New Gamer-oriented Motherboards from Asus

Remember the Republic of Gamers motherboard series from Asus? With the new Intel P35 chipset for the upcoming Penryn CPUs, Asus brings a couple of interesting additions to the gamers-oriented lineup. These are the Blitz Extreme and Blitz Formula motherboards and Asus plans to release them at the same time.

Both Blitz motherboards are based on the P35 chipset, but this is not necessarily a good thing since the new chipset brings certain limitations. In order to improve this situation, the Asus designers have come up with solutions to some of the chipset limitations.

The two motherboards are different in two respects. First of all, Blitz Extreme supports DDR3 memories, while Blitz Formula only supports the DDR2 modules. From this point of view, we may presume that the Blitz Formula motherboard comes as a mainstream solution. This is something new to Asus as they usually make all their gamer-oriented motherboards as high-end as possible, but we may also consider the fact that DDR3 costs a lot more than the actual DDR2 module and Asus might have thought of giving potential customers a choice. The other major difference is represented by the pre-installed waterblock support on the MCH. Although users don't necessarily need a watercooling device for good operational conditions, Asus claims that the MCH could run 12% cooler with the addition of a watercooler and this may also help cool the other heatpipes on the motherboard.

In all other respects, the motherboards share the same specifications. Thus, there are two classic PCI slots, two PCIe x1 slots, two PCIe x16 slots and a special connector for Asus audio riser card. One of the innovative features introduced by Asus in the Blitz series is the chip located between the two PCIe X16 slots. This enables the Crosslinx technology, which allows for the bandwidth from the x16 slot to be split between the two physical x16 slots so they both get x8 bandwidth. According to Asus, the bandwidth split twill offer up to 10% performance advantage over a normal P35 chipset configuration where one card has 16 lanes and the other only 4 lanes.

Furthermore, the Blitz boards integrate a new sound module. Known as the SupremeFX II, this sound card has been given shielding to remove potential interference from the system. Although it features the latest HD audio support, the ADI 1988B HD audio codec can't possibly compare to Creative's solutions.

Another interesting feature comes in the form of a small external POST display which can be placed outside the PC case. This should display any error messages during the post boot sequence, even if the monitor does not receive any video signal.

There is no info on the eventual price of each motherboard, but Asus promised to display them at Computex Taipei this week.