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The board we received was the Deluxe Edition, featuring a few extra goodies such as SATA and integrated IEEE1394. Thus, aside from the standard goodies as ribbon cables, the box contains two sets of SATA cable as well as the firewire "module" and the necessary cables to hook it up. The interesting thing here is that unlike in the case of the A7N8X, ASUS is not using the conventional 6 pin IEEE 1394 connector on the board but uses a 10 pin header. The module, on the other hand, uses the boxed 6-pin connector. ASUS supplies the necessary converter cables, though.

Hardware bundled with the P4G8X: left to right: S/PDIF I/O module, USB 2.0 - MIDI/Gameport, IEEE 1394 Firewire. Note the cable with the red 10-pin connector (to the mainboard) and the white 6-pin connector (to the module)

Standard accessories are the usual driver CD and manual, what is missing is the floppy for configuration of a third party controller needed in case of a fresh installation of WindowsXP or 2000 using the SerialATA interface. It is a small thing to include but can make a big difference since the only media accepted by the install shield is the 3.5" floppy.

The manual itself is in the usual ASUS quality except for the description of some of the Chip Configuration parameters that were more accurate in older ASUS manuals. Likewise, there is some misleading information regarding the AGP/PCI Frequency:
This field allows you to set a higher AGP/PCI frequency for better system performance.
It is simply not true: increasing the AGP frequency has never led to better system performance and the same goes for the PCI speed with one minor exception which is an alleged small increase in IDE performance.

The Install CD features all necessary drivers but unlike the situation in older Intel chipset-based boards, the individual parts of the chipset drivers need to be loaded manually, no big deal, though.

Aside from some of the standard ASUS-typical features like POST Reporter, ASUS has added a few new innovations to the P4G8X features:

CPU Parameter Recall

When the system hangs due to overclocking failure, there is no need to open the case to clear CMOS data. Simply restart the system and the BIOS will automatically restore the CPU default setting for each parameter.

We have seen this feature on ASUS boards for the last two years and certainly have come to appreciate it

CrashFree BIOS

CrashFree BIOS allows users to restore BIOS data from a floppy diskette even when BIOS code and data are corrupted during update or invaded by virus. ASUS motherboards now enable users to enjoy this innovative protection feature without buying an optional ROM.

Quite honestly, I think I'll postpone the real test of this feature until after the review.

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