Asustek Released Mainboard with Built-In DDR3 Memory Modules

[sushrukh]

Asustek Promotes DDR3 by Building it Into Mainboards

Even though DDR3 memory technology offers some promises for higher performance, it is still not available widely, which is why Asustek Computer, the world’s largest producer of computer mainboards, decided to offer its customers a motherboard with pre-installed DDR3 modules and specifically tailored heat-spreaders.



Asustek’s P5K3 Premium/WiFi-AP mainboard comes with two 1GB of PC3-10666 (1333MHz) memory modules already installed onboard and covered with high-performance heat-spreaders. Even though onboard DDR3 memory works at default 1066MHz, Asus guarantees that the memory can be overclocked to 1500MHz and higher, however, the company does not name the supplier of the modules or their latency as well as voltage settings.

The P5K3 Premium/WiFi-AP mainboard itself is based on Intel P35 chipset and supports a variety of LGA775 form-factor processors, including Intel Core 2 Extreme, Intel Core 2 Quad, Intel Core 2 Duo as well as future chips with 1333MHz processor system bus. The board support ATI CrossFire multi-GPU technology, sports a number of modern technologies for tweaking and overclocking as well as built-in wireless network controller that can function both as access point or wireless client mode.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/news/2007-07/asus_p5k3_mobo.jpg

The new P5K3 Premium mainboard is aimed at customers seeking for truly high performance, but not wishing to spend time on finding high-performance memory modules with robust cooling solutions and also without a plan to squeeze all the juiced out of their systems. Essentially, virtually all computer or gaming enthusiasts, except extreme overclockers, would find Asus P5K3 Premium/WiFi-AP motherboard an interesting solution.

The manufacturer suggested retail price of the novelty has not yet been announced.

[Nocutius]

Thats interesting, but only if the price is lower than buying stand alone sticks of ram. Otherwise what would be the point of it, 2gigs will soon not be enough (vista), what then?

[sushrukh]

Ya, but i don't think it will be any cheaper than buying modules separately but u know you'll always have to pay more for new technologies.

[tyle6]

i like the idea of the onboard RAM but it seems to be the same as onboard video in my eyes. are you going to get the top of the line modules on these boards a month or 2 down the road when DDR3 is readily available memory? No ability to expand?, mistake in my eyes. even a motherboard with onboard nvidia video still had AGP slots back in the day.

Does anyone now the deal with SLI and the new P35 chipset i have heard it could do it if Nvidia wrote the drivers basically? true?

[sushrukh]

One thing is differnt from the onboard video.In case of onboard video, u get far inferior quality onboard IGP compared to dedicated video cards but in this case, Asus is providing 1333Mhz Micron D9 modules that are simply the best & they are also equivalent to the separately purchased DDR3 1333modules.You can't get that in case of inbuilt video.But, ya the onboard modules should be user changeable & upgradeable without voiding the warranty.

[Kougar]

Does anyone now the deal with SLI and the new P35 chipset i have heard it could do it if Nvidia wrote the drivers basically? true?

While true, it still does not matter... performance would suffer for the same reasons Crossfire performance suffers on P35 chipsets. Except for some ASUS ROG boards all P35 chipsets are PCIe 16x+4x with it split between north and south bridges on the chipset, further bottlenecking things.

[Bio-Hazard]

As I posted on the other forums about this board, the memory is not upgradeable nor expandable, what you see is what you get. There's no way to add menory to the board regardless of how you look at it, so if you plan on running M$ Vista your kind of screwed while you're limited to only 2 gigs of ram. And where did the Micro D9 IC info come from???? I saw no mention of it anywhere on the ASUS web page.
So all in all this is in general a bad idea except for maybe the lazy "NOOB" that has no idea of how to pick out their own ram.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l...odelmenu=1 (http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1729&modelmenu=1)

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l...odelmenu=2 (http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1729&modelmenu=2)

[sushrukh]

While true, it still does not matter... performance would suffer for the same reasons Crossfire performance suffers on P35 chipsets. Except for some ASUS ROG boards all P35 chipsets are PCIe 16x+4x with it split between north and south bridges on the chipset, further bottlenecking things.

Even the 965 supports only 16x+4x crossfire.Take the example of Commando,which is a ROG board but still provides 16x+4x.The 975x & the RD600 provide 8x+8x Crossfire though.Nobody should buy these boards which have only 16x+4x if they wanna go for dual graphics.

As I posted on the other forums about this board, the memory is not upgradeable nor expandable, what you see is what you get. There's no way to add menory to the board regardless of how you look at it, so if you plan on running M$ Vista your kind of screwed while you're limited to only 2 gigs of ram. And where did the Micro D9 IC info come from???? I saw no mention of it anywhere on the ASUS web page.

So all in all this is in general a bad idea except for maybe the lazy "NOOB" that has no idea of how to
pick out their own ram.

Ya, i agree Bio, it's not a good idea.I remember that i've read somewhere in the Asus newsletter that the memories will be based on Micron D9 chips & that's the reason Asus is claiming that these memories will be OC'able upto 1600 Mhz (1500 is guaranteed).Now, u know not all memories can be OC'able to that level.Donno they are saying right or not though.

[timberwolf120]

I would just pick my own sticks of RAM and if I needed better cooling for them, I'll buy the Thermalright H07 RAM coolers. Only good Asus is doing is making their motherboard look even crazier with more heatpipes on it.