StaRflaM

The P5GD2 costs a lot of money. Weighing in at $200 street price, it is MUCH more expensive than a lot of other 915 solutions out there. Some of the other manufacturers have gotten their boards down into the low $100's. However, these are stripped down and are usually less stable, we have seen these for many years. Comparing the P5GD2 to mainstream motherboards yields significant differences. These can range from lack of Wireless, to single Gigabit over vanilla PCI, and no active OR passive cooling solutions. Asus has taken cooling, stability, and tweaking to a whole new level by including their A.I. overclocking settings, NOS, Stack Cool, the copper slug, and the passive cooling on the North/Southbridges. The combination of these features make the board worth it.

That being said, not everybody needs this vast array of features. For that reason they do sell a Deluxe version that cuts out the extra Gigabit controller and removes one of the Firewire ports for $25 less. 925 boards top out at $25 more than their 915 counterparts to get added PAT functionality. These are expensive for a reason and all of the extra features are that reason. Integrated wireless, 2xGigabit lan, 3xSATA raid, 12 total HDD's supported, all of the firewire and USB2.0 ports, and the added flexibility of external SATA connectivity is nice. Whether it is ultimately worth it, that is up to you.

http://www.gotapex.com/reviews.php?r...gd2/index.html