THE NEW CHIPSETS are upon us: Intel's P45 chip set promises to further the lega¬cy of its impressive predecessor, while Nvidia's 790i Ultra is the newest iteration in a well received series. We pitted the Asus P5Q Pro (based on the Intel P45) and the MSI P7N2 Diamond (Nvidia 790i Ultra) against each other, and the results were very interesting.

The Chipsets
The P45 has many improve¬ments over the P35. Most notable are the addition of an unlocked PCi-Express x16lane. This basically means that you can run two ATI cards in Crossfire with¬out taking a performance hit. Of course, there's no support for Nvidia's SU. Since this chip set is based on a new (65nm) manufac¬turing process, it also runs a lot cooler than previous models. The main drawback is that it does not" officially" support the latest CPUs that need 1600 MHz Front Side Bus support.
Nvidia's 790i Ultra is aimed at enthusiasts who want the latest and greatest chipset. It supports DDR3, SU in both triple and quad graphics configurations and of course the latest 1600 Mhz processors. The Ultra variant is also very good for over-clocking. It's a lot more expensive than the P5Q Pro, as benefits its status as a premium board.

Performance
Intel's P35 chipset was an excellent product, and the P45 is cast in the same mould. Despite using DDR2, which is slower than the DDR3 RAM on the MSI board, it outpaced the 790i Ultra in almost all the benchmarks we ran. We tested the boards with an Intel QX9650 Core 2 Extreme CPU, 2 GB of Kingston HyperX RAM(DDR2 and DDR3), an Nvidia 8800 GTX, and a Western Digital Raptor HOD. All this was powered by a 1300 watt PSU from Tagan-the BZ1300. The Asus P5Q Pro started out leading in WoridBench, with a score of 125 to 105 for the P7N2 Diamond. A

THE ASUS P5Q Pro is blazingly fast. The new P45 chipset is a great foundation for a powerfuL workstation, and the power saving fea¬tures of this board help.
twenty-point difference is quite substantial, and it set the tone for the rest of the benchmarks. PC Mark 2005 showed a difference of 774 points, with the P5Q Pro scoring 10217 PC Marks, while the P7N2 scored 9443. CineBench showed the biggest differ¬ence of all the benchmarks, with the P5Q Pro outs cor¬ing the P7N2 by over 4000 points. Sysmark 2007 and our gaming tests merely highlighted the superiority of the P45 chipset, with 10-20 percent improve¬ments across the board.

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Design and Features The P7N2 wins on the design front by offering many more features: Two eSATA ports as opposed to none on the P5Q, two gigabit Ethernet interfaces while the P5Q has only one, and a separate sound card, the Creative X-FI, while the P5Q supports only onboard audio. The MSI P7N2 also has support for SU, and the box contains all the cables that

THE MSI P7N2 Diamond is chock full of features, and is a great choice if you want the latest Nvidia chipset with support for DDR 3 and SLI..
you need and then some. The circu-pipe cooling system for the chipset on the P7N2 is quite striking, and works well. The Asus P5Q Pro is a lot simpler, but it has a very good board layout.

Conclusion
Overall, the Asus P5Q Pro wins. It's much cheaper, and quite a bit faster. It does lack a lot of the features on the more advanced MSI P7N2 Diamond, but we pre¬fer the faster performance.