Review by Kyle Kerley - November 20, 2006

CONCLUSION

I absolutely love this motherboard. From the packaging all the way down to the Q-Connector Kit, ASUS took the utmost care of its customers. This board is packed to the brim with features, both onboard and in the box, and all that attention really pays off. ASUS has a solid, stable, blazing-fast and feature-rich motherboard on their hands and any enthusiast should be happy to have this as the heart of their machine.

The only real negative to this board is that as it came to the game so late, it has been completely overshadowed by the new nForce 680i. The latest and greatest from NVIDIA features the C55 northbridge chip (whereas this board has the older C19) – which should allow for much more reliable and higher overclocking – along with many other features for a price not that far above the P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP. With that being the case, and this being a board with the enthusiast in mind, I simply cannot recommend people buy this board over the 680i, nor would I expect anyone looking for the latest and greatest to buy this board.

This board is fantastic in every respect and earns its Home Run award completely. I only wish it would've been released earlier so it could really get the respect and widespread usage it deserves. However, if you are considering making the jump to Core 2 Duo and want to use SLI, I highly recommend keeping any eye on this board as it is sure to drop in price in the coming weeks and months. It is far too good of a board to be looked over simply because it isn't the newest technology on the block.

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