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- Date:
- Wednesday, June 27, 2007
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
ASUS P5K Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition
As usual ASUS is one of the first companies to release a motherboard based on a new chipset. We take a look at one of the first boards to use the new P35 chipset, the P5K Deluxe WiFi/AP Edition, and put it through its paces.
ASUS Utilities
ASUS has included their suite of utilities as always. The ASUS Utilities suite is a single launcher type utility that has AI Gear, AI Booster, AI NAP, Q-Fan, and AI NOS. The board also comes with the usual PC Probe II and My Logo utilities. Those utilities haven’t changed in at least a year. The other utilities in the ASUS suite underwent major redesign a few months ago and are quite different than their predecessors. The ASUS Utilities suite works as a single application instead of separate apps like before. You simply choose the application within the launcher that you want to use and a new window will appear with that application.
AI NOS is ASUS’ utility for dynamic overclocking within Windows. The system adjusts the overclocking settings based on the demand placed on the machine by various user executed programs. Basically this feature runs with four sensitivity modes: Auto, Standard, Sensitive, and Heavy load. Depending on the mode chosen, the utility will dynamically overclock the system according to predefined values within the software. These values are percentage based. Unfortunately, this program is fairly conservative, and you will not likely see super-high overclocks using this feature. Next is ASUS Q-Fan. This utility is used to control fan speeds while in Windows. To control fan speed, simply select the fan to control via the drop down menu and choose Optimal, Silent, or Performance pre-sets. These will alter the speed of your fans either by thermal condition, low speed, or maximum speed. This allows you to quickly make fan speed adjustments within Windows to suite your needs at the time.
AI Booster is used for manual overclocking. There are six buttons on the AI Booster menu. Written from left to right they are: Default, Performance, Advanced, User Profile, and Save. The first button has two options, Auto or Standard. The Performance button has but one option and that is Auto. The advanced button actually gives quite a few options. Once clicked, three tabs appear in a new menu. The first is CPU frequency which is used for overclocking in Windows. You can choose a new frequency from the drop down. Unfortunately, you can not simply input your desired values. I would have really liked to have seen this rather than having to scroll down through the drop down menu to set your desired frequency. Below the CPU frequency field is the CPU ratio. Next, we have the Memory Tab. Here you can set DRAM voltage and frequency. This tab works by choosing an option from the drop down menu just like with the options in the CPU Tab. The final Tab in this section is the PCI-E tab. Here you can adjust your PCIe frequency. One thing I found very annoying is that once a drop down menu is selected, you MUST choose a frequency or you can not exit the drop down menu. This was really irritating and something I hope to see changed in the future. We also have AI NAP, which puts your PC to sleep, but not before a popup dialogue window asks if you are sure you want to put the machine to sleep. Also when you bring the PC out of “Nap” mode, the software again asks if you are sure.
The ASUS PC Probe II utility allows the user to monitor voltages, CPU temperatures and other monitored temperature zones. By default, power, chassis, and CPU fans are monitored. Voltage status for VCore, and all 3v, 5v, and 12v, voltage ranges are all monitored. CPU and motherboard temperature ranges are monitored within this utility. Voltages and thermal readings are displayed in rectangular boxes that resemble LCD readouts. They have tiny magnet icons in their corners and when they are clicked, they disconnect and the status displays can be re-arranged or moved around in any way you desire.
The main part of the PC Probe application is displayed in a hexagonal window and when the green arrow tab is clicked, the hexagon expands to allow the configuration of the utility itself. Just to the right of that is where all the DMI, WMI, and PCI information is displayed. The usage information is displayed in the form of pie charts that are almost exactly like the Windows drive space usage pie charts. Under the ASUS logo is a reporting tool. This tool shows detailed system information for the purpose of assisting ASUS tech support should they need more information concerning your systems configuration. There is also log reporting as well as alerts that show any kind of errors reported by the motherboard such as abnormal thermal and fan control readings.
ASUS Update is a basic utility and offers several methods of performing a BIOS update. You can browse to the BIOS update manually on your hard drive or you can connect to ASUS’ FTP site and download it. One thing that really bothers me is that every time I have actually tried to use this tool to perform a BIOS update, it always gives me an error message saying that the FTP server is busy, or unavailable. Rarely has this ever changed. I’d like to point out that I once killed my Striker Extreme’s BIOS chip using this utility. Due to my experience and the experiences of others around the web, I strongly advise against using this utility.
ASUS online BIOS support inside of Windows is hideous at best. Our thoughts are they should not even offer this software feature on their motherboards till they fix their broken web infrastructure.
ASUS My Logo provides a simple method for customizing your BIOS. You must download a copy of the BIOS you would like to use in advance in order for this utility to edit that BIOS file and output a usable BIOS that you can flash your board with that contains the logo you have added. You can actually use ASUS Update to save a copy of your existing BIOS, and then use that BIOS for this utility if you desire. The logo gives the end user or OEM's the ability to customize the motherboards boot logo with any bitmap they choose, provided the images are formatted correctly. Only images no greater than 640x480 in size that have 256 colors or less can be used. Using this utility is child’s play. It really is one of the most intuitive software applications that I’ve seen developed by ASUS or nearly any other motherboard vendor. It really is that easy.