With very little if any real difference between different
P965 Express platforms, motherboard manufacturers have had to resort to bumping
up feature lists significantly in order to capture your attention. From extra
Serial ATA ports to IEEE 1394a and wireless networking, Asus has crammed every
possible useful feature into the Asus P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard.
The 802.11b/g support included in this platform allows
the user to connect LAN devices on an 802.11b network at 11Mbps, or on more
modern 802.11g hardware at 54Mbps. Best of all, setting up wireless internet
access is a breeze with all the commercial routers on the market.
Click a few buttons, enter
your encryption key and you're set! Of course, once the computer is turned off
that wireless access goes away, but still it is a very convenient option with
many useful business applications - wireless printing being a prime
example.
Asus has put together a very
well rounded motherboard in the P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP, and it retails for about
$236 CDN ($200 US, £102 GBP). The platform is equipped to handle just about
anything you can throw at it.
The Asus
P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP is an absolute breeze to work on, it's as if an enthusiast
designed the motherboard. The ports and headers are easy to access and should
you run into trouble, the Clear CMOS jumper is in a central location. There's
plenty of space between the PCI Express x16 slots too. 
In the benchmarks we saw that workstation type
applications fared particularly well, as they do with most Core 2 Duo and Intel
chipset combinations. The P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP performed towards the middle of the
pack in the in terms of gaming, so you won't be disappointed there
either.
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