Closer Look at Mainboards

Before we move on to the practical tests, we decided to take a closer look at the actual mainboards that will participate. We are going to talk about four solutions from ASUS.

ASUS P5LD2-VM 2.0

It turned out not that easy to find a mainboard on i945G chipset that would support contemporary Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Most mainboards on this chipset have been designed a while ago, long before the CPUs on Core micro-architecture appeared in the market. Therefore, the processor voltage regulator of most i945G based mainboards selling these days is not compatible with Intel Conroe processors.

Nevertheless, some mainboard makers believed not without reason that the old integrated Intel chipset is still too good to retire. One of these companies is ASUS, whose engineers have updated their entire i945G based product line by adding new processors support. However, you should still be attentive when purchasing an i945G based ASUS mainboard. Pay special attention to the revision number to make sure that the given mainboard supports Core 2 Duo. Take, for instance, ASUS P5LD2-VM mainboard we picked for our tests today: only starting from revision 2.0 of this mainboard you will get Conroe support.

Like many other similar solutions based on an integrated chipset, ASUS P5LD2-VM is designed in MicroATX form-factor. This allows installing this board into small system cases that can be designed specifically for consumer device application. The board features an LGA 775 socket compatible with any processors of the same form-factor (except the quad-core ones), so the board supports Quad Pumped Bus frequencies of 533MHz, 800MHz and 1067MHz.

The mainboard is equipped with four DDR2 DIMM slots that can accommodate up to 4GB of DDR2-533 or DDR2-667 SDRAM. Unfortunately, the chipset memory controller doesn?t support higher DDR2 SDRAM frequencies. The DIMM slots are color coded, so that the user could know right away how to install the memory modules in order to enable dual-channel mode. As I have already said the mainboard allows installing maximum 4GB of memory. However, note that if you install the maximum amount of supported memory, a part of it will still be unavailable because of the chipset limitations.

Although the i945G chipset of ASUS P5LD2-VM features Intel GMA 950 graphics core, the mainboard also has an additional PCI Express x16 slot that can be used to install an external graphics card.

The ICH7 South Bridge brings support for eight USB 2.0 ports, four of which are laid out on the mainboard rear panel, and another four exist in the form of onboard pin-connectors. The South Bridge is also responsible for four Serial ATA-300 ports (with NCQ support), that do not support RAID in this case. Besides that, the mainboard also features two Parallel ATA ports, one connected to the ICH7 and another one ?to the additional ITE IT8211F IDE controller.

Also, ASUS P5LD2-VM features additional controllers for the Gigabit LAN. One of them is the corresponding Intel chip connected to the PCI Express x1 bus. There is also a spot for the IEEE1394 controller, however the mainboard model we had at our disposal didn?t have this controller installed. The 8-channel Realtek ALC882 HD codec is responsible for the integrated sound and an SPDIF Output port present as a PCB pin-connector.

Besides the four USB 2.0 ports, the mainboard rear panel features an RJ45 port, six audio jacks, PS/2 connectors for mouse and keyboard, D-Sub analog monitor connector, one serial and one parallel port.

The CPU voltage regulator is designed as a three-phase circuitry. Two thirds of the heating MOSFETs are covered with a small aluminum heatsink. The chipset components are also cooled down with passive aluminum coolers. The chipset North Bridge is equipped with a pretty massive heatsink, and the South Bridge ?with a small low-profile heatsink.

The mainboard design is pretty decent overall, most connectors are located conveniently, despite the small PCB size. Moreover, there was even enough room for two PCI slots and a PCI Express x1 slot. Although if you decide to install a powerful graphics card into this system, one of the PCI slots will be blocked dead and you may also have some problems reaching for the memory modules, as the card may also block the DIMM slot clips.

Note that although ASUS P5LD2-VM is not positioned as a solution for hardware enthusiasts, it still features a few options for CPU overclocking. Namely, the board allows changing the CPU voltage and increasing the FSB frequency up to 400MHz. However, unfortunately, the mainboard doesn?t allow changing the memory voltage.