Summer is closing in and with it, Intel's new mainstream chips, the P45 are getting ready for release. Earlier this month we had the opportunity to see quite a few of Gigabyte's motherboards powered by the P45 but now, it's time to move up the alphabet and see what Asus is preparing.
Part of the P5Q series, two of Asus' P45 implementations dubbed P5Q-E and P5Q Pro can be seen below in all their glory. Since they both utilize the same chipset that consists of the P45 and ICH10 chips, the boards share quite a lot of features, including support for the latest dual- and quad-core 45nm processors with 1333 MHz FSBs, CrossFire through multiple PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (only one being x16 electrical), DDR2 memory, Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 channel integrated audio.
The differences between the two see the P5Q-E as the higher-end offer, with three PCI-Express x16 slots, two Ethernet connectors and a more complex cooling system. The P5Q Pro has to make it trough with "only" two PCIe x16 slots, a smaller all-copper cooling system and only one Gigabit Ethernet adapter. Both boards feature 8 SATA 3.0 Gbps ports and the P5Q-E also comes with an eSATA connector. Expect this boards to hit the stores late next month.
