11-Way P45 Motherboard Shootout

P5Q Deluxe Onboard Devices

The P5Q Deluxe makes one sacrifice compared to the Maximus II Formula in its controllers by putting the second Gigabit Network port on a PCI interface. PCI has a limit of one gigabit total bandwidth, rather than the bi-directional transfers of PCI Express. The saved PCI Express lane is instead routed to the x4-bandwidth third x16 slot, but that particular slot will drop to x1 mode whenever any other x1 slot is occupied.

Asus has tried to rid the back panels of its product line of legacy ports, but retains a single PS/2 port that is now color coded for use with either a keyboard or mouse. Either use had worked previously, but the company had simply failed to indicate that in its earlier color coding. Typists can keep their favorite old keyboards, and gamers can keep their favorite old mice, but you don’t get both.

Instead the focus is now on USB 2.0, with six ports supporting modern peripherals. Coaxial and optical connectors supply digital audio, while the other side of the port panel has six analog connections for full support of 8-channel (7.1 surround) output plus 4-channel (stereo microphone and line-level) input. Two Gigabit network ports (one with full bi-directional bandwidth), an IEEE-1394 FireWire port, and a single eSATA port fill the remaining space.

Marvell’s 88SE6121 provides the interfaces for the P5Q Deluxe Ultra ATA, eSATA, and internal SteelVine SATA port multiplier.

The Sil5723 SteelVine controller turns one port into two, while adding advance features such as drive cascading and hardware RAID 0/1 options. Everything attached to it appears as a single “SteelVine” drive to the chipset and OS, minimizing overhead.

Hiding between the P45 Express northbridge and rear panel analog audio ports, the Marvell 88E8056 gets full bi-directional bandwidth from its PCI Express x1 interface.

The second Gigabit Ethernet controller, a Marvell 88E8001, is limited to one gigabit combined bandwidth.

Formerly an Agere part, the LSI FW3227 IEEE-1394 FireWire controller makes the best of its PCI interface.

An ADI AD2000BX audio codec has advanced features such as support for EAX 4.0 sound effects, but only through software emulation. This is also true of lower-cost Creative products such as the X-Fi Xtreme Audio, however, and Asus feels confident enough in this codec that the company uses it in its latest audio riser card as well.