Intel rules the roost when it comes to pure performance on their CPUs and motherboard chipsets. The Core i7 CPUs along with the X58 chipset outpace the fastest AMD CPUs for that market space by quite a bit. One of the issues with the new platform is the Cost of Ownership. While a $200 Core i7 920 CPU by itself isn't that expensive, motherboard and a set of triple channel DDR3 memory can get expensive.

On the other hand, a good Core 2 Quad CPU with dual channel DDR2 memory and a decent P45 chipset motherboard can be had for much less than the $600-700 the Core i7 setup would entail. ASUS is a motherboard and computer component supplier that is the number one motherboard supplier in the world with one out of every three computers built today using their motherboards. They recognize the fact that the market has room for an inexpensive alternative to the Core i7 platform.

Today the P45 chipset is a mature mainstream chipset used in many of the motherboards of the previous generation. Rather than discard the chipset, ASUS has released several new motherboards using it such as the P5Q Pro Turbo, the Maximus II Gene and a few others. These offer a mainstream alternative to those not wanting to spend nearly $1000 on a new system as a Core i7 system might have. Performance of the Core 2 Quads and Duos on the market is still faster than the equivalent AMD platform, making this a good choice. Today's review is on the ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard.
•Intel LGA-775 Core 2 Processors
•PCIe 2.0
•Dual Channel DDR2-1300
•ATI CrossFireX
•8-Phase Power Design
•TurboV/Turbo Key
•ASUS EPU
•ASUS Drive
•100% All High-Quality conductive polymer capacitors
•Express Gate
•ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution
•Q-Shield
•Q-Connector



•EZ-Flash 2
•OC Profile
•ASUS Crystal Sound
•MyLogo2
•SATA on the Go
•IEEE-1394a
•HDA
•S/PDIF-out on Back I/O Port
•GreenASUS
The P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard uses the Intel P45 chipset. This offers support for Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad CPUs and some of the earlier CPUs on the market. The P45 chipset was the mainstream version of the X48 enthusiast chipset for the Intel market. Today, Intel has moved on to the X58 chipset for the enthusiast market and the P55 chipset that is coming in a few months to address the mainstream end of the market.

The motherboard supports up to 16GB of DDR2-1300MHz DDR2 memory. As most motherboards have moved on to DDR3 memory this is both good and bad for the enthusiast looking at this board. The good news is if you have some DDR2 memory from your old computer it may work with this motherboard. The bad news is it will likely provide less memory bandwidth than with better memory. ASUS has qualified a large list of DDR2 memory for this board including some DDR2-1300MHz memory.
The first consumer video card company to release a video card with multiple graphics chips to improve game performance was a company known as 3DFX. Unfortunately they are gone, leaving NVIDIA with their SLI solution and ATI with their CrossFireX solution for multiple graphics chips. Intel adopted Crossfire support with their 975X motherboard chipset. The P45 chipset the P5Q Pro Turbo supports two ATI cards operating in CrossFireX mode.

ASUS's TurboV is their overclocking tool in Windows. It allows 1MHz incremental increases in the FSB and voltage changes of 0.02v. What's nice about TurboV is you don't have to reboot the system after changing a setting. Turbo Key allows the user to turn their Power button into an overclocking button. The environment is one of the concerns of most computing companies and ASUS designed the Energy Processing Unit 2(EPU) to deliver lower power on idle. Express Gate is ASUS's customized operating system that is loaded onto a flash drive and boots within 5 seconds or so. This works well but the flash drive is not included on the P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard.