Two New Asus Mainboards with Intel X38 Chipsets

Asus announced the launch of two high end products that are aimed at gamers and computer power users which are demanding the absolute performance from their Intel compatible setups. The two new mainboards, named P5E WS Professional and P5E3 WS Professional, are based on the Intel X38 desktop chipset and thus they provide a high level of performance and many expansion options as well as increased versatility and efficiency.

The two new Asus mainboards are offering native support for the second iteration of the PCI Express system bus and they come equipped with dual PCI Express x16 slots that are compatible with the previous generation of PCIe standards too. As the Asus P5E3 WS Professional mainboard is featuring the Super Memspeed technology it allows its users to achieve high levels of overclocking and thus a higher performance mark, by boosting memory speeds up to 72 percent.

As the new Asus mainboards are centered around the Intel X38 chipset on the northbridge side and the ICH9R chip on the southbridge, they are compatible with most Intel LGA 775 central processing units like the ones from the Core 2, Pentium D, Pentium 4 and Celeron families, as well as processors from the upcoming 45 nanometer class that includes Core 2 Extreme, Quad and Duo units. Thanks to the new chipset, the two Asus mainboards are also offering integrated support for high speed system bus frequencies that can go as high as 1333MHz.

On the random access memory side, the P5E WS Professional and P5E3 WS Professional motherboards are both able to house four memory modules with a maximum capacity of 8GB of DDR2 or DDR3 memories running at frequencies between 667MHz and 1066MHz for the P5E WS Professional version and 800Mhz and 1600Mhz for the P5E3 model. While the two mainboards are using distinct memory standards, both of them are capable of housing system memories laid out in dual channel configurations.

Six Serial ATA controllers are also integrated into the two new Asus mainboards and they are RAID compatible too, while for users having external storage devices, two external SATA ports are also provided as well as a legacy ATA connector. On the connectivity side, two network high performance chips Marvell 88E8056 are also integrated and they provide a high data throughput at low processor use. 12 high speed USB 2.0 ports are also included with both of the new Asus mainboards and they should provide enough connectivity options for most users.