Introduction

While ASUS and Gigabyte may be working in joint ventures since the announcement was made last year to fend off buyout threats from Hon Hai, Gigabyte and ASUS still are producing their own motherboards and competing for market space and performance more than ever – it’s business and usual, and they great news for the consumer as they fight it out.

Gigabyte set the Core 2 motherboard market a blaze with their stunning DQ6. We have tested this baby and it’s not only the feature king but it has proven to overclock like an unchained crazy beast.

ASUS’s first P965 board we tested, the P5B Deluxe, while able to keep up on the onboard features, it certainly isn’t able to keep up when it comes down to the crunch in the overclocking front. ASUS fall behind by nearly 80MHz in the FSB department, and with the latest BIOS from Gigabyte, there is even more speed coming from the DQ6, as it keeps surprising us.

ASUS to this point has decided rather than relinquish the performance/overclocking crown to its partner, they have decided to bring out a board that is designed to overclock from the word go.

Today we are testing the latest addition to the ASUS P965 chipset line-up. Dubbed the P5B-E Plus, it’s more refined than the P5B Deluxe, though lacking some features, let’s have a close look and see if it really does allow you to adjust speed as you wish.