Because this motherboard has so many overclocking features I could tell from the start that things were going to go well. I decided to overclock normally by choosing the standard overclocking option and adjusting the FSB and voltage. After increasing the FSB and adding more voltage as needed my final result was a FSB of 265 taking my 2.8GHz P4 to 3.7GHz!
With this overclock it also pushed my Corsair memory to DDR706 which is extremely impressive. To achieve this overclock I flashed the BIOS to version 1003 and set the DDR voltage to 1.9v, northbridge to 1.5v, and CPU to 1.5875v. I also locked the PCI-Express to 100Mhz and PCI to 33.33MHz. Unfortunately my cooling got in the way after increasing the CPU voltage causing it overheat and shutdown my system.
I know this motherboard could have given me more, however without watercooling my processor would have been in danger. A feature that I really like is the CPU Parameter Recall which resets the BIOS to the previous settings if the system hangs due to an overclock failure. This makes overclock much more fun eliminating the need to clear the CMOS and reset everything if the boot fails.
| CPU | Memory |
 |
 |
Conclusion
Though LGA775, PCI-Express, and DDRII are all very new technologies the benefits can already be seen. With a great motherboard like the P5GD2 Deluxe from Asus you will be able to take full advantage of all these now and in the future. The benchmarking results were fairly similar in comparison to a motherboard with original DDR however if you look at the overclocking results there simply no comparison. This motherboard is packed with so many great features that encompass the design, BIOS, onboard options, overclockability, and stability to name a few.
Asus definitely prides itself in making very high quality motherboards that cater to true overclockers. There is so much that I could say in this conclusion about why I like this board so much but hopefully that can be seen throughout the entire review to eliminate repetitiveness now. With faster and better PCI-Express video cards slowly coming out there will be even more reason to move to this new video card standard.
As soon as these new technologies and factors have matured a little more results and overclockability will be much more impressive than they already are. Because I am so impressed with this motherboard and am going to give it a 10/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Asus for making this review possible.
Pros
- Overclocks like a champ
- Very good BIOS, nothing missing
- Uses DDRII
- PCI-Express & PCI lockable
- Onboard WiFi-g
- Stack Cool for better cooling
- High definition 8-channel audio
- Multi-language BIOS
- CPU Parameter Recall
- SATA and IDE RAID
Cons
- Memory scores similar to original DDR
