facebook rss twitter

Review: ASUS P5GD2 i915P & P5AD2 i925X Premium

by Tarinder Sandhu on 2 August 2004, 00:00

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qazj

Add to My Vault: x

P5GD2 Premium specs.

ASUS P5GD2 i915P Socket-T
CPU Support All LGA775 processors
Northbridge Intel i915P 'Grantsdale'
Memory Support 4 slots, DDR-II only. 400MHz, 533MHz, and 600MHz support at 200MHz FSB. 4GB max, dual-channel
AGP None
PEG16X One slot
Southbridge Intel ICH6/R
Audio CMI 9880 from ICH6/R - High-definition audio
Audio Connectivity 6 port backplane speaker, Optical and coaxial S/PDIF output
PCI 2 x 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.1 slots
PCI Express 3 x X1 slots
IDE 1 ATA133 compliant port from ICH6/R
IDE RAID ITE 8212F. 2 ATA133 ports. Capable of RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1 and JBOD modes
SATA 4 ports from ICH6/R and a further 4 ports from Silicon Image 3114R controller
SATA RAID RAID0 and RAID1 from Intel Matrix Storage and RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1, RAID5 (via software patch) and JBOD from Sil3114
Networking Dual Gigabit Ethernet Controllers. Marvell 88E8001-LKJ PCI-based controller and 88E8053 PCI Express-based controller
Networking Wireless Marvell 88W8310 two-chip 802.11g Wireless controller with on-board antenna port
USB ICH6/R, 4 x backplane USB2.0, 4 x I/O USB2.0
FireWire 2x FireWire800(1394b) and 1x FireWire400 (1394a) from Ti TSB81BA3 OCHI controller
Other I/O PS/2, Parallel

ASUS is of the school of thought that premium is another word fot proverbial kitchen sink. Where the P5GD2 Grantsdale particularly stands out is in the use of triple RAID, that is, from the ICH6/R (4-port RAIDable SATA), Silicon Image's PCI-ridin' 3114R controller (4-port RAIDable SATA), and ITE's 2-port ATA133-compliant PATA controller. Given the recent introduction of Hitachi's goliath 400GB drives, there's a very scary amount of potential, both in size and configurability.

Audio will undoubtedly be good, Intel's new south bridges have taken care of that. ASUS has also pushed the FireWire boat out. A couple of 1394b FireWire800 ports are run off Texas Instruments' new TSB81BA3 and TSB82AA2 chips. It's a shame, though, that they run of the older PCI bus. Networking is highly impressive. ASUS implements a regular Marvell PCI-based Gigabit Ethernet controller but then adds a second PCI Express-based chip. You can already see how and why PCI-E can be a potential benefit. 500MB/s for a X1 lane is plenty fast enough. Not only that, Marvell strikes again with a board-mounted 802.11g Wireless ASIC, and ASUS obliges by adding in its compliant antenna.

Two words characterise ASUS' P5GD2; storage and networking.