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The 915P chipset supports all Socket 775 LGA Pentium 4 CPUs. One nice thing about Intel's platform launch is that many CPUs ranging from 2.8 GHz to 3.6 GHz were released at the same time, offering a wide variety of inflection points to purchase for the OEMs and Enthusiast markets alike. I tried both the 3.6 GHZ P4E and 3.4 GHz P4EE on the P5GD2 without issue after upgrading the BIOS to the latest available. Memory support on the new chipset consists of either the tried and true DDR or the more expensive DDR2. Truthfully, the performance is lesser with DDR2 memory at 533 MHz compared to DDR 400 memory. The ASUS P5GD2 Premium supports DDR2 memory which I tested with both 2 sticks of DDR2 533 from Micron and 2 sticks of the new DDR2 667 Ballistix memory.  Memory Expansion on the new chipset differs a bit from the old 875/865 chipsets. Earlier this year, you would get accolades for 6 PCI slots. With the P5GD2, Asus included 1 PCI Express X16 slot for graphics, 3 PCI Express X1 slots (one in an extremely strange position, and 2 PCI 32-bit slots. One of the PCI Express X1 slots is above the PCI Express X16 slot. This seems like a very strange place to put a slot, but isn't detrimental to the board design.  PCI 1X  PCI 1X The PCI Express X16 slot was correctly identified by Windows and was tested for compatibility with both an X600 and a 6800GT from ATI and NVIDIA, respectively. Unfortunately, I don't have an X800 for the PCI Express platform, but it's good to see compatibility right away. Some may remember the problems Matrox cards had with nForce2 boards or some ATI 9700 Pro early adopters with problems with AGP 8X.  PCI Express 16X The first thing that popped out to me when I opened the box of the P5GD2 was there was 8 SATA connectors on the board! The new ICH6R supports 4 SATA devices natively. ASUS added support for the other 4 drives by including a Silicon Image Sil3114 controller on the board. But ASUS didn't stop there. They included an ITE8212F controller for PATA RAID and support for 4 PATA devices on the board as well. In a sideways position is a third IDE connector, for easy connection of CD-ROM drives.  PATA RAID  SATA A  SATA B RAID support for the motherboard is a bit complicated. The two IDE RAID connectors can support up to 4 Ultra ATA 133/100/66 drives. You can configure RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD sets with these connectors. If you want to use IDE HDDs in a RAID array, you need to set the ITE8212F controller item in the BIOS to RAID mode. The ICH6R supports RAID 0 (striped) and RAID 1 (mirror) configurations. The Silicon Image controller supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 (mirror striped) RAID 5 and JBOD configurations. The back panel is awash with options and more come with the included bundle. The back panel includes one PS/2 mouse port, one PS/2 keyboard port, one parallel port, one Optical S/PDIF Out port, one Coaxial S/PDIF Out port, one Microphone port, one Center/Subwoofer port, one Rear Speaker Out port, one Side Speaker Out port, one Line In port, one Line Out port, 4 USB 2.0 ports and a Firewire port. 2 more USB 2.0 ports are provided with an additional cable in the package. The chipset supports 8.  Primary IDE  I/O On-board audio is provided by a C-Media CMI9880 audio CODEC. Intel has qualified two CODECs for their new Azalia standard which will replace the AC'97 standard, the CMI and the Realtek ALC880 CODEC. The board offers support for 7.1 sound, like many good audio chips and supports all of the features one would expect from a sound chip today. There are two different LAN controllers on the board both by Marvell. The first thing you'll notice when you install the drivers is that two indications of Ethernet are found. Simply install the included LAN cable and you have dual Gigabit LAN controllers on the motherboard. I think it's a cool concept and that more manufacturers should follow suit.  Main Settings  Mixer  Effect  Device Setting  Information  
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