There's little doubt why the Intel P965 Express chipset is so popular. On paper it stacks up well against Intel's high end 975X Express chipset (no ECC memory support but desktop users don't care), it performs as fast and it's cheaper overall. Intel hasn't given us something like this sweet since the 865PE days.

With the upcoming broad release of Microsoft Vista, many of you will have to upgrade or buy a new machine if you want to run Microsoft's latest and greatest. The timing couldn't have turned out better as most major architectural changes (aside from perhaps vidoecards) has been completed and there will not be any major overhauls till the end of 2007.

The Asus P5B-E is one of the new generation of Intel P965 Express motherboards and its pretty sweet. With a retail price of $173 CDN ($151 US, £76 GBP), you get a mid level mainstream motherboard that's not overly expensive and still comes with a decent amount of goodies.

The Asus P5B-E motherboard may be bland to look at but it's what's inside that counts right? ;-) There's a decent amount of onboard peripherals such as 7.1 channel Intel Azalia audio, IEEE 1394a, Gigabit LAN and an additional Serial ATA II controller. If you feel the need to add devices, the P5B-E has a lot of upgrade possibilities with three 32 bit PCI slots and three PCI Express x1 slots.

Overall Asus did a good job with the lay out but it should have placed the JMicron internal Serial ATA connector in a better location. At the bottom left hand corner, it'll be very difficult to connect the cable when the motherboard is installed into the case. Another thing Asus should have included a second physical PCI Express x16 slot. The Intel P965 Express supports ATi's CrossFire technology and having a second slot would greatly increase the P5B-E's appeal.

Performance of the Asus P5B-E motherboard is a no brainer, that means it's good. In all the tests that we ran the Asus P5B-E consistently performed near the top, exactly what we'd expect from a motherboard using the Intel P965 Express chipset. From workstation to gaming, the Asus P5B-E will be able to keep you happy.

The Asus P5B-E motherboard did well in the overclocking tests and we were able to take it from a standard 266 MHz FSB all the way up to 406 MHz FSB! That's definitely a very sweet overclock! Asus has put together a very solid Intel P965 Express motherboard together in its P5B-E. It's not a perfect motherboard, but then again it does offer some pretty good value. If you've been looking to upgrade, now is a perfect time and the Asus P5B-E motherboard is not a bad choice.

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