The P5WD2-E Premium has recently been released and is the flagship motherboard, for socket 775, from ASUS. Based on the Intel 975X chipset, the board retains the black PCB and its great quality, as is the case with most of the hi-end ASUS boards. It also incorporates the STACK COOL 2 technology, a unique feature from ASUS, whereby board uses fanless cooling which is apparent from the start, with virtually no noise at all. Two PCI Express x 16, Crossfire support, Dual Gigabit LAN, Dual RAID support, High Definition Audio 8-channel, up to eight USB2.0 ports and an external SATA connection are some of the many features.

The P5WD2-E Premium bundle has everything you will need. Our only complaint is with the firewire which takes up a PCI slot. One could have been included along with the other on-board connections on the back panel. As well, due to the price as we will see shortly, we believe a Wireless Lan could have been included.

The accompanying utilities and software are a strong feature of the P5WD2-E Premium. ASUS' AI Booster utility, PC Probe II and the ASUS update application are here to make things even easier for inexperienced users.

The performance of the P5WD2-E Premium was very good, and in comparison to other i975X based motherboards, the ASUS leads the race. The reported scores and framerates during our benchmarks confirmed this.

The price at the time of this review was US$230 from newegg.com. This is a little high, but latest releases and advanced technology costs a little extra.

Pros:

• Crossfire support
• Excellent features
• Good Retail Package
• Very Good performance
• Monitor utility from within Windows
• Q-Fan and AI NOS features
• Great motherboard overclocking capabilities

Cons:

• No Wireless Lan

Like to be fixed

• A lower price is always welcome
• Onboard Firewire

Features
Performance
BIOS/Overclocking
Value for money