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The Intel P35 chipset holds many of the characteristics that had made its predecessors -- the P965 and P975 chipsets -- very popular.  The P35's improvements over its predecessors includes 1333MHz FSB speeds, native DDR3 memory support, and the potential compatibility with upcoming Intel processor revisions. Specifically, Intel will be launching their 45nm processor line up in the next couple of months, and the low VCore voltage requirements for those upcoming chips; Penryn and Penryn XE for laptops, Wolfdale and the Yorkfeild XE for desktop systems (both running at 1333MHz FSB), and the Wolfdale-DP Dual Core, with the Yorkfeild and Harpertown series of Xeon Quad Core processors for the server environment are still a few months away.

The chipset does have the somewhat dubious distinction of DDR3 memory support, which is at present a mixed bag of high frequencies, higher latencies and even higher prices. I could elaborate further, but to simplify, I'll just refer readers to our recent article entitled "DDR2 vs. DDR3: The Battle of Latency vs. Bandwidth".

The Asus Blitz Extreme has taken full advantage of the P35 chipset as we can see in the rather lengthy feature set below.

The Intel P35 northbridge and the ICH9R southbridge.

Storage seems wholly typical with 6 SATA ports, 1 IDE port, 1 floppy port and 2 eSATA ports for external storage. The 0, 1, 5 and 10 RAID functionality is nice.

In terms of audio, the board features a SupremeFX II add-on card for 8-channel surround. There's even extended features such as on-board temperature probes, the LCD poster, the Fusion Block cooling system and a host of other ports to plug into.

Unfortunately, the Intel P35 chipset falls behind in terms of available PCI-e lanes, with only 22 available to be divided between the likes of graphics, memory and other on-board necessities. But with the Asus Blitz Extreme motherboard, Asus has taken a decidedly different approach to the PCI-e divisions with a feature they have termed Crosslink Technology.

Typically, the two PCI-e slots available on a P35 chipset based motherboard will run at 16x and 4x respectively. The Asus Blitz however has both PCI-e slots running at equal 8x by 8x speeds for a little CrossFire/Crosslink action. It may not begin to compare to the much more expensive NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset and its 46 PCI-e lanes but it's a start. Yes, 46 lanes would allow for 16x by 16x SLI graphics glory, but that supposed and implied performance advantage is in reality quite the minimal. So many should be pleased with the Asus Blitz and this new feature.

Now, I could delve ever further into the features and selling points of the Asus Blitz Extreme motherboard, but I think a simple inspection is in order. We'll start with all of the bundled hardware first, and there's a tonne of it.