The P5K3 Deluxe is a flagship board from ASUS. It’s a P35 chipset-based board, using Intel’s ICH9R Southbridge. We tested P5K3 Deluxe with the latest and greatest of the new technology available.
It supports DDR3 memory up to 1,333MHz. There’s two PCI-E x16 slots, one running at 16x, the other 4x, with CrossFire support, two PCI-E x1 slots and three PCI slots. There’s six internal SATA ports and two eSATA ports via the backplane. The board is bundled with a hard fixed ASUS Wi-Fi AP which supports 802.11b/g.
On the board we installed Corsair DDR3 1,333MHz XMS3 DHX modules, 2GB, and a brand-spanking-new (and ‘next generation’) Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 quad-core processor running at 3GHz and the new 1,333MHz frontside bus. It doesn’t get any more up to date than this.
On the bench, the ASUS P5K3, with the 1,333MHz FSB hardware and the latest drivers from Intel eked out a PCMark score of 7,805. Compared to the score for DDR2-800, Intel’s QX6800 quad-core processor and the same graphics card earned 6,837 points. That’s a decent jump for a first-generation release, but it’s not cheap. The memory will cost you five times the price of DDR2 in similar quantities, and the Intel Extreme processors have never exactly been cheap.
The design and implementation of the P5K3 is spot on. It’s well laid out, with a solid heatpipe solution to keep the chipset and MOSFETs cool. It’s got great potential to be the basis of a real powerhouse PC. Once memory prices drop and the speeds increase, this is a board to look out for. As it stands, unless you have very deep pockets, the DDR2 version might be better.