Considering the Asus BLITZ Extreme is a $300 motherboard, you'd expect Asus to include a few things with the board and you won't be disappointed.

Asus includes quite a large software bundle with the motherboard. On the driver DVD disc, you get a full copy of FutureMark's 3DMark06. That may not sound like much but for overclockers, it's a very important tool.

Even bigger is that Asus bundles the first person shooter game, STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl with the motherboard. The game is one of the prettiest DirectX 9 games to come out and it was well received by the sites online and gamers around the world.

If you play videogames, STALKER will certainly keep you busy for a good few weeks! Videocards (Asus has been bundling some pretty good games with its videocards lately) rarely come with videogames of this caliber which makes it even more surprising to see Asus bundle this game with a motherboard!

The package also includes a stand alone ADI 1988B high definition Intel Azalia 8-channel audio card.

For the hardware enthusiast, Asus bundles three thermistors with the motherboard so you can keep the temperature of various devices in your computer in check.

The metal I/O shield that fits into the computer case is also special. It has an electroluminescent backlight that shines brightly so you can read what you're doing if you have to connect a cable in the dark. Asus also clearly labels the various ports so you should have no problems plugging in an extra USB device, or network cable in the dark.

Asus has been bundling small LCD displays with its high end motherboards for the last couple generations. The Asus BLITZ Extreme comes with a small external LCD display. It is connected via ~100cm long cable so you can position it at the front, or top of the PC case. The LCD screen displays a host of information: status of the CPU initialization, the USB ports, hard drives, and a few other items. It's a gimmick, but you might appreciate it.

Asus CrossLink

You may have noticed the CrossLink heatsink on the Asus BLITZ Extreme motherboard. According to Asus, the BLITZ Extreme is able to handle AMD CrossFire technology better than regular Intel P35 Express motherboards. On any given Intel P35 Express motherboard with two physical PCI Express x16 slots, one videocard gets 16 PCI Express lanes while the second gets 4. That can cause a bottleneck, as the second videocard have as much bandwidth as the primary videocard.

With its "CrossLink" feature, Asus splits the first 16 PCI Express lanes allocated to the primary videocard into two equal PCI Express x8 lanes. This allows both videocards to work together at the same speed, and according to Asus, provides better framerates and 3D performance than the traditional Intel method.

At the moment it doesn't make a huge difference as current technology does not require that much bandwidth but things may change in the future when more powerful videocards are released.