Two weeks ago, ASUS
showed off its first upcoming Intel P55 chipset motherboard for the midrange enthusiast
market, the
P7P55D
EVO.
During CeBIT in March, it also
showcased another P55 motherboard named the
P7P55 Pro. Both boards
smiled nice for the cameras and seeme to be good options for prospective consumers,
but the P7P55D Deluxe now takes the floor by bumping the specs of the EVO up a
few notches.
Ironically, the color scheme makes us think of the idea that
a Marvel comic character was transformed into a motherboard. Even so, this
looks like a solidly built character, featuring a 16 + 3 phase design rather
than 12-phase and four stunning DDR3-2133 memory slots rather than the
DDR3-1600 slots found on the EVO.
Update - On the graphics front, the board features three PCI-Express
2.0 slots, two of which are split off from the main PCI-E bus coming directly from the CPU. When a single slot is populated, it will run at x16 but for SLI and CrossFire, the slots will run at x8/x8/x4.
The board also features eight SATA II 3.0Gbps ports as well as dual gigabit Ethernet,
7.1 Realtek HD audio and the
">Express Gate
instant-on OS feature. The board also comes bundled with a TurboV overclocking
remote and corresponding software. Perhaps with enough overclocking skill and
enthusiasm, this robust Marvel character can be transformed back into its
original sentient life form.