Intel Core i7 965EE, i7 940, i7 920 Review :: ASUS P6T Deluxe Features

• 8-layer PCB with Platinum Circuit Layout
• Unique Wind-Flow Thermal Design
• 2 channel SAS RAID Marvell 88E632-TFJ2
• 6 SATA Ports
• 6 DIMM Sockets
• Express Gate
• 5000 hour Japanese Solid Capacitors
• OC Palm
• TurboV
• EPU
• 16+2 phase VRM Design
• Wind-Flow Design concept

ASUS is launching two boards on the X58 chipset at launch, the P6T Deluxe board and the Republic of Gamers Rampage II Extreme. For the purposes of this launch review I had the ASUS P6T Deluxe board in my hands and will provide the features section for this review. ASUS's board does not sport an nForce 200 chip, so 3-way SLI is limited to x16, x8, and x8 configuration on this board but that shouldn't make much of a difference.

Express Gate is a recent ASUS innovation that allows the user to browse the Net, chat with their friends and can run basic web operations. It is a great feature for those that need to download a new BIOS or driver without going into Windows. It loads instantly after the BIOS within 5 seconds of bootup. This feature has made it into some of the P45 motherboards from ASUS and will likely be in virtually every motherboard they make from now on.

TurboV is an advanced overclocking tool that ASUS is introducing with the P6T Deluxe. It allows end-users to adjust the CPU Ratio, NB Voltage, NB-PCIe voltage, CPU PLL voltage and DRAM voltage in 0.02v micro-intervals. The micro-controller allows the end-user to do all this without rebooting or exiting Windows. We'll cover this feature in more depth in the ASUS review when we have more time to look at the board.

The EPU is ASUS's term for the Energy Processing Unit. The EPU controls the CPU, VGA card, memory, chipset, hard drives and the CPU cooler/system fan. The EPU has a database of all known Intel CPUs and selects the profile that matches the CPU installed to give maximum power efficiency. The EPU provides better power efficiency for the Chipset and memory. With an ASUS video card supporting EPU, the video card voltage and frequency can be adjusted up to 37% saving more energy.

The vCore on the P6T-Deluxe has 16 phases and 2-phases for QPI/Memory Controller in the CPU. The P6T-Deluxe has features like low RDS (on) MOSFETs, Ferrite core chokes with lower hysteresis loss and 100% Japan made high quality conductive polymer capacitors, ultimate power durability, power efficiency and performance are ensured. The OC Palm is an optional add-on hardware device which allows overclocking during game play. SATA devices have become ubiquitous and are in everyday use. A new standard for hard disks has been introduced called SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). This offers higher data transmission speeds and better storage reliability in comparison to SATA interfaces. This is the first SAS equipped motherboard I've seen but if you have a SATA drive the board still sports 6 SATA ports.