Asus P5E-Deluxe X48 or Gigabyte GA-x48-DS4

Not really finding a whole heck of alot of comparisons just between both of these boards so I thought I would start a thread on it if it hasn't already been done.

I don't care for Gigabyte because of the way they do their BIOS's. Not sure if it is the same on that board, but the one that I have does not tell you what the voltages are by default, only lets you select the delta...which is quite annoying.

That's interesting. Ill have to investigate that. Thanks for the heads up

That's how the voltage in BIOS was with my old GA-EX38-DQ6, so I wouldn't be surprised it it's the same with the x48 board. As long as you know the default values though, you should be fine. It's just an annoying extra bit of work.

So does anyone have any insight on the P5E-Deluxe?

I'll have its brother on Monday, I have the DDR3 version coming.

supposedly you can use the Rampage Formula bios in the P5E-Deluxe to give you more bios ocing options.

Can you use any rampage formula bios with the p5e-deluxe?

thideras said:

I'll have its brother on Monday, I have the DDR3 version coming.

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So what's the deal then thideras, I assume you're going to be benching it?
What are your plans for video benchmarks? I mean without the true dual x16 slots, do you think that will hold you back in any way? Or are you going to go with some cards or res. that won't peg the bandwidth like I've been reading in some other threads.
I ask because I just picked up the DDR3 and now I need a board to put it in and was thinking about the p5q3 due to the price. Otherwise I was thinking about the much more expensive Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6, which I would rather not do.

I hope this is still on track with the thread here Oblivion.

EDIT: Sry thideras, I thought I read in another thread that you were picking up the p5q3 deluxe. Now that I look in this thread, you were referring to the p5e3 Deluxe. Maybe I'll try one of these.

baditude_df said:

So what's the deal then thideras, I assume you're going to be benching it?
What are your plans for video benchmarks? I mean without the true dual x16 slots, do you think that will hold you back in any way? Or are you going to go with some cards or res. that won't peg the bandwidth like I've been reading in some other threads.
I ask because I just picked up the DDR3 and now I need a board to put it in and was thinking about the p5q3 due to the price. Otherwise I was thinking about the much more expensive Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6, which I would rather not do.

I hope this is still on track with the thread here Oblivion.

EDIT: Sry thideras, I thought I read in another thread that you were picking up the p5q3 deluxe. Now that I look in this thread, you were referring to the p5e3 Deluxe. Maybe I'll try one of these.

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Yup, benching on it

Lol, no kidding?

Well, I had my eye on the same two boards that Oblivion did, so this thread caught my eye.
Recently I caught a pretty good deal on some DDR3 ($230.00 shipped for a 2x2GB set of GSKilll DDR3-1600 7-7-7-18), so now I need a damn DDR3 Board to try it out in. Looks like it's gonna be another $3-400.00 bill for that if I want instant product replacement warantee on it.

Oblivion, can you post the link where you read you can flash with Rampage BIOS?
Which way are you leaning so far? I have both DDR3 versions of this board available here and quite honestly I'm torn as to which one to buy also.

Does this asus board have dual 16x lanes?

The x38's and 48's only for true dual x16. Not sure what you are referring to there Oblivion. The ones I have my eye on are the Asus P5E3 and the GA-X48T-DQ6, so both of them will have dual x16 lanes.

I have a P5E, the DDR2 version, and the bios options on it are amazing.

After a bios reset, you have to reboot it 2 or 3 times for it to detect the vcore to be able to change, but after that, its great. The vcore voltages go up in increments of 0.075 starting at 0.75 and ending somewhere around 2.0v I think. Mem goes up in sets of 0.02 starting at 1.2v and ending at 3v (I think). I'm not 100% sure at the moment as I'm not at home to check.

It has GREAT overclocking options. More than I would normally mess with and I usually like to play with as many settings as I can.

Would recommend this board and its greaters to anyone looking to purchase a X38/X48 board.

OBLIVIONLORD said:

Can you use any rampage formula bios with the p5e-deluxe?

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Please do not try this, you'll render your board useless, the 2 boards are not the same in design, you can however flash the Maximus Formula with a Rampage Formula bios as the pcb layout and design is virtually the same.

I do not care for the P5E, it was very finicky about RAM, do not try to run Ballisix on it as it will spiut it out, you'll need low volatge RAM such as G-Skills or Geil.

Unless you going x-fire rather get a P45 board, in fact I ran x-fire with dual 4850's on a P45 with great results, the dual x 8 lanes could handle 1920 x 1200 and 8 x AA without any problems

In the other thread .. I haven't seen anyone do a dual 4870 on 16x + 8x lane to say that it isn't hindered compared to 2 16x lanes.

How many ram sticks did you try out if the board is that sensitive to high voltage memory? It could have also been something defective on the board you got compared to others. I'm not seeing this issue on google.

The BIOS for the EP45-DS3R does not use deltas for voltage. It's the only board I've really OCd though so I have nothing to compare it to. I can tell you this: from what I've seen I will get an Asus board for my next box that gets OCd.

That said, Gigabyte's Award BIOS is good, it has basically everything that I have read about tuning. EasyTune is also very handy. And the dual BIOS means you don't worry about updating it, so there ya go.

I've had the board up to 475MHz w/ my q9450. I haven't dropped the multi yet, no idea how high it goes. I had to set the clock skews and mess w/ all the voltages but everything I needed was there.

One drawback: it has a wicked vdroop (0.05 idle - 0.12v load). I have the P45 though, so who knows about their X48 boards.

Greetings....

I'm a noob to this forum and also new to overclocing as I'm a firm believer in buying something fast from the outset...but I own a watercooled case just in case I ever decide to overclock...which I AM leaning towards with my current setup now!

I currently have an ASUS P5E Deluxe that I've had for a week so I can give you some insight into this board if you like. Mine arrived with a defective S/PDIF optical port. The board itself as great. The BIOS has tons of options and it runs fairly cool. If you do decide to get this board, be aware that there are no BIOS updates available for it so your choice in memory is going to be key! Do not get Corsair Dominators 8500s! I did and regret it. You just cannot get them to run at the advertised 1066 speeds without memory errors, random blue screens, etc. BUT, DDR2-800 speeds run fantastic and a simple, temporary overclock to 3.01GHz on my Q6600 was very stable. If I had to do it all over again, I think I would have gone with G-Skill or Mushkin memory with the Rampage Formula board.

I guess you have noticed there just isn't much out there on the P5E-Deluxe but I've found tons on the Rampage Formula and I think memory compatibility with the Rampage is better plus they have released BIOS upgrades to accomodate more memory types.

Just my 2 cents.

In fact, I'm considering sending this back to Newegg and doing just that.

I like gigabyte but I have to say their board quality is not there.

I had ga-p35 ds3r, board was solid and unbreakable. Since then I tried p35-dq6, week after having it some components came off, then was x38-ds4, it came with odd working lan ports and died after 2 months of service.

I too had one of those Gigabyte boards (GA-P35C-DS3R)....I loved it until the BIOS died and went into endless loops of turn-on/turn-off every 5 seconds. It's RMA'd as a corrupt BIOS issue.

BTW, I tried your fix on getting my memory to pass memtest. The OC worked great and the memory errors went down GREATLY...but I'm still getting about 7 errors thru the end of step #5 in memtest. Much lower than 30,000+, but still not a pass.