Asus' P5E-VM HDMI motherboard
Introducing the G35 Express

With Nvidia's next-gen GeForce 8200 integrated graphics chipset not quite ready for prime time, the 780G's primary competition will come from Intel's G35 Express. This latest IGP chipset from the blue team features a GMA X3500 graphics processor with a unified shader core whose roots can be traced all the way back to the GMA X3000 found in the G965 Express chipset. Like the X3000, the X3500 has eight scalar shader execution units and a 667MHz core clock speed. The X3500 is DirectX 10-compliant, too, with support for Shader Model 4.0 and OpenGL 2.0. This IGP also packs a Clear Video decode engine that can offload some elements of the HD video playback process.

The G35 Express is more of a refresh than a brand new chipset, though, and it shows. Digital video outputs like DVI and HDMI are only supported through auxiliary sDVO (Serial Digital Video Output) chips, and PCI Express is limited to gen-one connectivity. Intel's block diagram for the G35 even calls for the chipset to include south bridge components from the old ICH8 family.

Asus has been a little more enterprising with its G35-based P5E-VM HDMI, pairing the G35 Express north bridge with the very same ICH9R south bridge chip you'll find on high-end P35 and X38 boards. The result is a Micro ATX motherboard with many of the bells and whistles one might expect from a full-size ATX model.

The P5E-VM uses a much larger north bridge cooler than we saw strapped to the 780G, but it's still a fanless and therefore silent design. Asus favors PCIe over PCI, equipping the board with a pair of PCIe x1 slots and only a single PCI slot. That actually makes sense given the fact Asus is now making PCI Express sound cards.

Installing a double-wide graphics card will cost you one of the x1 slots, though. Longer double-wide cards will also interfere with a number of the board's SATA ports—apparently par for the course within the Micro ATX form factor's relatively cramped proportions.

In fact, the board is so crowded that Asus has moved a handful of components onto a little riser card that sits just above the top PCIe x1 slot. This card houses an ASMedia Technology ASM4136 chip, which according to what little information is available on the wide world internets—and then mostly in speculative forum discussions—is some sort of video processing decoder likely tied to the board's HDMI output.

You won't find quite the bounty of ports on the P5E-VM that we did on the Gigabyte board, but there's plenty to like here, including VGA and HDMI video outputs. DVI output is supported, as well, although only through an HDMI-to-DVI adapter that Asus includes in the box. The board has a full range of analog audio outs and a coaxial S/PDIF output courtesy of Realtek's budget ALC883 codec.

As one might expect, the P5E-VM features Gigabit Ethernet, but through an PCIe-based Atheros L1 networking controller rather than more common chips from Marvell or Realtek. Firewire and USB make the cut, as well, but External Serial ATA is conspicuously missing.