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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2223
It's that time of year again. Computex is almost upon us and that usually means some major product introductions are getting ready to occur. On May 21st, Intel will launch the P35 chipset, the successor to the P965 chipset introduced last June. We have been testing several P35 (Bearlake) based boards in both DDR2 and DDR3 configurations. We cannot reveal benchmarks yet, but let's just say there are a few surprises in store on launch day. Unfortunately, AMD's new AM2+ design along with the Barcelona/Agena family of processors are not quite ready for public display, but rest assured we think the wait will be well worth it.
While the new product introductions always grab the lion's share of attention, it also means that today's top performing products are well on their way to becoming tomorrow's value based solutions. This is always good for those of us with limited budgets and the lack of desire to upgrade every six months but who want excellent performance per dollar. We are now seeing the second generation of P965 motherboards selling near the $100 mark and they are still providing very good performance and features.
More good news is that the products based on these now "mature" chipsets are well tuned and most of the bugs have been sorted out. Case in point is the Infinity 965-S from DFI and the P5B Premium from ASUS which are two excellent P965 motherboards that were recently launched. While targeted to different audiences and price segments, they both offer top performance and features with a certain level of maturity not found in earlier designs. In fact, our P35 motherboards will be compared and graded against these two P965 boards shortly.
Today we will present some of the motherboard products that we are currently testing and will provide reviews of in the near future. While this is not a complete listing and does not include all of the boards in the upcoming uATX opus, it should provide a good indication of the products we are currently excited about. If you can't wait for the full reviews and one of these boards has the features you're looking for, consider inclusion in this preview a general recommendation of the product. (Naturally, you'll still have to wait for the P35 parts.)
One of the most interesting articles we have worked on in a long time will be an upcoming chipset shootout with all currently available chipsets for the Intel Core 2 Duo product including the new Bearlake series. The chipset determines many of the features a board will include, as well as many of the performance aspects. As such, we think the chipset roundup will prove enlightening. With that said lets take a quick look at some of these product offerings.
Motherboards: Intel Performance
The continuing introduction of new chipsets from both Intel and NVIDIA for the Intel Core 2 Duo processor series has created an enormous amount of product introductions in recent weeks. So much so that our labs are once again stacked with motherboards that we are in the process of testing and analyzing. Intel currently holds the overall performance crown with the Core 2 Duo and the continued rollout of new motherboards for this impressive processor series is still amazing.
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The DFI NF-680i LT is based upon the recently released NVIDIA 680i LT SLI chipset that we reviewed a few weeks ago. The board supports LGA775 socket processors, features three PCI Express x16 slots (dual x16 SLI support, x8 physics support), one x4 PCI Express slot, and two PCI 2.3 capable slots. Besides the six native Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, DFI has also included two Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the Silicon Image 3132 chipset. The board also features DFI's new Karajan audio module featuring the Realtek ALC885 8-channel HD audio codec. In initial testing we have reached 9x420FSB with our retail QX6700 and general performance has been very good, although DFI is still tweaking memory performance and overclocking capabilities on the quad core and 4MB cache Core 2 Duo CPUs. We will be comparing this board to our other 680i and 650i boards shortly.
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The MSI P6 Diamond is based upon the NVIDIA 680i chipset that has proven itself over the course of the last few months to offer excellent performance when tuned properly. As with most new Core 2 Duo chipsets introduced since last year, the 680i had a bumpy introduction but the latest boards based on this chipset have matured greatly since the launch. The P6 Diamond is no exception to this rule and early testing has revealed a board with a lot of potential and performance that scales very well.
The board supports LGA775 socket processors, features four PCI Express x16 slots (dual x16 SLI support, quad x8 SLI support), one x1 PCI Express slot, and two PCI 2.3 capable slots. Besides the six native Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, MSI has also included two Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the new Silicon Image 4723 chipset and one e-SATA port via the Silicon Image 3531. The board also features Creative's X-Fi 8-channel HD audio codec and has proven to be a welcome relief when compared to the Realtek codecs in gaming. In initial testing we have reached 9x420FSB with the QX6700 and 7x510 with our E6600. Overall performance has been very good although MSI is still tweaking the BIOS. We were hoping for beta Quad 8800GTX SLI drivers but gave up so the board review will be up shortly.
Motherboard Products: Intel Performance
We cannot disclose performance results yet for the Bearlake motherboards nor give general indications on how it compares to the P965 but all will be revealed on May 21st. Let's just say we were surprised with our test results over the last few weeks. (You'll have to wait to find out if we were surprised in a good or a bad way.) In the meantime we have three boards from ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI to show you today with more coming shortly.
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The spiritual successor to Gigabyte's highly acclaimed GA-965P-DS3 series is the new GA-P35-DS3R. The board features a single x16 PCI Express slot, two x1 PCI Express slots, and three PCI 2.2 slots. The new ICH9R chipset is also included with six SATA 3Gb/s ports, and two additional SATA 3Gb/s ports come from the now standard JMicron JMB363 chipset that also provides IDE functionality. Audio is provided by the new Realtek ALC889A chipset and the board features Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 2 technology. This technology is a combination of ferrite core choke coils, low RDS MOSFETs, and solid aluminum polymer capacitors on the board.
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The ASUS P5K Deluxe is based on the P35 and ICH9R chipsets. The board features two x16 PCI Express slots (x16 electrical and x4 electrical for CrossFire), two x1 PCI Express slots, and three PCI 2.2 slots. The ICH9R Southbridge features six Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support. ASUS also supplies the JMicron JMB363 SATA controller that provides two e-SATA ports and the single IDE connector. The board is equipped with an ADI 1988B 8-channel HD audio codec and features dual Gigabit LAN. The ASUS WiFi-AP Solo IEEE 802.11g wireless card is included as is IEEE 1394a support from the Agere FW322 chipset.
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The MSI P35 Platinum is also based on the P35 and ICH9R chipsets. The board features two x16 PCI Express slots (x16 electrical and x4 electrical for CrossFire), two x1 PCI Express slots, and two PCI 2.2 slots. The ICH9R Southbridge features six Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports with MSI utilizing two for e-SATA duties. MSI utilizes the Marvell 88SE6111 chipset that provides a single 3Gb/s SATA and IDE ATA133 port on the board. The board is equipped with the new Realtek ALC888T 8-channel HD audio codec that features support for VoIP. The board features a single Gigabit LAN port and IEEE 1394a support from the VIA VT6308 chipset.
AMD uATX
We have several uATX boards featuring the AM2 processor series that we will present in our upcoming roundup that can only be described at this time as an editor killing review. The products we will briefly cover today are just a few examples of the boards that will be included. While most of our boards are based on the AMD 690G and NVIDIA 6150 technology we do have a couple of AMD/ATI RS485 boards along with a VIA K8M890 based board. We will also include results from the new NVIDIA 7050 chipset.
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The Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD board is based on the AMD690G chipset that offers very good onboard video performance via the ATI X1250 with the ability to upgrade to the latest graphics card technology via the x16 PCI Express slot. The board supports 8GB of DDR2 memory, single x1 PCI Express slot, two PCI 2.2 slots, HD audio via the Realtek ALC882D, and IEEE 1394a from the VIA VT6306 chipset. The board also features HDMI, VGA, and DVI output along with four 3Gb/s SATA ports and a single IDE connector via the tried and true SB600 Southbridge. With the latest BIOS we are now over 300HTT in our overclocking tests along with the board performing superbly overall.
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The Biostar TF7050-M2 board is based upon the new NVIDIA GeForce 7050PV and nForce 630A chipsets that offer very good system performance in a uATX form factor. The board has one x16 PCI Express slot, one x1 PCI Express slot, and two PCI slots. The board supports 4GB of DDR2 memory, HD audio via the Realtek ALC888, Gigabit LAN via the Realtek RTL-8111B Fast Ethernet, and four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports along with a single ATA133 IDE connector. The board also features VGA and HDMI outputs. Additional details about this chipset will be available on May 15th.
Motherboard Products: Intel uATX
The Intel uATX motherboard suppliers have been slow to ramp up production of boards supporting the Core 2 Duo processor but we have several in for testing now based on the Intel G965/Q965 chipsets along with new performance enhancing graphics drivers. We are also expecting a few 946GZ based boards shortly that make a perfect match for the Intel E4xx series of Core 2 Duo processors with an 800MHz front side bus.
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The abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD motherboard is based on the ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 and SB600 chipsets featuring the ATI X1250 onboard graphics capability. The board offers support for 16GB of DDR2-533/667/800 memory, four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, a single ATA133 IDE connector, Realtek ALC885 Audio, and Gigabit LAN. The board has VGA and HDMI outputs along with support for 10 USB 2.0 ports. This motherboard offers excellent performance for a uATX board with our E6320 CPU reaching 7x366 in the overclocking tests.
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One of the more interesting Intel uATX motherboards to show up is the Gigabyte GA-965QM-DS2 that is a full featured product based on the Intel Q965 and ICH8D0 chipsets. The board features a single X16 PCI Express slot, one x1 PCI-Express slot, and two PCI 2.2 slots. There are six Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support, and a single ATA133 IDE connector via a J-Micron chipset. HD Audio is courtesy of the Realtek ALC888, and Gigabit Ethernet supplied by the Nineveh 82566DM chipset. We just received a performance BIOS update and will have overclocking results shortly, but the overall performance of the board has been very good to date.
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ASRock has actually supplied us with a few boards for review with the ConRoe1333-DVI/H being the latest board to arrive for testing. The board is based on the venerable Intel 945G and ICH7 chipsets and features a single x16 PCI Express slot, one x1 PCI-Express slot, and two PCI 2.2 slots. There are four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports and a single ATA133 IDE connector. HD Audio comes from the Realtek ALC888 and Gigabit Ethernet via the Realtek RTL8111B chipset. The board ships with a DVI/HDCP compliant daughter card that utilizes the single x16 PCI Express slot to provide DVI output via the 945G chipset. The board also has a standard VGA port.
AMD Mini-ITX
One of the most interesting motherboards we have seen in the labs recently is the Albatron KI51PV-754 motherboard. We found the performance of this motherboard to be very good overall. The potential market for this system spans from vehicle installations to HTPC to medical/industrial systems. If you are looking for a Mini-ITX board we highly suggest you seriously consider this offering from Albatron.
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The board is based on the NVIDIA GeForce 6150 and nForce 430 chipsets. The board supports current socket 754 processors and has a single memory slot for DDR333/400 memory. Audio is provided by the Realtek ALC655 and the board features a Marvell 88E3016 10/100 Fast Ethernet PHY and a Marvel 88E8055 Gigabit LAN chipset. There are four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, two ATA133 ports, and a single PCI slot. The board has both a DVI and D-SUB output ports and can support HDTV output capability via an optional cable for the onboard header.
Final Remarks
Although we just briefly went over a few motherboard products, rest assured we have a significant amount of boards that will be reviewed shortly along with some exciting storage, networking, and USB flash drive roundups. We will also be introducing our Vista and Linux benchmarks for our mainstream motherboard reviews.