Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
Overclocking
As history shows, Asus enthusiast motherboards generally overclock pretty well, and the P5K Deluxe WiFi is no exception.
I was able to reach a stable 485x7 - namely a 1940MHz FSB (not too shabby at all!) which is an excellent result. Reportedly and supposedly, other people have reached 530MHz, and even higher. However, keeping in mind that I only count stable results; I was able to post and even get to the Windows desktop at over 500MHz, but without real stability. Perhaps some better cooling or subsequent BIOS revisions would allow for stable performance at that staggering 500MHz plus FSB speed, however given that we tried two boards, with multiple BIOS revisions, it would be fair to say that everyone cannot expect to reach 500+ MHz with good stability. Please let us know in our forums how high you were able to go - but also remember that we are only interested in stable results, so it has to survive many hours of stress tests to qualify as stable.
But the one major shortcoming of the P5K Deluxe is that it appears to deliver a higher Vcore than is selected in the "Jumper Free" menu - or CPUZ is not reading the Vcore correctly. The heatpipe based heat sinks work well, however when highly overclocked, they get too hot to keep fingers on for any period of time! This trend towards overheated motherboards for me is disturbing, since we saw the same problem overclocking NVIDIA 680i based boards, which are even hotter than the P5K by quite a margin!
While the results at 485x7 were very good, I wanted to see if I could do better; and I was able to get the system almost 100% stable at 450x8 1080-4-4-4-12. But alas I had a crash in the Business Winstone Content Creation benchmark during one of the runs, so I cannot in good conscience call it 100% stable.
How did I get the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi stable at 485x7?
Your mileage may of course vary, however I can't complain about a 3.395Mhz Core 2 Duo overclock running with a 1940MHz FSB!
It would not surprise me at all if a bit more cooling was able to get 3.6GHz stable.
Conclusion
The P5K Deluxe WiFi follows in the tradition of Asus enthusiast level motherboards by providing a full complement of features along with very good performance overall, the end result being excellent performance for more modern games and multimedia. You basically cannot go wrong by selecting this board - however in all fairness, I need only to point out that the Gigabyte P35-DS3R I recently tested ended up with a higher stable maximum FSB, and while it is not quite as feature full as the Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi, it also sports a lower price tag to go with its slightly better performance.
You should also carefully consider the slightly older, but still excellent Asus P5B Deluxe which is available for a lower price - as you could see in the benchmark results, it usually outperformed the newer P5K Deluxe - and the only significant difference between the P35 and P965 chipsets is DDR3 support - which is not likely to matter before DDR3-1600 - and PCIE 2.0 - which again does not make a lot of difference at this time.
Early in the testing I had some memory performance issues due to the old BIOS shipped with the board, and Asus was quite responsive with sending me not only a new BIOS (twice; 304 and 311), but also a new board - just in case - so that I could complete the testing.
And of quite recently, we have *finally* received some DDR3 memory, so I can now get on with testing the P5K3 Deluxe WiFi - the sibling of the P5K Deluxe that uses DDR 3 memory. It will be interesting to see for myself how DDR2 and DDR3 compare at this early stage in DDR3's development and availability. I look forward to that prospect of competition among the various memory module manufacturers, and perhaps the eventuality that will lead us to 2000MHz+ DDR3 modules. When Nehalem comes out with its integrated memory controllers, DDR3 will hopefully be available at very high speeds with lower latencies than the currently prevalent CAS7 and CAS9 - because that monster of a chip should finally be able to make use of the full potential bandwidth of DDR3 with an on-die memory controller.
The future does indeed look bright. For now, the P5K Deluxe is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a feature rich enthusiasts' board.
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