The ASUS M2N32 WS Professional board is unique in several ways. First it's about the only board on the market today with PCI-X slots on the Socket AM2 platform. PCI-X can use both the PCI-X devices and PCI devices, meaning you lose nothing with the inclusion. As a workstation board, the M2N32 WS Professional scores 37 points on our Features chart. I modified the scoring a bit as to the memory, as almost every board on the market supports 8GB of memory.
If a board supports less than 8GB the new scoring system takes away a point, if it supports 8GB or above a point is given. The old system where boards with 16GB support would add 13 GB to the total, skewing the scoring. With 10 SATA ports, 2 PATA ports, SLI and High Definition Audio make this board a well-rounded AM2 board. Stability and performance on the board were great. Considering the fact that most boards with Socket AM2 platform score within a couple percentage points each other, the M2N32 WS Professional board is a great choice for the enthusiast as well as the workstation user, as you can easily plug in a Quadro or FireGL graphics card to run workstation applications. Of course these extra features come with a price, as the ASUS M2N32 WS Pro has a price of $300 online as of this writing.
