All, this might be an old news, just thought I'd share anyway
Just got reply from ASUS support on my question about QX9650 support:

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Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry, sir, currently this motherboard does not support this CPU, but we are working to upgrage a new BIOS which can support this CPU, please keep updated from us.


Sincerely and Merry Christmas,

Cooper
ASUS Customer Service Center (Shanghai , China)
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Take it for what it is worth. These guys are pretty responsive and from my experience (may be I am just lucky) they eventually deliver what they promise. It might take time though :-). My take that it won't happen until Intel releases new 45nm CPUs early next year

I did had a chance to play with 45nm CPU on this board using BIOS 2403. I managed to get it up and running and in general it works as advertised - ~20% or more performance gain vs my old QX6700 (B3), ~30W less power consumption, etc. BIOS is clearly not there though - it required CMOS reset each time it did not like the changes I made in the CPU configuration in the BIOS. In particular, it hated me fiddling with the ratio multiplier.