ASUS P5W64 WS Professional

Additional Specifications

Specification wise the P5W64 WS is comparable to the P5W DH but there are some differences which stand out. The P5W64 WS uses a different audio chip, the Analog devices AD1988 which according to our tests provides a definite improvement over the Realtek ALC883 used by the P5W DH. Like its smaller sibling the P5W64 WS has two Gigabit LAN controllers. Seen as nearly all of the PCI-Express lanes have been set aside for the PCI-Express slots, only one LAN connection is controlled by a PCI-Express chip, the Marvell Yukon 88E8052 to be precise. The other LAN connection is connected to a Marvell Yukon 88E8001 PCI-chip. The onboard WLAN-controller that was on the P5W DH is sadly missing on the P5W64 WS.

ASUS incorperated a JMicron JMB363 controller on the P5W DH that upped the amount of SATA-connections to six and the total of PATA-connections to two. For the P5W64 WS ASUS have decided to use a four ports Marvell SATA 300 controller, type 88SE6145, which raises the amount of SATA-connections to eight one of which is meant for external use.
Going into the BIOS of the P5W64 we see that it is almost identical to that of its little brother. One detail which surprised us most is that all the overclocking options that were available on the P5W DH have been left intact on the P5W64 WS! Just like the P5W DH the board offers lots of overclocking options such as raising clock frequencies or voltage supplied to the core or memory. Located around the socket we find the 8-phase power design, which is supposed to prevent the CPU and VRM from suffering high power stress, and heat sinks connected through a heat pipe strategically placed to dissipate the heat generated by any capacitors and north bridge efficiently.