In April, we've seen the release of the Intel Pentium 4 D (Dual Core) and the Intel 955X chipset to go along with it. On the Intel side of things, if you want to use their Dual Core CPU, the 955X is currently the only option (NVIDIA, VIA and ATI do have chipsets that support it as well). Those of you with 915/925 based boards are out of luck, at least officially.

If you haven't taken the plunge into the LGA775 based P4, the 955X wouldn't be a bad place to start. It has all of the 925 based features, and supports all of Intel's LGA775 based CPUs. Along with the older features, the chipset supports the faster DDR2 800 and 667 specs and updates the Southbridge to ICH7R.

Today we'll be looking at the latest from ASUS, the P5WD2 Premium. Luckily for enthusiasts, ASUS did not stop at the Intel 955X/ICH7R features as they have added a lot more technologies based on their AI Life Series of boards which we'll get into shortly.

CPU	Intel LGA775 Pentium 4 CPU, Incl. Dual Core
Chipset	Intel 955X, Intel ICH7R
Memory	- Native DDR2 800 Support - 4 x 240-pin DIMM sockets support max. 8GB DDR2 800/ 667/ 533 ECC and non-ECC memory - Dual Channel Memory Architecture - Intel MPT (Intel Memory Pipeline Technology)
Expansion Slots	- 1 x PCI Express x16 slot for discrete graphics card - 1 x Universal PCI-E Slot ( x4 mode) - 1 x PCI Express x1 - 3 x PCI
LAN	- Dual Gigabit LAN controllers: *1 x Intel PCIe Gigabit LAN Controller *1 x Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit LAN Controller, featuring AI NET2
Audio	- Realtek ALC882D High Definition Audio 8-channel CODEC Support Multi-streaming, Jack-sensing and Jack-retasking functions Coaxial, Optical S/PDIF out on back I/O port Features Dolby Digital Live technology

The ASUS P5WD2 Premium

As mentioned earlier, the ASUS P5WD2 Premium is part of their AI Life Series of motherboards, and ships in a classy looking white box. The motherboard itself looks standard fare on first inspection, and as usual with many of ASUS' high-end boards, they package a large assortment of cables, CDs and accessories to complete the package.

The 955X Northbridge is passively cooled, as well as a couple of MOSFETs. Those of you concerned with noise will appreciate the nonuse of active cooling as the Northbridge heatsink never got to scorching hot during testing. However, those who decide to go the water-cooling route and overclocking may want to consider replacing these with active coolers as typically they do get some airflow from air cooling CPU heatsinks.

There are four ram slots that support Dual Channel and a maximum of 8GB. The slots are colour coded and should make configuration easy for those who tend to gloss over the manuals. ASUS is quite specific regarding memory support, and though our Corsair modules weren't in the list, the ram worked just fine. Nonetheless, it'll be a good idea to check their site if your memory is in question.

Also located in this area are the ATX 24-pin power, EZ_Plug and the floppy connections. The EZ_Plug is a four pin Molex connection that is recommended if you plug in two video cards into the system. There is also an ATX12V connection located to the upper right of the CPU socket. The plug is a newer 8-pin EPS +12V connection, but it is capped for those of you who only have four pin power leads.

Moving over to the ICH7R Southbridge area, we have an abundance of HDD connections. Angled away from the board is the lone primary IDE connection (blue). Just above it are four SATA connections which supports a single drive config, as well as RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. Two ITE IDE connections (red) are located to the left and support up to 4 hard drives, but not CDROMS. Not pictured above, but located between the Northbridge and rear IO is a Silicon Image SATA connection to round out your stock storage options.

The ASUS P5WD2 Premium comes equipped with one PCI Express x16 slot, a PCI Express x4 universal slot, a PCI Express x1 slot and three standard PCI slots. Those of you hoping to run an ATI Crossfire or NVIDIA SLI config will want to continue hoping. According to some sources, NVIDIA's 66.75 drivers will enable SLI on the board, but game support is spotty at best. For those of you wishing to power four displays, the board will handle that just fine. One placement issue we had was that the CMOS reset jumper is located under the PCI Express x4 universal slot. If you happen to be using a large graphics card, and several IDE and SATA hard drives, getting to the jumper will be difficult without disconnecting some parts. This is not a huge issue though as we'll get into later.

To keep things chilly, ASUS updated their Stack Cool PCB board to version 2. Located beneath the CPU socket, how it works is it transfers heat generated by the CPU and other components and transfers the heat to the other side (the bottom of the board). In practice, I'm not really sold on it as our Pentium 4 3.73GHz seemed to run just as hot on the P5WD2 Premium as it does on other boards.

For your inputs and outputs, there is little to be desired. From left to right, we have; two PS/2, one Optical and Coaxial S/PDIF Outputs, one External SATA port, one parallel, six audio connections, four USB 2.0, two Gigabit Ethernet, and one FireWire (1394). Additional connections are available with some PCI brackets in the package.

Along with the P5WD2 Premium, we received a TV Tuner/WiFi card ASUS included with our review sample. This will not be a standard part included with the retail boards, but rather an option. We'll look more into it in a follow-up article as it's outside the scope of the review.

The BIOS

As usual with ASUS, the AMIBIOS is the center of the P5WD2 Premium's board level tweak options. Everything is neatly arranged and pretty self explanatory. On the main page, you can access the IDE configuration, which is worth pointing out now that more NCQ supported drives are shipping. For the Raptor in our test bed, we were required to configure the SATA as IDE, but if we had two, RAID would have been an option. If you have an NCQ drive, AHCI is the setting you'll want, or RAID if you have more than one.

In the Advanced CPU Options, your settings will be somewhat limited depending on the CPU you have. All the processor's information will be displayed on this page, and if you have an unlocked CPU (very unlikely) you can adjust the ratio. For Pentium 4 Extreme Edition owners, many of the Enhanced Speedstep options will be disabled.

Under Advanced Chipset Settings, many performance options are available here. You can manually adjust the ram's timings by setting the DRAM SPD to disabled, and your options are; CAS# Latency: 3 - 6; RAS# Precharge: 2 - 6; RAS# to CAS#: 2 - 6; RAS# Activate: 1 - 15; Write Recovery: 2 - 5.

Under the JumperFree Configuration, you have access to your front side bus settings. Setting AI Overclocking to Manual allows you to OC the traditional way, while AI N.O.S. are made up of preconfigured settings from 5% to 30%.

Finally, you can adjust the memory frequency, especially handy if you spent a bundle on fast ram. The board currently supports DDR2-400/533/667/711/800/889.

We touched on the topic of the CMOS reset jumper being a problem earlier, but the reason we said it was not that big an issue is because the P5WD2 Premium has a CPU Parameter Recall (C.P.R.) feature to get around this. If your system locks up, shut down the computer, and reboot. At POST, you'll be offered an option of F1 to go into the BIOS and change the settings. Unlike most CMOS resets, nothing changes here unless you manually do so.

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