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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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. :DThanks 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 itxtremejack - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link
If you look at the chipset price guides for this month by Anand, 975x will not support ConroeGary 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 allCalin - 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