P5B Delux vs. P5W DH

[CrudOfCrow]

Other than thirty bucks...whats the difference between these two boards? Crossfire Capable?

 

[Skott]

The P5W DH has more features like CF. It can also do SLI if you want to try the hacked drivers. The one area the P5B-D clearly beats the P5W in is overclocking E6300/E6400 chips. The P5B-D can do a higher fsb setting. Some feel the P5W DH is a little more stable than the P5B-D. The general feeling seems to be that if you want to use a E6300/E6400 chip get the P5B-D (The P5B-E is better) and if you want to use a E6600 or higher chip then get the P5W DH. Unless you want all the extra features the P5W DH has that the P5B-D doesnt.

 

[Indyboy2]

The main difference is that the p5wdh has a 975x chipset and a ich7r southbridge .The P5B Deluxe has a 965 chipset and ich8r southbridge.They both support crossfire the p5wdh 8x8 in crossfire mode where as the p5b has 16x in one slot and 4x in the other.The p5wdh has ez-backup which is a silicon image hardware sata controller onboard which imop is not very good much better off using the intel ich7r for raid.Oh and the big one the p5b deluxe has a pretty blue lighted logo that says asus on the board and the p5wdh does not

 

[Twitch22]

Originally posted by: Skott
...The general feeling seems to be that if you want to use a E6300/E6400 chip get the P5B-D (The P5B-E is better) and if you want to use a E6600 or higher chip then get the P5W DH...

Wow...you're the first person I've read/heard say the exact same thing as my local computer-shop guys have been saying! They've been selling and building C2D rigs and parts since they became commercially available. During this time, they've pretty much stuck with the reccomendation, "P965 for the 63's or 64's and P975X for everything above."

I'm not sure this ammounts to anything than "price matching" components, but they swear that the P965's work better with the E6300/E6400 CPU's, especially if you're gonna' OC'ing. If I remember correctly, it's because the P965 boards have more flexible voltage settings...

FWIW, I ended up with the P5W DH Deluxe. Once I mentioned that I was set on getting the E6400 (I wanted the larger cache), it seemed like the more feature-rich solution.

Twitch

 

[hardwareking]

Actually the p65 boards can reach much higher FSB speeds than the old 975x board.I'm waiting to see what intels bad-axe 2 retail can do.
As for the question.The ASUS P5WDH supports dongle less crossfire,as in u can put 2 matching cards like 2 x1600 xt's and they'll run in crossfire.But the 965 boards need a physical link between the card.Like crossfire dongle or crossfire bridge(x1950 pro cards)
Also the P5B Deluxe has more sata ports and doesn't have PATA from the soutbridge.PATA port comes from a third party controller.