The Asus Striker Extreme and P5N32-E SLI are based on Nvidia's 680i SLI chipset. Both share many components and features. Compared with the P5N32-E SLI, the Asus Striker Extreme was somewhat faster, in specific tests. Both the P5B Deluxe and P5W64 WS Pro, based on the 965Express and 975X Intel chipsets, are faster in many tests and especially under games. The board supports all currently sold Intel processors for 775 socket, Intel® Core™ 2 Duo/ Intel® Pentium® D/Intel® Pentium® 4/ Intel® Celeron® D processor.

The board's overall design is good. The passive cooling system is better than that found on the P5N32-E SLI since it includes more heat pipes and bigger copper coolers. The NB chipset was very hot on the P5N32-E SLI, but this is not the case on the Asus Striker Extreme. Of course, adding extra fans on the NB will allow for even higher overclocking speeds. There are six SATA II connections for HDD and optical storage devices, along with ATA133 and floppy connections.

There are several onboard switches and buttons that are very useful for users. At night, the Asus Striker Extreme is very impressive with all the blue lights scattered around the motherboard. The retail package is impressive and complete, as you would expect from a top Asus motherboard. All cables and connectors are there, along with an 8 channel Audio card (extra module) along with microphone and line in.

When overclocking, the board proved to be easy to overclock. There are many settings to play with. We liked the fact that the FSB and memory can work (linked) or independently (unlinked). The DRAM voltages can reach up to 3.425V (!) while Vcore voltage proved to be a bit unstable (1.6 max from BIOS gets you 1.47 volts tops). The board can reach very high FSB frequencies (500MHz+) as we confirmed. If something fails during overclocking, the system will POST most of the time with an "overclocking failed" message, so there's no need to go through the whole clear CMOS song and dance. We also didn't come across any weird problems while testing the board.

Ending our presentation, while a good motherboard, we are a little skeptical about the Asus Striker Extreme. The board offers more or less the same performance and features as the P5N32-E SLI. It is improved in some cases - better passive cooling system, impressive backlight LEDs/design and of course LCD poster. The retail package is more complete with Ghost Recon Advanced WarFighter retail game included.

All that means an increase of US$140 on the retail price of the board. The Asus Striker Extreme costs around US$409 (or €330) and is not so readily available on the retail market. This is probably the highest priced motherboard you can buy for Core2Duo and in terms of performance/stability/usability we were quite satisfied, even if Intel 975X chipset based boards offer higher CPU RAW performance. If money is not the question here, then the Asus Striker Extreme is a perfect choice for you, gamer or not.