While many companies make money selling dedicated servers for businesses, it is entirely possible for someone to build a high-performance system from scratch. You need a serious PC for serious work. But most of the high-end components in the market for home system builders are generally geared towards the extreme gamers. Your boss probably wouldn’t like the idea of having the ultimate gaming system as the centerpiece of the office floor.
This is where the ASUS P5E64 Workstation comes in. It is a 64-bit motherboard based on Intel’s X38 Express chipset. This allows it to support up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM running at 1333MHz, or even up to 1800MHz with overclocking. The front-side bus can be clocked between 800 to 1600MHz. With an X38 chipset, the P5E64 supports the latest 45nm CPUs from Intel, including Quad-core CPUs.
A key feature among the P5E64’s impressive list is the fact that it has four PCI-e 16x card slots, two of which are PCI-e 2.0. This enables the system to support up to eight displays simultaneously. Such a configuration could be useful for users who require large amounts of screen space, such as engineering designers or financial institutions. Multi-display configurations allow users to work with large amounts of data or media without having to switch between windows, increasing overall work efficiency.
Another feature that sets the ASUS P5E64 Workstation apart from consumer-grade equipment is the inclusion of ASUS’ GP Diagnosis Card. This plugin module conducts system diagnosis at startup and displays the system status via an LCD display. The card also has on-board power and reset switches for easy troubleshooting when working within your CPU chassis.
As a workstation motherboard, efficiency and reliability are key factors for the ASUS P5E64 Workstation. Premium components and a power-management chip continually adjust the power supply for the CPU for a claimed 58% in power savings as well as keeping the board running cooler. Another nice little feature is the front panel connector plug. This lets you connect all the front panel devices via a single plug rather than multiple tiny connectors.
Based on our benchmark results, the ASUS P5E64 Workstation beat everything else we’ve tested, and rightfully so. Powered by a Quad-Core Extreme and running Vista Ultimate 64, the workstation board excelled in nearly every respect. Compared to another high-end motherboard, the CPU score under PCMark05 was measurable higher at 9,616 points. The graphics score saw much higher performance gains with a whopping 12,467 points. The only area where the P5E64 didn’t completely dominate was in the HDD performance. At 4,870 points, the HDD performance was only average. Note, however, that the board supports and optional SAS card that boosts disk performance and reliability, which was not tested. The final score for the ASUS P5E64 Workstation was 9,581 overall.
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