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Representing DDR3 technologies, we have the new Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi AP and the Corsair TWIN3X2048-1333C9DHX. 

Representing DDR2 technologies, we have the new Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi AP and the Corsair's TWIN2X2048-8888.

To make the comparison as fair as we could, we kept everything we could the same - so we are using the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi AP motherboard we've reviewed, along with the excellent Corsair XMS2x2048 PC-8888 4-4-4-12 modules for comparison - pitting some of the best low latency DDR2 modules from the same manufacturer against their new high speed DDR3 modules.

In order to keep this article to a managable size, I'd like to refer you to our Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi AP review for more details of the Asus P5K3 Deluxe WiFi AP motherboard as well; that board is the DDR2 version of the board used in this review, with the only significant differences being DDR2 vs. DDR3 support, two extra SATA2 cables, a small fan, and the more impressive heatpipe & coolers on the P5K3. I will of course cover the overclocking capabilites of this board separately in this article :-)

As you can see from the photo below, the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi has a SERIOUS number of heatpipes and heatsinks on it. Initially I was worried that our Noctua 12 coolers would not fit due to the sheer size of the heatpipes/heatsinks - but fortunately the cooler fit just fine.

All the attention paid to cooling was a promising sign for getting good overclocks out of the board.

Here is a closer look at all that cooling near the processor. Notice all the solid state capacitors too.

The Southbridge needs less cooling, but it still gets a heatpipe assist. I like how the SATA connectors were grouped, and the position of the IDE connector is also decent.

Next, we see a lot of thought has been given to I/O expansion capabilities. You can see the tiny Asus WiFi card on the top right side of the left image; and you can also see the blue PCIe 16x slot for a GPU, and the black PCIe 4x slot (with 16x connector) for a second GPU or high bandwidth PCIe card. Two PCIe 1x and three PCI slots complete the picture; for a total of seven expansion slots.

The I/O backpanel has a PS/2 keyboard connector, but wisely foregoes a PS/2 mouse connector for two USB connectors - most mice are USB based these days, and one can never have enough USB2 ports! Two gigabit Ethernet connectors, another four USB2, two eSATA, one FireWire six audio connectors and one WiFi antenna jack complete the picture.

I thought it was worth showing the eight voltage regulators on the back of the board.

Here we can see the DDR3 sockets, the ATX power connector, and the obsolete floppy connector.

As you can see, there is little difference in the physical DIMM slots between DDR2 and DDR3.

The only difference between the motherboards is the type of memory socket they use and a slight difference in the heat pipes. We even used the same E6400 processor, hard drive, video card, power supply etc. for the comparison - the only variable is the memory (and the slight difference in the BIOS for accomodating DDR3 vs. DDR2)