Asus has formally announced its first two motherboards to support Intel's upcoming Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo desktop processors aka 'Conroe', though the P965-based boards may also play host to a number of older CPUs, right back to the P4.

Asus' two boards are the P5B and the P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP. Both use Intel's P965 North Bridge to support an LGA775-connected processor across a 533, 800 or 1,066MHz frontside bus. The Deluxe product provides a pair of PCI Express x16 slots, while the regular P5B includes just one such slot. Both boards support up to 8GB of 800MHz DDR 2 SDRAM through four DIMM slots.

The Deluxe-branded board uses the ICH8R South Bridge. It has seven 3Gbps Serial ATA ports to the regular, ICH8-based P5B's five. Both boards have an e-SATA port and a single Ultra ATA 133 link for two devices. The P5B Deluxe supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBoD, while its sibling supports RAID 0, 1 an JBoD.

Both boards have a Gigabit Ethernet port - two on the Deluxe, which also has an 802.11b/g WLAN adaptor that can also operate as an access point. Both provide an array of USB ports, FireWire, S/PDIF and legacy ports.

The P5B and P5B Deluxe are expected to ship later this month. ®