ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
Workstation motherboards from ASUS have always commanded their own niche away from the mainstream selection, and despite also being another ‘P8P67′, the latest WS Revolution is no exception.
The WS Revolution is designed to cover high-end performance systems that are designed for heavy computation, serious business, servers and/or an extreme performance gaming rigs, for those who demand second to none stability and particular WS features.
Fundamentally there are some similarities: the DIGI+ VRM hardware, TPU and EPU are all ported over for example, however it also features Nvidia’s NF200 chipset, which adds twice as many PCI-Express lanes over four slots. These can operate in two 16x or four 8x to provide three-way SLI or quad CrossFire.
Other Workstation-esq additions include the Internal USB ports, dubbed Quick Gate, and support for ASUS’ SAS upgrade kit, in addition to the eight SATA ports (four 6Gbps, four 3Gbps) already fitted.
Both Gigabit Ethernet controllers are Intel powered, allowing for teaming between the two to give extra bandwidth, and there’s also two USB 3 ports, Firewire and 7.1 channel High-Definition surround sound with S/PDIF out options as well.
The heatsinks are also different to signify the boards tweaked design, along with the ‘Platinum’ stamp to denote its ’92%’ power efficiency level of the 16+2 phase DIGI+ VRM, the chunkier and angular heatsinks are more reminiscent of the Republic of Gamer boards. Secretly I think they look better than the blue ones on the normal P8P boards..ahem!
Fancy yourself a Revolution? Drop us your thoughts, in the comments below.