We recently reviewed Asus' P5Q Deluxe motherboard, a very high-end board based off of Intel's new P45 Express chipset and we decided to do a separate review of the ExpressGate software featured on that motherboard as well as the full range of P45 Express motherboards from Asus as well as numerous other products. Let's take a look and deeper at what it has to offer and also run what tests we can to measure performance and power consumption.

To begin if you are as yet unaware of Asus' Express Gate it is a new application that loads immediately on startup of a system based off of Splashtop. To quote from Splashtop's website it is a, "proprietary pre-boot environment, developed by DeviceVM, which allows you to rapidly access certain applications without the need to boot your main operating system. Splashtop boots out of the BIOS on your PC motherboard, and launches a lightweight Linux stack capable of running certain applications like the Splashtop web browser, and the Skype VOIP program. The Splashtop environment allow you to open a web browser, check email, watch videos, instant message, and place VOIP calls within seconds instead of minutes." Pretty cool, eh? ExpressGate is contained within onboard NAND flash memory chip pictured here in between the a PCI slot and the second PCI-Express 16x slot.

This is what greets you as boot the Asus P5Q Deluxe though you can disable it and change the time until it boots into the main OS easily within the BIOS. A very clean and friendly interface giving the user of launching the Splashtop OS and immediately launching one of the four applications: web browsing through a modified Firefox 2.0, photo browsing, chat via Pidgin, and Skype. The buttons at the bottom allow you to enter your main OS, enter the BIOS, or shut down the system. Your mouse will work fine here without a problem making it easy to move through the GUI.

Before we get into the review though we do want to address one of the best things and worse things about Express Gate. I'm willing to place bets that the odds are more often than not when booting their main PC most people are going to want to go immediately to their main operating system 90% or more of the time. Although the pre-configured time to boot into your OS is ten seconds, which can be lowered in the BIOS, and you can move your mouse to the "Enter OS" button and give it a click in a matter of seconds it does of course add to your boot time and require an additional step to boot if you use your mouse to click to enter your main OS even if only seconds. On most people's main machines there will though come those times now and then where they quickly need to check their e-mail, reach someone on AIM, make a VOIP call, or browse the web to get information. Hopefully this doesn't seem to be bashing at the beginning of our investigation but one of the features we think Asus or DeviceVM should look into is some option say at the normal Asus' splash screen when one has booted the computer for a command such as CTRL-E to instead  load the ExpressGate OS for when those moments do come up. When you really can't wait those extra 35 seconds for Windows to load to check your e-mail or browse the web for what you need. Is this an engineering possibility? That we don't have an answer to but if ExpressGate is to become popular and be accepted, and we do believe it is a very cool and unique feature worth exploiting, when booting on your main PC there should be a command from system startup to instead load the ExpressGate OS. Otherwise we do find it likely that after some of the novelty wears off people will more than likely disable ExpressGate from loading rather than have it start every single time they boot their computer as even though it is only mere seconds it is still adding to the boot time. People go to deep measures to save seconds off their Windows OS boot time so adding even two or three seconds and requiring an extra step every time they turn on their PC we believe will eventually cause them to disable it as ExpressGate's use, at least in regards to your main PC, will more than likely only be now and then and in emergency situations where you're running late say for work or to catch a movie. I haven't done a survey of users but odds are this is much less often than more often at least in my case and I assume your average person. Some command at the normal Asus splash screen to load this would do wonders I believe for ExpressGate's acceptance.

Upon further investigation we did find somewhat of a solution to this problem though it wasn't obvious to us and more than likely the newer users who could benefit from something user friendly, we're leaving the above paragraph untouched as we still feel this is a problem. Putting the timer for "1 second" in the BIOS for ExpressGate it seems that the ExpressGate OS either didn't even load or loaded and left so quickly that it was not even viewable by the time we had video output. Moving the mouse around though after immediately powering on the computer though allowed us to enter ExpressGate as needed as we assume the mouse movement was detected by ExpressGate and the OS loaded. That did find a solution to one of our main grievances but again it isn't an obvious one. Perhaps this could be included for a hint for those who want to lower their start time or not require another step to enter their main operating system. I'd say without some solution to this or a work around you again might find more users disabling this feature once the novelty wears off which would be a shame.

While Intel's integrated chipset may not be able to compete with AMD they still make a very good mid-range chipset. Recently they launched the P45 Express chipset and motherboard manufacturers worked on all their motherboards to get the best out of solution. Today we have one of these to look at from Asus, the P5Q Deluxe with a number of strong unique features.

Let's start off with the new P45 Express chipset. One of the major new features over the P35 is the upgrade tp PCI-Express 2.0 slot from 1.0 increasing bandwidth. DDR2 or DDR3 is supported though the board we're testing uses DDR2. The chipset is one of the first from Intel to use a 65nm manufacturing process which cuts down heat and power consumption dramatically. Our Asus P5Q Deluxe and other newer Asus boards try to cut this down even more so with their proprietary technology, EPU or Energy Processing Unit which tweaks the computer to use less power. The new Southbridge also features a die shrink and otherwise no major changes.

The P45 isn't the most exciting chipset if solid but luckily our Asus P5Q Deluxe is. The board features the large copper heatsinks and heatpipes that Asus have used for sometime to allow for passive cooling of which they do an excellent job even when overclocked. A total of 3 PCI-Express 16x slots are featured supporting AMD/ATI's Crossfire with two additional 1X PCI-Express slots and two more PCI slots. If you do go three way though you'll be limited to single slot cards for the other two slots as they sit next to each other on the board but honestly if you're going that far you're better off with that anyway. There's plenty of room for a larger heatsink around the LGA 775 socket as well for overclockers.

The board features a whopping eight SATA connectors onboard which amazingly also stay out of the way of expansion slots with ports both on the edge of the board and mounted on top. The main PCI-Express 16x slot has been moved down a few places to accomodate both a PCI-Express 1x slot and a PCI slot which allows for plenty of room to add and remove memory without a long graphics card getting in the way. Have a few PATA drives laying around? Don't worry as Intel might have forgotten them but Asus hasn't with one on the edge on the board and another mounted on top near the power connector. In addition to this power and reset switches are included on the board as with other Asus high-end products although nothing to clear the CMOS, though we had no problems coming back from a bad overclock attempt.

For ports the Asus P5Q features 6 USB 2.0 ports, one E-SATA, one Firewire, two Gigabit NICs, unusually one PS2 port for either mouse or keyboard though you're out of luck if you want two use two PS2 ports, ADI AD2000B 8 channel HD audio with coax and optical outputs. On the inside four more USB ports are available via expansion, an extra Firewire port, and more.

For the chipset Asus officially supports 1.66GHz front side bus up from 1.33Ghz of Intel's spec and all the way up to DDR2 1200MHz RAM. The P5Q Deluxe supports true 16 phase power, as mentioned their EPU power saving support, Asus Q-Shield, Q-Connector, Drive Xpert, Die Hard BIOS, O.C. Profiles, Fan Xpert and more. Read more about these features over at Asus' website. Suffice to say the Asus P5Q Deluxe is overloaded with unique features from Asus but the largest and newest by far is Express Gate SSD. This is a proprietary pre-boot environment with the OS loaded from the BIOS ROM and a Linux stack on a flash drive onboard the motherboard. We'll go into detail soon with a review of the software but suffice to say it is a very interesting and cool feature from Asus.

Accessories include 8 SATA cables, Asus Q-Shield I/O cover, Q-Connector, manual, case badge, optional cooling fan, and a USB and Firewire Bracket.

Let's move onto the BIOS.

Nvidia and AMD have had some step competition going up against one another lately with video cards and chipsets. AMD just recently leapfrogged Nvidia when it comes to video cards and had been doing well with their 780G board. Today we're going to take a look at Nvidia's integrated graphics offering, the GeForce 8200, and pit it against AMD's 780G to see who comes out on top and the board we are looking at is the Asus M3N78-EMH HDMI.

The GeForce 8200 was the first AM2+ integrated motherboard from Nvidia which means it brings a number of new features primarily of which is Hypertransport 3 support which was missing from older Nvidia chipsets. This means the HT bus can run at 1.8 or 2GHz that Phenom CPUs support to maximize their potential. The GeForce 8200 MCP supports 12 USB 2.0 ports, DDR2 1066MHz, one PCI Express 2.0 slot, 3 PCI Express 1x slots, 6 SATA drives, two PATA, and Hybrid Power with DVI, HDMI, or VGA connections through the integrated video in addition to 5 standard PCI Slots. The M3N78 we're looking at features four USB ports on board with more via expansion, DVI output, VGA output, and HDMI output on board which will handle any monitor you can throw at it. It features 2 PCI slots, one PCI Express 1x slot, and one 16X PCI Express slot.

As with other cards in the GeForce 8 series the 8200 supports DirecX10 which is the first Nvidia chipset to do so. It uses a 500MHz core clock speed and 16 stream processors at 1.2Ghz. As with the 780a chipset Hybrid SLI is supported though we ran out of time for testing it during this interview. Full decoding of high definition H.264 content is also supported in the new chipset matching AMD's 780G. of which it is the closest competitor.

The Micro ATX board is laid out well with everything easily within reach and not a problem. The CPU power adapter sits near the Socket, the 4 DDR2 slots behind the CPU, 24 pin ATX power there next to six SATA ports. One problem we did have is that the chipset gets exceptionally hot and more cooling might have been beneficial but you shouldn't run into very many problems. One area where there might be is the PATA port near the second PCI slot could be a tight fit if you're using both PCI slots.

Since the launch of the GeForce 7 series of products Nvidia has for the most part executed it's product launches with attention and care. Products are usually at all retailers the day of the launch, reviews are plentiful, and the product is usually stable and ready to go. Unfortunately all of that hasn't been true for their integrated chipset, the GeForce 8200. A definite product launch never quite was and we've been waiting on a newer BIOS from Asus' 8200 motherboard for some time now while the 780G has been the champion of integrated graphics for the AMD platform. The boards though have been out for some time and today we have a new one to look at from ASRock who have been stepping up things as of late including with the ASRock K10N78hSLI-WiFi.

As with the 780a and other new Socket AM2+ chipsets Nvidia recently announced, the major change in this chipset is the inclusion of integrated video across the board. From the lowest-end to the highest. This is to allow for Nvidia to enable it's HybridPower technology across the board. What this does is enable for the primary PCI-Express graphics card to be disabled and for the integrated graphics to take over, thus saving power for what can be a very power hungry part of a computer. This function, however, requires a GeForce 9800 GTX or 9800 GX2 which makes it's use very limited for now until Nvidia applies it to more cards. Nvidia also allows for their GeForce boost technology which allows for SLI when a GeForce 8400GS or 8500GT is used with the integrated video. The ASRock still supports this function but onboard integrated video is not on the motherboard so if that is something you're looking for you'll want to look elsewhere. That said you can get much better video than the GeForce 8200 for $30 or less sot it isn't a huge burden for something better.

Another major feature of the new Nvidia chipsets including the GeForce 8200 is the support at last for HyperTransport 3.0 which allows for much more bandwidth (5.2GT/s). This is built on a new 65nm manufacturing process which also greatly reduces the heat and power consumption compared to previous motherboards. The ASRock is cooled only by a small heatsink on the Southbridge of motherboard and it does the job excellently without the need for anything more. The board is even quite an overclocker as were able to reach 2.9GHz although this wasn't stable. This is helped by the solid state capacitors used by ASRock.

The board is ATX but not full sizing in at 12.0-in x 8.4-in and fairly light and small motherboard if packing a large number of features. Placement is fine for most of everything except for the ATX power plug which is in-between the the processor and the PCI-E 16x slot putting it in a somewhat uncomfortable position for those with larger heatsinks. We were able to sneak it by with our larger ZeroTherm heatsink/fan but if you are using one of the largest heatsinks out there such as the Tuniq Tower it could be a very tight fit.

The board is 5 phase and features PCI-E 2.0 support with one main graphics card 16x lane, two PCI-Express 1x slots, three PCI slots, 7.1 HD Realtek audio, 802.11g Wi-Fi included with, six USB 2.0 slots, six SATA ports which support RAID, one E-SATA port, one Gigabit Ethernet port, one IDE port, firewire onboard the motherboard, four slots for up to DDR2 1066. So it is very feature rich motherboard ready to handle pretty much everything you can throw at it.

Accessories included with the ASRock include a Wi-Fi 802.11g module, one antenna for it, flopppy and ATA133 cables, 4 SATA cables, 1 SATA power adapter, 1 HDMI_SPDIF cable, and driver and software CDs.

ASRock for some time have been content to release motherboards using older chipsets and not go for high-end features but rather for value and cost cutting measures. Lately though they've also released motherboards geared towards the higher-end and enthusiasts and also motherboards based off of new chipsets. One of these we have to look at is based off Nvidia's new 780a chipset, ASRock's K10N780SLIX3-WiFi.

As you might know Nvidia's 780a chipset is the highest-end chipset they have for AMD's Socket AM2+ platform and also features a number of unique features that Nvidia introduced with this chipset. These include integrated video on a high-end board to allow for Hybrid SLI and Hybrid Power. What Hybrid Power does is allow for the integrated motherboard GPU to take control of the main display and work in-tandem with a discrete GPU. What it does is reduce power consumption dramatically as the discrete GPU is turned off when it isn't needed saving possibly hundreds of watts of power if you're using an SLI setup and high-end graphics card. Currently this only works with the GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards but we hope Nvidia extends this technology to other cards in the future as it is very promising.

To give a quick run over Hybrid SLI it is similar to AMD's CrossfireX technology that allows the integrated graphics card on a motherboard to work with lower-end cards to run in SLI and give more performance for lower-end systems. This works only on the GeForce 8400 and 8500 low-end cards as with a higher end card there isn't much the integrated video onboard the 780a can offer.

The new 780a chipset is also Nvidia's first to use a 65nm manufacturing process and is thus much, much cooler running than previous Nvidia chipsets which is a great bonus. We noticed on both the high-end Asus Striker II and this ASRock that the heatpipe was much smaller but did it's job perfectly with no need for more cooling. We also increased the HyperTransport link to a hefty 2.45GHz with ease. The other main chip of the 780a is the nForce 200 which handles PCI-E 2.0 support and provides 32 lanes of bandwidth for 16x PCI-Express support and also for triple SLI support and 8x PCI-E bandwidth for three graphics cards. Of course only the 9800 GTX and 8900 GTX support triple SLI but the ASRock maintains that support. One relic which we don't like much but helps them save money is the return of the paddle card selector to choose triple SLI.

Don't think that because ASRock took out integrated video support on the 780a that they skimped on the rest of the features. As mentioned the motherboard still supports triple SLI, a hallmark of the 780 chipset series, as well as DDR2 1066 memory, 6 Serial ATA II 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support for RAID, an external eSATA II connector, one Gigabit LAN, a firewire connector on board and support for another on the back panel, it includes a Wi-Fi/E header, six USB 2.0 ports, 7.1 HD audio content with DTS support as well as optical SPDIF output. Wi-Fi support seems to be a new trend for ASRock on all of their new motherboards. The ASRock K10N780SLIX3 motherboard definitely is full of features and all the connectors you could need. This definitely isn't the level of support you'd see on a value board and not only that it includes Wi-Fi support which is still fairly uncommon on most motherboards.

Another feature ASRock is now touting usually seen on higher-end motherboards are all solid capacitors for the motherboard. This should increase the lifespan of the motherboard, how reliable it is, and give a more stable overclock.