Asus introduces the P5K Deluxe motherboard which uses Intel's latest P35 (Bearlake) chipset.

INTRODUCTION

Motherboards using the long awaited Intel's Bearlake P35 chipset is only now becoming available through mass production from all the major manufacturers including Asus, Abit, Gigabyte and MSI. The Bearlake P35 chipset was first show cased at the Cebit 2007 Exhibition earlier this year, and one of the main features of this chipset, includes the support for DDR3 ram, a higher FSB of 1333Mhz and native support for Intel's Quad Core processors. It attracted some attention, but with limited DDR3 samples available, manufacturers failed to have any "LIVE" demo on display.

Asus, being one of the pioneers of PC products, wasted no time in producing and releasing their latest motherboard series that's equipped with the Bearlake P35 chipset ... the P5K Deluxe and the P5K3 Deluxe. The main difference between the two only comes down to the the type of ram they support. The P5K Deluxe supports DDR2-800 officially, and native DDR2-1066 (no need to overclock). While the P5K3 Deluxe has full support for the new, up-and-coming DDR3-1066.

The Asus P5K Deluxe is absolutely packed with features. To name a few, these include integrated 54G wireless LAN card, 2 eSATA ports, dual gigabit ethernet LAN, firewire and digital SPDIF/optical connectors. You also get all the extras from Asus, like backplates for USB, and firewire, plenty of SATA power and data cables ... and of course silent heat-pipe cooling.

The P35 chipset is really something of an odd ball. From what I can gather, the P35 is more of a stepping stone for Intel's next-gen chipset. Intel needed a chipset that can support DDR3 ram ... so rather than to rush something out, they used an existing chipset design and added the support DDR3 ram.

There have been reports from other sites, that the P35 chipset is merely a P965 in disguise, with the only difference being the added support for DDR3 ram. Some have even said that the performance was much poorer than the current Intel i975X chipset. Whatever the rumour, one thing's for sure ... the P35 is Intel's latest chipset that supports both DDR2 and DDR3 ram, and is aimed at the performance and enthusiast market. Whether consumers will adopt this chipset with open arms is something we will have to wait an see.

OK, Let's not waste any more time and take a closer look at the specifications of the Asus P5K deluxe ...