The Asus P5Q Deluxe is the second motherboard that arrived in our labs based Intel's P45 chipset. Armed with tons of features, the Asus P5Q Deluxe was designed to attract all categories of users. The fact that the motherboard has already reached 1306 BIOS revision, shows that Asus is constantly keeps improving it.

So what exactly is the Asus P5Q Deluxe? We can definitely describe it as a powerful motherboard with a very clean layout and it is possibly one of the best performers in the DDR2 platform while it is "properly" priced. Compared with the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R, the Giga has the obvious advantage of the lower retail price and it is somewhat easier overclockable under Windows (Easy Tune 6). In terms of absolute benchmark numbers, the Asus P5Q Deluxe has a small lead, while we cannot say that their differences are significant.

Both the Asus P5Q Deluxe and the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R offer their own energy saving technologies. We cannot judge which one is better than the other, but again it's useful to have them onboard. With Asus EPU-6 engine you can actually downgrade your processor to further reduce the power consumption.

The Xpress Gate feature is also present and it would be interesting for some users.

If we had to talk about the overclocking performance, our thoughts would be excellent... The true 16 phase design does work and gives this board a good stability even with quad core processors. With all settings left at AUTO, we managed to get a 545MHz FSB using an Intel E8600. According to several online reports, the motherboard can even reach the 600MHz on air, but that requires much tweaking.

The fact that you cannot do full Crossfire (2x16 lanes) is an issue with the P45 chipsets so we cannot blame Asus for this.

Priced at approximately $199 we feel that the Asus P5Q Deluxe is a lethal weapon to those who wish to highly overclock their processors. Keep in mind to update BIOS and start playing with the tons of settings under Ai Tweak - something good will eventually come up :-)