P5Q pro vs. P5k deluxe wifi

[steve1616]

Hi, I am building a computer for my Dad. I built my own computer earlier this year, and I bought the P5K deluxe wifi. I love my motherboard, but new options are on the table now, and at cheaper prices. I am interested in the P5Q pro, and also the P5K deluxe wifi. I will probably not set this computer up to be overclocked very much. I have already purchased an E8500 processor. I will install a wifi card in the P5Q pro if I get it. The P5Q pro is $99 shipped to my door (after rebates). The wifi card will cost about $25. This will put the purchase price at $125 for this setup. The P5K deluxe wifi already has wifi, but is higher initially. The price of the P5K deluxe wifi will be $155 delivered to my door. I will only use 1 video card so the crossfire ability of the P45 doesn't mean much to me. I have read several reviews on P45 vs. P35 chipsets, and get really mixed reviews. Some reviews say that the P45 isn't as good as the P35 chipsets. Some reviews say that the P45 and P35 are equivalent, but that the P45 offers crossfire. Some reviews show benchmarks of the P35 beating the P45, but then say the the P45 is still a good upgrade. I am really confused and would love if anyone could give some recommendations. I am not tied to these boards, but I kind of like Asus only because I have had good luck with the P5K deluxe that I bought a year ago.

 

[semisonic9]

The obvious question: Why do you care about wifi to a desktop?

Beyond that, I'd probably go with the Pro. Watch the 'egg, it can get pretty cheap sometimes too.

-S

 

[steve1616]

I only care about wifi on the desktop, because my Dad's office is small. I can use the wifi to the printer to make it work while being in another room. Also, his internet service provider offers espn. I use the wifi to move my pc to the living room and still get the internet connection. I just hook my computer up to the TV and watch the games. We don't get cable so this is a fairly nice feature to have.

 

[steve1616]

Also, My dad and I work together. We also live next door to each other. There are many times that wifi would be convenient to send his printer files to be filed away at his house.

 

[BoboKatt]

I love my P5KE-wifi. It is/was a fantastic, easy to use and reliable board that if you wanted to OC, it did a great job. I still use it -- with my Q9550 OC?ed to just under 3.6 GHz. It's very stable -- the bios is easy to understand etc.

However it is still more expensive (at least at my local computer store where they still have a few sitting there). The P5Q-pro is a newer chipset with some definite advantages. The P5Q-pro seems to the sweet spot now and has a very large following. Personally with how cheap wifi cards are, I would get the P5Q-pro for as little as $99 and even less at times if you get lucky and then slap in a wireless card. In my case I don't even use the wireless onboard on my P5K because it's a G card and I upgraded to a DLINK N router so I wanted to actually see what N was all about so I bought a dedicated N wireless card.

Again that was an option I chose to do -- the original wireless card worked flawlessly with my N router just fine.

BTW my P5KE has been running crossfire ATI X1950XTX from day one. It's just not running it at 2 X 16 bandwidth but then again as far as I know neither can the P45 (the pro anyhow). I have yet to see any benefit online from reviews of boards that can run 2 x full 16 (X48 I think). Maybe like 2% if that?

Either board I can't see you going wrong.

 

[steve1616]

I think that I am leaning toward the P5Q pro because it is cheaper and no one is replying to me that it has been a bad board. Hopefully the bad reviews on this board were just because of early silicon.

 

[m0moma]

i just got a p5q pro pretty good so far no problems did a quick oc too

 

[steve1616]

I think the P5Q pro is the way to go. I will order it tomorrow. Now I just have to decide whether to get DDR 2 800 or 1066. It looks like there isn't a huge performace difference between the two speeds so the cheaper will probably be a better deal. A lot of the reviews say that I will never notice the difference between the 2 memory speeds.