Taking a look at the results posted in the previous pages, we must say that we were surprised to actually find the 945P based board perform a bit slower than the 955X based board. This is especially visible in memory benchmarks where we see differences between 6-10%. While this only resulted in a difference of 1-2% in real-world non-synthetic benchmarks, the 945 chipset was consistently slower. We saw similar results when the 856 and 875 chipsets were released where the 875 featured PAT that allowed it to perform better. It was only a matter of time, and from ASUS, that an 865 chipset solution managed to achieve similar results and thus, we wont be surprised if this performance gap is obliterated with newer BIOS/boards.
Coming back to the board itself, the P5LD2 has almost all the bells’n’whistles found in the more expensive P5WD2. The feature set is identical with the exception of a secondary Gigabit Network Controller on the P5WD2 while the bundled software and accessories remaing unchanged. Overclocking results were a tad bit better on the P5WD2 however, stability was top notch in both the boards. With a very modest performance difference between the two, we think that the P5LD2 might prove to be a better choice because it will be priced lesser that the P5WD2. If you're up for an Intel chipset solution then you can't go wrong with either of these ASUS boards
