ASUS P5AD2

ASUS P5AD2 Premium motherboard

ASUS’ P5AD2 Premium Edition is loaded with a ton of features: Dual Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394b, onboard 802.11g Wi-Fi, the P5AD2 Premium is even equipped with enough controllers to drive up to eight Serial ATA hard drives (and those are just some of the board’s goodies). Looking over the P5AD2 Premium’s spec list, if there’s a feature ASUS left out, we’d be hard pressed to find it.

802.11g Wifi integrated onboard

Stack Cool cooling

For keeping the board cool, ASUS has developed Stack Cool. Stack Cool places a metal plate on the underside of the motherboard’s PCB, effectively acting as a heat spreader for the power circuitry that drives the CPU. These MOSFETs and capacitors can get fairly toasty under load, especially when overclocking, so it’s important they remain cool for optimal stability and motherboard longevity. Stack Cool sits underneath these components, drawing heat away from them. ASUS claims their Stack Cool cooling system bought them an additional 10 degrees Celsius in cooling.

Unlike ABIT, ASUS relies on passive cooling for the P5AD2’s North Bridge. Fortunately, the heatsink seems to do a good job of keeping the chip cool, even after overclocking.

Unlocked CPU multiplier!

Manually adjusting the CPU parameters

CPU voltage options

But the P5AD2 isn’t just stuffed with features, ASUS has integrated a number of cool settings in the motherboard’s BIOS as well. You’ve got bus speed options ranging from 200MHz-400MHz, and a wealth of voltage options. CPU voltages range from 1.3875V-1.70V in increments of 0.0125V, giving enthusiasts a wide range of CPU voltages to choose from for Prescott processors. Chipset voltage is also adjustable, settings of 1.5V and 1.6V are present, as is memory voltage, with settings of 1.8V, 1.9V, 2.0V, and 2.1V. There’s even an FSB termination voltage setting in the board’s BIOS.

Overclock profiles

NOS dynamic clock adjustment

PCI Express clock adjustment

For those extreme FSB clocks, the memory ratio can be adjusted to keep your RAM in check. Ratios of 2.0, 2.66, and 3.0 are provided, which will clock your memory at speeds of 400MHz, 533MHz, and 600MHz at 200MHz FSB. (As we mentioned earlier, ASUS fully stands behind their 600MHz memory setting.) The PCI Express frequency can also be manually locked to run at a particular frequency, clocks from 90-133MHz are available in BIOS.

In case you’re new to overclocking, ASUS also provides overclock profiles. The “overclock profile” setting will automatically adjust all settings needed for a CPU overclock of 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, or 30%. So if you’d like to try and overclock your processor by 20%, select the “Overclock 20%” overclock profile, and the P5AD2 BIOS will adjust all the necessary system parameters for you. There are also overclock profiles for FSB settings as high as 1066MHz, with DDR2 options at that FSB speed of 533MHz and 710MHz.

Onboard settings for the P5AD2

One new feature ASUS has incorporated into the P5AD2’s BIOS is AI N.O.S. N.O.S (Non-Delay Overclocking System) dynamically adjusts the clock speed of the system processor based on load. Unlike other utilities from competing manufacturers, N.O.S. monitors CPU voltage draw rather than temperature. ASUS claims this allows their N.O.S. solution to react to load changes quicker than others.

Like other ASUS motherboards we’ve tested in the past, the P5AD2 features a “Turbo” performance mode setting, which cranks up the bus speed 10% for a little added performance. You can also disable Intel’s PAT feature in the 925X chipset via the “Hyper Path 2” setting.