Asus P5Q-E (P45) Motherboard Review

Can anyone confirm as to just how much crossfire is crippled on these boards compared to the X38's?

Im looking to crossfire 2 4850's eventually but begrudge paying £130+ for an X38 when their likely to be half that come year end.

Edit: Also whats the average clocks E85's are hitting on this board?
 
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gazozborne said:
Im looking to crossfire 2 4850's eventually but begrudge paying £130+ for an X38
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Lol I paid £120 for the P5Q-Deluxe! :)

My advice to you is forget about having two GPUs, its a waste of money and a waste of power, go with the best single GPU solution you can find and plug it into a nice shiny P45 motherboard and enjoy your gaming.

If you should decide to go for ePeen then the P45 is meant to be rather good at running Crossfire, X38 and x48 are only 10%-15% better in certain games at really high 1920x1200 resolutions.

The results you want to read are out on the web so spend a little time and you should find everything u need.

[edit] P5Q-Dlx not P5B-Dlx oops! :o
 
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Hah but the most i've ever spent on a mobo is £50!

And i've already bought a 4850 :(

I thought with them only being just over £100 now...in six months they'll be half that at and at the same time the lone 4850 will start slowing down in new games, so i'll just bang another in for crossfire. (@ 1680x1050).

Also the 4870 was an inch or so too big to fit in my case (oo er), have decided to go for the P5Q-E now though cheers :D
 
ha all i need to do is remember how to overclock! haven't done it since S939 and that was piddle.

Also about the 8-channel High Definition Audio these feature, is this actually any good or shall i just stick to the X-Fi?
 
gazozborne said:
ha all i need to do is remember how to overclock! haven't done it since S939 and that was piddle.

Also about the 8-channel High Definition Audio these feature, is this actually any good or shall i just stick to the X-Fi?
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If its for Primary Music then the sound on that Mobo is awesome (built 1 last week for customer) and sound was amazing with the new 2.1 Logitechs.

I know I ain't been happy with Music on any Audigy or X-FI, unlike my Live 5.1 Player. :(

I don't mean to boast but I have a very good ear and I can count on my 2 hands the times I have heard something that blew me away, and Bose etc never have.

He put in some modern souped up classical CD, it sounded damn minted and Bass was natural.
 
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Dunno about the P5Q-E but the deluxe had too high CPU temp readings with the supplied BIOS, these dropped quite a bit once updating to the latest official ASUS BIOS.

Rivatuner worked fine for me until I manually adjusted the BIOS settings, after that it couldn't find any chipset/motherboard sensors?

CPU temps sensors appear to be working fine! :)
 
My P5Q-E should arrive on Monday, plus an E8600.

Should I set all the voltages manually? I'm a bit worried when I read about the board setting volts too high. This is my first Intel build (been with AMD since 2004) and I have never OC'd a Core 2 Duo CPU. If anyone has any advice or tips to get me started up the right way I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Dee

EDIT: Oh, I should mention my other components that I will be reusing from my X2 4800+ system.

2 x 1GB Ballistix PC2-6400. This RAM will do DDR1000 @ 1.8 volts.
Tagan TG-500BZ Modular
ECS 8600GT
Auzentech X-plosion 7.1 DTS
WD Caviar 500GB SATA II
Hitachi 7K250 160GB SATA
BenQ DW1640 DVD
BenQ G2400W 24" LCD
Wave Master Case with Noctua fans & Scythe Kama Bay Cooler

Unfortunately I ran out of money buying the new board and CPU, so I have no choice but to run with the stock Intel cooler for now. I'll be buying a Xigmatek s1283 soon enough. What kind of OC can I expect with the stock cooler? Should I just wait before OCing? Sorry for all the questions! :)
 
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Yip set all voltages manually to +0.02v above stock to start with. Always take full control of them.

P5Q-E and an E8600 will be a very good combination.
 
Can anyone confirm which BIOS version the P5Q-E comes with?

That question goes out to anyone who recently purchased the board from OcUK.

Cheers.
 
Probably comes with 0610.


When you come to update it be sure to do it via a CD or USB drive in the BIOS rather than using the Windows based utility. The latter is well known for bricking boards.
 
Will do. I just got an OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB stick recently, so I'll use that if it's OK. As long as the board recognizes the E0 stepping CPU I'll be happy, I just want it to be able to boot up so I can flash it. I'll probably try the latest (1201) BIOS.

Thanks again. ;)
 
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The eSata port is part of the separate Marvell IDE controller, had me scratching my head for a while trying to get my eSATA drive working as I had the Marvell controller disabled in BIOS.
 
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