Thoughts and rating
It's difficult to know what to make of the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe motherboard. It's also difficult to evaluate the Springdale chipset on this showing. Intel pushed the virtues of the Canterwood chipset with a mass of information and performance data. It was destined to be the numero uno solution for S478 CPUs. That may still hold true over time. The ASUS Springdale appears to match it on a specification front and beat it on the Hexus benchmarking run.
As this is a full retail motherboard from ASUS, let's sum up what we've found. The board's layout is markedly different than its Canterwood stablemate. What we'd thought of as simply a chipset alteration has, in reality, been nothing short of a board redesign. Redesign or not, the annoying position of the i865PE MCH's passive heatsink may still cause problems for mounting coolers and graphics cards. Just like the performance, the P4P800's SB is better than expected. The Canterwood version featured the standard ICH5, the P4P800D goes a step further by using the ICH5/R, giving the possibility of S-ATA RAID0 without the use of discrete controllers.
VIA's all-new VT6410 is a Highpoint P-ATA RAID controller in disguise, we feel. It's intuitive, easy-to-use, and offers decent flexibility. The excellent ADI AD1985 jack-sensing CODEC finds its way on to this board too. The BIOS is robust. That's also to be expected as it's generally lifted from the P4C800D. Therefore the layout, features and BIOS are all above average. Why do ASUS then let themselves down by not providing all the necessary brackets that'll make use of the on-board features ?. That question beats us. The similarities between the P4P800D and P4C800D seem to blur the line somewhat. Why would one really opt for the more expensive Canterwood board given that the Springdale version generally mirrors its features ?. That's difficult to answer too.
Our first foray into the performance Springdale chipset unearthed a few surprises. It seemed to be stupendously fast when set to SPD (DDR-400) timings at 200FSB, comfortably beating the Canterwood into second place. Secondly, it's an FSB monster. 285FSB came and went with utter stability; a testament to Intel's impressive engineering prowess. Fast and relatively inexpensive, just how we like it. Recommended.
Highs
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Amazing performance with SPD settings
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Able to reach high FSBs with ease
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A decent array of features
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Stability is second to none
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An impressive showcase for the Springdale PE chipset
Lows
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Additional brackets aren't provided
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A little more VCore would have satiated enthusiasts.
