ASUS Commando
ASUS has expanded their line of Republic of Gamers branded motherboards with the ASUS Commando based on Intel’s proven P965 Express chipset. Does it compete with what’s on the market and offer features beyond current P965 motherboards?
Introduction
The ASUS Commando is the latest in the Republic of Gamers branded motherboards featuring the proven and highly overclockable Intel P965 Express chipset and ICH8R south bridge. The Commando supports the Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. . Following Industry trends the ASUS Commando requires only a few components to create a working machine. The required components are: Socket LGA775 CPU, DDR 2 memory, power supply, drives and a video card. ASUS integrated the following components into the Commando:1 ATA-133 port; 1 floppy port; 10 USB ports (4 on the backplane and 3 headers supporting 2 ports each.) ; 6 SATA 3G ports; 2 GigE Ethernet ports; Onboard ADI® 1988B Codec; Coaxial, S/PDIF In/out; 2 IEEE1394 ports (1 on backplane and 1 via header) and of course standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The motherboard is packed adequately. I don’t really like the new style packaging design found on many of the newer boards. I suppose they look better than older retail packages, but getting stuff in and out of the packages isn’t as easy as it used to be. This packaging is also nearly identical to the packing used with the ASUS Crosshair and Striker Extreme.
Board Layout
The first and more apparent area where the Commando shines is in it’s layout. It is virtually flawless. Quite simply this is probably the best laid out motherboard I’ve seen to date. It has exactly one flaw I can think of. That is the location of the IEEE1394 header. It’s too far back and therefore difficult to connect front panel ports to in some cases. Otherwise it has a very effective layout. Even with dual X1950XTX’s there is enough room for two PCI cards. The CPU socket is clear of obstructions, and you can remove and add memory modules without removing the video card. All headers and plugs are placed in sensible locations and are easy to reach. Also the location of the power, clear CMOS and reset buttons are well thought out and easy to reach provided a second X1950XTX or similarly large graphics card are not installed. I also like the fact that the onboard audio is located on a daughter card. This keeps the back plane looking much cleaner and also allows you to completely remove the audio if you plan on using an add in sound board like the Creative X-Fi series cards. I see this as a nice idea for OEMs who will include aftermarket sound cards in their systems. Removing the audio card could help prevent customers from being confused by having two separate sound cards.
The CPU area of the ASUS Commando is very clean. There are no resistors or other components blocking the use of large heat sink and fan combinations. In fact I used the Thermaltake Big Typhoon on this board during testing. As you may know, the Big Typhoon takes up quite a bit of real estate.
The board has 4 240 pin DDR 2 DIMM slots located in the usual spot in front of the CPU socket. To ASUS’ credit they have placed the DIMM slots in a manner that allows the removal and installation of memory with large video cards installed. Few boards seem to allow for this luxury and ASUS didn’t forget it.
The north bridge is located just to the left of the CPU socket. There is a large copper heat pipe based heat sink system that connects to the south bridge and voltage components directly above the CPU area. This cooling system is fairly adequate to cool the chipset and while it did get warm, it wasn’t enough to burn you.
The south bridge is located in between the PCIe x16 slots and sports the Republic of Gamers logo. Directly in front of the south bridge are the six SATA ports wich are turned so that cables will be positioned forward and away from any installed expansion cards.
The ASUS Commando has two PCIe x16 slots. The first slot operates at x16 speeds, and the second at x4 speeds. This motherboard like all P965 Express chipset based motherboards with dual PCIe x16 (form factor) slots supports ATI’s Crossfire technology. Unfortunately, if R600 turns out to be anything like the G80 cards, the second slots x4 bandwidth may reduce performance, but we’ll just have to wait and see if this theory holds true or not.
The ASUS Commando has the following ports on the backplane: 1 PS/2 mouse port, 1 PS/2 keyboard port, 1 IEEE1394 port, SPDIF out port, 1 optical port, 2 RJ-45 ports, and 4 USB ports. Also found on the rear panel is the LCD Poster Screen.
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