Tans Computer - Asrock P45R2000-WiFi Intel P45 Motherboard Review

Asrock P45R2000-WiFi Intel P45 Motherboard Review

Written by Administrator, on 25-06-2008 14:23

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Codenamed the Eaglelake the new Intel P45 is geared to be this year’s P965. The P965 offered a better price versus performance ratio that it’s bigger brother the 975X. This can also be said with Intel P35 compared to the X48. Strangely the P45 is the P35 compared to X48. As the P45 is replacing the P35 and updated some of its lackluster features at the same time.

The P35 only support Crossfire in the form of 16x in the first slot and 4x across the second. Crossfire in any form is good but the second slot did cripple the performance some. With the birth of the P45 the user has the option of picking between 16x/4x or a performance boost 8x/8x. There are a few more advantages of the ICH10R that would heavily benefit the end user like the smaller die that produces less heat and additional SATA support. But one cool feature that was totally not included in the P35 is the ETU or Extreme Tuning Utility. This allows the user to have control of the BIOS function via Windows. Many motherboard manufacturers have their own version of this software but it is good that Intel is getting into the act as well.

Features

LGA 775 for Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme / Core™ 2 Quad / Core™ 2 Duo / Pentium® Dual Core / Celeron®, supporting Penryn Quad Core Yorkfield and Dual Core Wolfdale processors
All Solid Capacitor design (100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors)
Intel® P45 + ICH10R Chipsets
Compatible with FSB2000/1600/1333/1066/800MHz CPUs
Supports Dual Channel DDR3 1333/1066 (4 x DIMM slots) with max. capacity up to 8GB and Dual Channel DDR2 1066/800/667 (2 x DIMM slots) with max. capacity up to 4GB

Supports ATI™ CrossFire™
2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (green @ x16 mode, blue @ x8 mode)
6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, RAID 5 and Intel® Matrix Storage), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug functions
2 x eSATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors
Dual GLAN: 2 x PCIE Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
Supports 2 x IEEE1394 ports (one port on back panel, one header on board)
7.1 CH Windows® Vista™ Premium Level HD Audio with Content Protection, supports DAC with 110dB dynamic range (ALC890 Audio Codec)
1 x WiFi/E header
Supports I. O. T. (Intelligent Overclocking Technology), ASRock OC Tuner
Windows® Vista™ Premium 2008 Logo Ready
Free Bundle: 1 x ASRock WiFi-802.11g Module, 1 x Antenna, 1 x ASRock XFire Switch Card
ASRock DualLAN_SPDIF I/O: 1 x Coaxial SPDIF Out Port, 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port, 2 x eSATAII Ports, 2 x RJ-45 LAN Ports with LED, 1 x IEEE 1394 Port, 6 x USB 2.0 Ports