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It's November 2008, and we're pretty close to the end of the NDA ( Non-Disclosure Agreement ) for the Core i7 CPU series from Intel.
Is this the end of the Socket775 era ? Nope, not really. The new processors from Intel will be unveiled to the public soon and of course we're going to review them and some new motherboards with the LGA1366 socket. If you want the best, most expensive and newer processor you'll have to wait a bit and raise your budget.
The new Core i7 CPUs will be a tad faster in some areas ( scenarios ) and incredibly faster in other areas ( especially in server-orientated scenarios ), but you don't really have to get them if you're a not so demanding user ( well... in video encoding for example they can encode a video in 11 minutes instead of 17 minutes, on a clock per clock basis [ comparing the new Core i7 processors with a Core 2 Quad-Core { Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Extreme QX9650 / QX9770 } with both of them running at the same operating frequency ], but... do you really need to get the job done that fast ? If you're not a A/V Professional and you work in the industry, you don't really need them, you can do your things just fine with the current Core 2 Duo & Core 2 Quad processors ).
The Intel P45 Express Chipset is Intel's latest mainstream ( mid to high end ) chipset for the LGA775 CPUs, and is supposed to be very good in overclocking the newest Core 2 Quad 45nm CPUs ( hitting higher FSBs than the previously released chipsets, such as 965P/P35/X38/X48/etc average ).
The P45 Express Chipset supports both DDR2 and DDR3 RAM, and today we're going to take the Asus P5Q3 Deluxe ( Intel P45 + DDR3 ) motherboard for a ride!
The P5Q3 Deluxe features some new Asus features, the ExpressGate SSD ( a onboard SSD drive with a Slashdot linux O/S preloaded with a web browser, a image viewer, a Messaging application [ pidgin ] and Skype, bootable in 5 secs ), the new Asus Wireless Draft-n Adapter, and the Asus 6-engine EPU power saving controller.
If you're not a fan of DDR3 RAM, you can get the Asus P5Q Deluxe, the DDR2 version of their high-end P45 board.
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After spending a lot of my time with the Asus P5Q3 Deluxe WiFi-AP@n motherboard I think that I've seen both its good and "bad" side.
You know that I'm an open-minded person and I certainly say whatever I have to say no matter what.
Back on topic now, the Asus P5Q3 Deluxe is a decent motherboard, it's stable, has a lot of ports to satisfy all your needs, it is overclockable and relatively easy to setup.
It may not be the very best overclocking board to suit my extreme overclocking needs ( I'm talking about extreme overclocking with exotic and "temporary" cooling like Liquid Nitrogen and Dry Ice ), but it's a fine board for a 24/7 system overclocked or not.
The board did great with our Quad-Core processors, reaching some crazy high FSBs with relatively low voltages.
It also managed to retain stability at 550+ MHz FSBs with our Core 2 Duo CPUs with really low FSB & Chipset ( NorthBridge ) voltages, with the best part being that it could handle 575MHz FSB with all the settings ( except CPU & Memory Voltage ) at Auto.
The P5Q3 Deluxe gave us some pretty good results with various 2GB Dual Channel memory kits, but failed to reach higher than the average frequencies with 4 DIMMs.
That's not a problem because it doesn't matter. Whether you run your RAM at DDR3-1800 6-6-5-18 or DDR3-1500 7-6-6-21 it doesn't matter, your system's performance will be the same in most ( if not all ) desktop applications.
The bundled Wireless adapter is also pretty good, compared to their previous solutions hit twice the bandwidth and the signal quality was about 35% better in my testing.
Apart from a few problems, like the divider issue, which could easily be an isolated case ( I'm quite sure that there would be lots of people complaining in the forums if their board couldn't run their RAM at DDR3-1333 with their processor at stock [ 333MHz FSB ] ).
To sum it up, I have no hesitation to recommend this motherboard to any kind of user out there.
It can be set up easily for the newbies, it's a good and easy to overclock board for the average joe, it can reach very high frequencies, good enough to hit any Core 2 Duo/Quad/Extreme's limits on air cooling/water cooling/phase change cooling.
I wouldn't recommend this motherboard to the extreme overclockers ( I mean people who buy stuff just to overclock them and run various benchmarks with them ), there are better boards than the P5Q3 Deluxe in extreme overclocking ( like the Asus Rampage Extreme, the Asus P5E64 WS Evolution, the Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 and the Gigabyte GA-EP45T-Extreme ), but of course they're more expensive and using the top chipset for the LGA775 platform, the Intel X48.
