The Asus P5B Premium Vista Edition (PVE) takes the popular P5B motherboard for Intel processors and adds new hardware to show off some of the features added in Windows Vista.
By far the coolest addition is the ScreenDuo, a USB-connected 2.5-inch QVGA LCD with five buttons and a directional pad. This small screen is similar to the SideShow displays found on some recent Vista laptops. It works with a number of "gadget" programs that let you view e-mail or Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, control music playback, view a photo slide show, and so on. (Note: ScreenDuo uses its own custom gadgets, not SideShow files.) Right now, Asus has more gadgets available than Microsoft does, including an iTunes remote control, but you might be frustrated later once more SideShow gadgets become available. It's a gimmicky feature, but a little creativity can lead to uses such as reading RSS feeds while your spouse uses the computer, or checking your e-mail while playing a full-screen game.
Another innovative feature is Asus Accelerated Propeller (ASAP), which adds a 512MB flash-memory module to the motherboard. The module works with Vista's ReadyBoost feature, which speeds up the loading of frequently accessed programs. Because ASAP only contains 512MB of memory, its acceleration is most noticeable if you have 1GB of RAM or less. The P5B PVE also has a socket for an optional Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, which supports Vista's BitLocker feature for secure encryption of your boot drive.
This ATX-format board accepts Intel LGA 775 processors, ranging from older Celerons to the latest quad-core Core 2 Extreme. Hobbyists and hard-core gamers will find the combination of a stable eight-phase power setup and a wealth of BIOS settings should allow substantial overclocking of most processors. We had no problems running a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 at 3.2GHz.
The P5B PVE has a pair of PCI Express (PCIe) x16 slots that can accommodate two compatible ATI video cards in CrossFire mode. The second card actually runs at x4 speeds due to limitations of the Intel P965 chipset, but this has little real-world effect on performance. A single PCIe x1 slot and three standard PCI slots round out the expansion-card capabilities. The board has full RAID support, as well as connectors for eight SATA 3.0 hard drives—seven internal and one external—and a single EIDE connector that supports one or two drives.
The board also delivers eight USB 2.0 and two FireWire connectors, dual Gigabit LAN ports, and an old-fashioned serial port. High-definition 7.1-channel audio is handled by an onboard AD1988 chip. The sound quality is on par for motherboard audio—not bad, but lacking the clarity of a dedicated sound card or even the riser board on the Asus Striker Extreme. The board itself is silent, thanks to heat-pipe cooling.
The box says that the P5B PVE "gives you joyful and relieved feelings." While we wouldn't go that far, it's a full-featured, stable board with some nice extras that let you take greater advantage of Windows Vista.
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