE motherboard from top-tier manufacturers rarely list for less then £125 and many premium bundles from the likes of MSI and ABIT cross the £150 threshold.
ASUS has taken the simple step of updating its already impressive 925X Premium board with this incarnation. It's fast, solid and overclocks well. Users looking to migrate to a 925XE-based platform generally put features above cost. That said, ASUS delivers on most counts. Recommended.
