Asus P5WDG2-WS: Intel 975X goes to Work
by Gary Key on December 6, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Asus P5WDG2-WS deserves serious consideration if you are an Intel user needing to build a workstation or office platform. The ability to fully utilize your existing PCI based cards is definitely a plus as the current market for PCI-E based peripherals is minimal. The performance and stability of the board was outstanding in all testing phases and should be an indicator of the quality of this board. However, we see this board having a limited market and anxiously await the arrival of the Asus P5WD2-E enthusiast board.
With that said, let's move on to our performance opinions regarding this board.
In the graphics area, the inclusion of two physical PCI Express x16 slots that fully support x8 bandwidth operation for two graphics cards is an important step for Intel with this chipset. The board fully supports ATI CrossFire mode in our testing and can unofficially support NVIDIA SLI with the proper BIOS and graphics driver set. However, we have our doubts that NVIDIA will license, certify, and sanction SLI operation on the Intel platform anytime soon.
In the on-board audio area, this board has an excellent implementation of the Realtek ALC882 High Definition Audio codec. The audio output of this codec in the music, video, and gaming areas is very good while performance in certain games has improved tremendously with the R1.27 driver release. If you plan on playing on-line, we highly suggest a dedicated sound card at this time, but the onboard capabilities of these chipsets will satisfy the majority of users.
In the storage area, the Asus board offers a wide variety of storage options with additional SATA RAID ports. The board fully offers Intel's excellent Matrix RAID system and offers Hot Swap, NCQ, and 3Gb/s capability. Asus supplements the Intel SATA II capability with the Marvell 88SE6141 SATA II chipset featuring support for Hot Swap, NCQ, and 3Gb/s operation. The board offers the standard eight Intel USB ports and two IEEE 1394a ports utilizing the TI TSB43AB22 chipset. However, we believe that Firewire 800 should have been offered on the Asus P5WDG-WS board, since it is their premium offering.
In the performance area, the Asus P5WDG-WS consistently offered excellent performance while exceeding the Gigabyte GA-G1 975x and the P5N32-SLI at times. Asus offers their HyperPath3 BIOS option that effectively reduces memory latencies even further on the Intel 975X chipset. The board's performance with the Presler CPU was excellent and is an indication of a well engineered solution.
We have to give Asus credit for bringing an Intel based workstation board to market at this time, considering the performance advantages that AMD holds in this area currently. The Intel 975X chipset is on a level playing field in performance with the NVIDIA nForce4 Intel Edition SLI in most areas based upon our current testing. The NVIDIA platform is still the preferred choice for gaming if you are interested in SLI capability. However, once ATI launches their X1800 CrossFire Edition solution, then the Intel 975X based boards will deserve a second look for those needing multi-GPU capabilities. Or, if our idea of sanctioning SLI on the Intel 975X platform comes as a revelation to NVIDIA, then we can have the best of both worlds.
The Asus P5WDG2-WS deserves serious consideration if you are an Intel user needing to build a workstation or office platform. The ability to fully utilize your existing PCI based cards is definitely a plus as the current market for PCI-E based peripherals is minimal. The performance and stability of the board was outstanding in all testing phases and should be an indicator of the quality of this board. However, we see this board having a limited market and anxiously await the arrival of the Asus P5WD2-E enthusiast board.
With that said, let's move on to our performance opinions regarding this board.
In the graphics area, the inclusion of two physical PCI Express x16 slots that fully support x8 bandwidth operation for two graphics cards is an important step for Intel with this chipset. The board fully supports ATI CrossFire mode in our testing and can unofficially support NVIDIA SLI with the proper BIOS and graphics driver set. However, we have our doubts that NVIDIA will license, certify, and sanction SLI operation on the Intel platform anytime soon.
In the on-board audio area, this board has an excellent implementation of the Realtek ALC882 High Definition Audio codec. The audio output of this codec in the music, video, and gaming areas is very good while performance in certain games has improved tremendously with the R1.27 driver release. If you plan on playing on-line, we highly suggest a dedicated sound card at this time, but the onboard capabilities of these chipsets will satisfy the majority of users.
In the storage area, the Asus board offers a wide variety of storage options with additional SATA RAID ports. The board fully offers Intel's excellent Matrix RAID system and offers Hot Swap, NCQ, and 3Gb/s capability. Asus supplements the Intel SATA II capability with the Marvell 88SE6141 SATA II chipset featuring support for Hot Swap, NCQ, and 3Gb/s operation. The board offers the standard eight Intel USB ports and two IEEE 1394a ports utilizing the TI TSB43AB22 chipset. However, we believe that Firewire 800 should have been offered on the Asus P5WDG-WS board, since it is their premium offering.
In the performance area, the Asus P5WDG-WS consistently offered excellent performance while exceeding the Gigabyte GA-G1 975x and the P5N32-SLI at times. Asus offers their HyperPath3 BIOS option that effectively reduces memory latencies even further on the Intel 975X chipset. The board's performance with the Presler CPU was excellent and is an indication of a well engineered solution.
We have to give Asus credit for bringing an Intel based workstation board to market at this time, considering the performance advantages that AMD holds in this area currently. The Intel 975X chipset is on a level playing field in performance with the NVIDIA nForce4 Intel Edition SLI in most areas based upon our current testing. The NVIDIA platform is still the preferred choice for gaming if you are interested in SLI capability. However, once ATI launches their X1800 CrossFire Edition solution, then the Intel 975X based boards will deserve a second look for those needing multi-GPU capabilities. Or, if our idea of sanctioning SLI on the Intel 975X platform comes as a revelation to NVIDIA, then we can have the best of both worlds.
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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 :pDanDaMan315 - Monday, December 5, 2005 - link
yayVegito - 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.