Conclusion of ASUS P5E-VM HDMI Intel G35 Mainboard Review

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Conclusion of ASUS P5E-VM HDMI Intel G35 Mainboard Review
Bluetooth 10 Dec 2007

Conclusion

ASUS is first to deliver the DX10 compliant mATX board with embedded graphics. Although it is already here, the drivers available today (ver 15.7) isn't able to execute any DX10 games at all. DX10 games aborted, awaiting for the day when Intel delivers the beta driver to support DX10.

Although DX10 driver isn't ready, the ASUS P5E-VM HDMI based on Intel G35 did not disappoint me with it's graphics capabilities. In synthetic benchmarks, we see a big improvement in scores, making headway for more performance tweaks when new drivers arrive in 2008. With it's HDMI capability, you can hook it up easily to large LCD TV screens with audio already channeled in. One HDMI cable and you have the top notch image and audio delivered to your LCD TV. The VC-1 decoding also did not take up much of the CPU resources, ranging between 30-40% cpu utilisation.

Thumbs up for it's image quality. In the HQV test, it scored 95. In fact, I haven't come across any integrated graphics boards able to do that well in tests like 3:2 detection, Jaggies, Flag test etc. Other than noise reduction which seems to be missing, the rest are well ahead in comparison to it's competitor's product, including it's own G33 chipset.

Although this is a mATX board, it does come with tons of options for you to tweak. Click here to see BIOS Screen shots. In our tests, we are able to POST at 520x6 with the on board graphics. We lowered it to 450MHz and got it slightly more stable with occasional IGXdrv aborting itself. When we pair it up with the external 2600XT card, it is able to do 480x6 with an external graphics card. That is pretty good for an integrated chipset. In fact, it is as good as the Intel P35.

Overall, if you are considering building a HTPC based on Intel chipset. This board will fit the bill with it's onboard graphics for DVD or HDDVD/Bluray playback. If you intend to play some games with it, you can always upgrade the board with an additional graphics card.

Discuss

Pros

HDMI/HDCP
Full HD 1080p support
o/c options
Dual monitor display using HDMI/DVI and D-SUB

Cons

South bridge ICH9R is hot

Ratings

Here are my ratings out of 10.

Category	Score
Performance	9 / 10
Features	8 / 10
Ease Of Installation	8 / 10
Overclocking Features	10 / 10
Documentation	7 / 10
Packaging	8 / 10
Cost / Performance	8 / 10
Overall Rating :	8.2 / 10

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