Asus P5WDG2-WS: Intel 975X goes to Work

by Gary Key on 12/6/2005 12:05 AM EST
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  • Tujan - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    Can you tell us what power supply was used on this Asus multi-layered board ? What kind of power muscle did get used. ? [ ]

    Thanks.Didn't see it right off in table of 'Setup.
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    We used the OCZ Power Stream 520. It is our standard power supply for testing. I have listed in the overclocking setup but not in the regular test setup. I will add that line in the next article.

    Thank you.
  • Kensei - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Cool quote from the man often referred to as the first US psychologist. The psychology building at Harvard, where he was a professor, is also named after him. And I'm pretty sure he got that honor without giving them a ton of money.

    Kensei
  • Saist - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    just wondering how the board would compare using the Via Envy HT-S sound chip...
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Would a Chaintech AV710 satisfy your question? ;->
  • Hikari - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    I have some horrible 945G board (don't ask, I use a 7800GT lol), and I can't even run PC2-6400 over 667, nor will the computer not crash if I put the bus over 205. :(

    So when are the 975x boards supposed to come out? I see some of the Intel boxes listed now in froogle (not usually in stock though), but not from Gigabyte, Asus, or anyone else yet. :) I'd be happy if it is before the 21st (my birthday). This Asus board looks like it'll be exceedingly expensive, though.
  • rrcn - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Boards featuring the 975X chipset should hit retail stores sometime this week. We'll see...
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    The 975x boards should be shipping in volume by the end of the year. We expect to see a small sampling of boards in the retail channel as early as next week but as always that could change.
  • IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Right... I am gonna overclock my workstation system by 30%....

    "I'll overclock my server by 20% when 4 million people depend on it NOT TO CRASH!!"
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    quote:

    Right... I am gonna overclock my workstation system by 30%....
    :->

    I know the overclock testing was a bit much for a "workstation" board but it does give an indication to the quality of the components used on the board.
  • Cygni - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    Workstation /= server...

    Overclocking isnt wacky in the worstation world at all. Picture a guy using 3dsmax everyday in his personal studio, or rendering TV streams in Maya, or doing texture work, or compiling source codes at a game studio...

    Overclocking in the Workstation market is probably ALOT more common than people would think. Take overclocking that Pressler. That big of an overclock could mean whole DAYS of extra time per year that the CPU would have otherwise been spending cranking away on rendering. Thats a serious gain.

    I dont think many serious servers will find a board like this one in em, to boot. Its lacking alot of features that a serious server hosting lots of users would deffinitly feel the need for... like built in SCSI, multi cpu support, RAM support over 8gig/4slot, etc.

    On the other hand, this is a near perfect workstation board. High clocked RAM support for both ECC and non ECC. Non buffered memory. Both SLI and Crossfire support at 8x/8x. Plenty of SATA II plugs for cheap storage.

    I took notice of the OC results and settings, and i like what i saw. :)
  • Cygni - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    That was a reply to the poster one level up, sorry. :D

    Thanks for taking the time to do the OC tests, however. Some people out there did like to see em.
  • Zebo - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    If those 4.8ghz air overclocks are normal intel won't have to wait for conroe to take back enthusiasts crown. That's amazing.
  • Leper Messiah - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Hell yeah. 4.8GHz on air with Dual core is a 20% over what an 840EE will do. And I bet that with nF4 and a DFI 5.0+ is possible. oooh. Sexay.
  • stephenbrooks - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Yeah, I'm wondering if the Pentium D 920 might become a new "favourite" chip for them to play with :)
  • Niv KA - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Talking about Conroe, isn't the 975X supposed to support upgradability to it
  • xtremejack - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    If you look at the chipset price guides for this month by Anand, 975x will not support Conroe
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Intel has not officially confirmed either way on the 975X to Conroe path. We have heard both a positive and negative on this but from different sources. As soon as we have a clear path it will be posted.
  • Niv KA - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    That would mean I could buy a 975X based MB with a Celeron and buy a Conroe in the summer without having to buy a new motherbord and all
  • Calin - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    When the graphs shows both min framerate and max framerate, I suggest that ordering should be done by the min framerate instead of the max framerate. Only on F.E.A.R. Performance test on the 9th page the results will change, and only for the top two boards - however, I prefer to have good consistent high framerate in the worst cases than extremely high framerate in the best conditions.
    Thanks
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    We are still working on a way to properly show this in the graph engine.

    Thank you.
  • imaheadcase - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    I saw this article 2 times put up already. anyone else seeing this?

    Last half a dozen reviews show up, i see people comment on them, then they disappear and come back latter. weird
  • wilburpan - Monday, December 5, 2005 - link

    According to your Ethernet tests:

    Gigabyte GA-G1975X: 951.4 Mb/s
    Asus P5WDG2-WS: 950.3 MB/s

    Gigabyte GA-G1975X: 16.04% cpu utilization
    Asus P5WDG2-WS: 23.78%

    And in your text:

    "The Marvell 88E8062 PCI Express Dual LAN solution exhibits slightly higher throughput along with very good CPU utilization rates. The Broadcom 5789KFB option on the Gigabyte board offers excellent throughput, but at a slightly higher CPU utilization than on other solutions."

    With the data you have, it seems the exact opposite conclusion should be made.
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Hi,

    Unfortunately, our document engine had a mind of its own last night when the article went up the first time as it was not completed yet. The last couple of pages are correct now along with additional information that was not available last night. We had to wait on Asus to provide shipping drivers and Marvell firmware which changed the original scores (went down but stability increased). The new graphs were correct but my text changes had not caught up yet. We have been informed by Asus the 88E8066 chipset will actually be used on the board in the near future.

    Thank you.
  • BrownTown - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    interesting stuff for the Presler there, I eagerly await your new article :p
  • DanDaMan315 - Monday, December 5, 2005 - link

    yay
  • Vegito - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Juicy.. I just need these pcix + pcie board for an amd machine.. :)
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    We highly suggested this to Asus. ;->
  • Pirks - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Many many years from now we'll get another Asus or any other r333w1 mobo (DFI LanParty Ultra 3.0? :) with quantum 1000 GHz CPU, UltraWideFirewire 24000, USB 8.0, built in laser keyboard link and wireless 80" display link... and a LOT more... and....

    ...AND...

    ...and A FLOPPY CONNECTOR!!!
    and AN LPT PORT!!!!!
    and PS/2 JACKS!!!!!!
    AND TWO, LISTEN TO THIS - !TWO! COM PORTS!!!!

    bwahahahahahahaaaaa

    I just can't look at all the museum artefacts on these so called "professional" mobos, when Macs have only USB and FW as their standard interfaces for years!

    Yea I know Mac hardware is sucky/expensive, no cool gaming and stuff, but... I really understand well some of my Mac using buddies when they visit me while I'm working on one of my PC's "professional" mobos (upgrading heatsink or something), and they see one of these huge LPT connectors and they're like "WTF???!?!?"

    I know noone cares about this stuff, noone will ever make decent and inexpensive legacy free PC mobo, just wanted to vent it off... thanks :)
  • Saist - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    obviously you have never tried to run a data center, or ever bought hardware on a budget, nor that you run windows...

    or are you conviently forgetting that Windows has the worst in-box hardware support available and that to run many SATA drives requires installing drivers as though they are SCISI devices rather than on-chip devices.

    Or that not everybody can afford to upgrade to a new laser jet / ink jet / Hp OfficeJet at every new release, and that for many a business the stock dot matrix offers the best price/performance and there is no reason to replace a perfectly functioning dot/matrix printer for something that costs a lot more to run.

    or that usb support for keyboards is a little spotty in the Microsoft bootloader if you do try to run multiple versions of windows

    Or that many older devices still require the com ports.

    Sure, if you are building a brand new computer and have no hardware you ever intend to run again, running a legacy free system is a good idea.

    But, when you only have 5% of the market at best...

    it just doesn't make sense.

    Sorry, but I find the laughter and your comments to be so far off base... I can only sigh and wish I had your budget to spend.
  • Pirks - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link

    quote:

    obviously you have never tried to run a data center

    So data centers are built with floppies, COM mice and LPT printers. Great! Very nice that I don't run one, thank you for enlightening me.
    quote:

    or ever bought hardware on a budget

    FYI I've got ABIT AT7 mobo (the _ONLY_ legacy free mobo ever created) very cheap a couple of years ago and it was running all my 4-5 year old hardware like cheap USB kbd and old second hand USB mouse. And I still DON'T even consider wasting my money on Athlon 64 or any fancy PCIe stuff, and with all this I still sound Bleeding Edge Hardware Freak for you? Are you from a PC museum or what? Can you even find COM mice these days? I'm not buying anything that's above lower 30% of price range, so I won't even consider mainstream stuff these days. You seriously overestimate my financial abilities and more important my will to upgrade (I won't fix my PC unless it's broken)
    quote:

    nor that you run windows..

    XP SP2 here :P
    quote:

    or are you conviently forgetting that Windows has the worst in-box hardware support available and that to run many SATA drives requires installing drivers as though they are SCISI devices rather than on-chip devices.

    I'd do that by patching my XP install CD or by using USB floppy (if it works, not sure about this), or if it doesn't work I'd replace my boot HDD with PATA one, given that it's not any slower than SATA these days :P So floppy is still not necessary WHILE every mobo out there includes PATA, and please note that I didn't include PATA in my Stupid Obsolete Interfaces list :) PATA is obsolete, yes, but it's still widely used everywhere (in almost every DVD burner, jeez, that's what I call LONGEVITY!) unlike LPT and COM and floppy and other museum stuff.
    quote:

    Or that not everybody can afford to upgrade to a new laser jet / ink jet / Hp OfficeJet at every new release, and that for many a business the stock dot matrix offers the best price/performance and there is no reason to replace a perfectly functioning dot/matrix printer for something that costs a lot more to run.

    I'd say stick those LPT plugs onto the cheap "business" mobos, but please let us breathe fresher air with the "advanced", overclocker or whatever you call 'em mobos. There is a place for the old mobos with legacy stuff, but including them on those ubercool silver/gold advanced P4 975X or nForce4 SLI Ultra Extra boards? Do you seriously think the guy with dual 7800GTX setup uses COM mouse, LPT printer and other "data center" accessories? Hahahahahaaaa
    quote:

    or that usb support for keyboards is a little spotty in the Microsoft bootloader if you do try to run multiple versions of windows

    Never tried that. I only run XP SP2 and never ever run into issues with its bootloader and my USB kbd, maybe 98/95 one has issues, dunno. Anyway, if you still use 95/98 then ok, you need COM and LPT as well.
    quote:

    Or that many older devices still require the com ports.

    It would be hard to persuade me someone still uses COM mice, their mechanics must be ground into dust by now :) And even if there are some ancient PDAs that don't have USB 1.x then there are USB-COM adapters, so COM is not needed too (btw there are USB-LPT adapters as well, for your data centers :P)
    quote:

    Sure, if you are building a brand new computer and have no hardware you ever intend to run again, running a legacy free system is a good idea. But, when you only have 5% of the market at best... it just doesn't make sense.


    New computers are only 5% of the market? All these Dells, Compacs, HPs and many more, they are only 5%? OK, so 95% of the market are what? Retrofitted IBM PC XTs? Hahahahaaa...
    quote:

    Sorry, but I find the laughter and your comments to be so far off base... I can only sigh and wish I had your budget to spend.

    Man you have no idea about my budget, really really! I run ABIT KW7, and looks like Socket A is my choice for at least 12 months from now if not more, depending on how things will turn out with Vista. You wanna know my top list of mobos I'd buy right now if I had the money? Number one - Chaintech S1689, dirt cheap 939 mobo, only 50 bucks or so, just stick cheapest Venice 3000 in there and fly away. Number two - ABIT AN8-V. Expensive bad boy, whole 80 bucks!... but it's from ABIT and so it's again ALMOST legacy free (damn I hate you floppy and PS/2!) so this one I'd take if I had BIG money to swap my old AGP video with some cheap PCIe 6600GT or somethin'... and you call me a Big Budget Guy. Hahahaaa... can't stop laughing, sorry :)

    OK, if you really insist, I'd agree that legacy stuff has its place in PCs and will have place for many many years to come, but including these 20-year old COM and LPT plugs on the so called "advanced" nForce4 SLI Ultra Extra whatever boards? Hahahahahaaaa.... sorry again, just can't stop laughing...

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