jmke

Consistency is a hard thing to come by in this industry, but year after year, Intel has managed to deliver excellent mid-range core logic chipsets. Since its launch last spring, the P35 Express has been the best bang-for-your-buck Core 2 chipset on the market—a position inherited from its P965 predecessor, which was the LGA775 platform of choice in its day. The P965's crown, of course, was a hand-me-down from the Intel 915P chipset that came before it, which in turn, well, you get the picture.

Intel's mid-range chipsets are perhaps the very definition of the sweet spot; they offer nearly all the performance of the company's high-end chipsets and comparable features at a fraction of the cost. Trickle-down is a wonderful thing indeed, and its value hasn't been lost on motherboard makers, which tend to eagerly snap up Intel's latest mid-range chipsets and deploy them across a wide range of different products. We've seen the latest P35 Express featured in stripped-down budget boards selling for less than $100, enthusiast-oriented offerings draped in indulgent excess that cost $200 and up, and all points in between.

Given the impressive flexibility and consistent quality of Intel's mid-range chipsets, we've naturally been looking forward to the new P45 Express with bated breath. This successor to the P35 hasn't yet been formally announced, but we managed to get our hands on P45-based P5Q and P5Q3 Deluxe motherboards from Asus to run through the wringer. Read on to see if Intel's latest mid-range chipset lives up to its lineage.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14655

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