P45 Showdown – Asus P5Q Deluxe vs MSI P45 Diamond
Specification
With both motherboards squaring up at the pre-fight weigh in, we can now take a look at the specs of these two refined fighters.
It is clear that both boards are fairly evenly matched. Asus have opted to go with more PCIe ports than the MSI but have also opted to stay with DDR2 (although a DDR3 version is to be released in tandem with this version) however they do support up to 1200mhz DDR2 speed to compensate. How this will compete with MSI using the higher performing but more expensive DDR3 remains to be seen but its clear MSI intend to go all out for raw performance and not bang per buck as they are claiming official support of up to 2000mhz! MSI also lands a pre-match blow by making use of Creatives X-FI chipset which should also give them the edge in the audio stakes.
While the boards prepare to do battle lets take a closer look at each of them to see what features each camp has to offer…
