We have already taken a look at upcoming reviews featuring storage, optical, and multimedia products. Today we will present a quick look at 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 the long awaited RD600 board from DFI, it should provide a good indication of the products we are excited about. With that said let's take a quick look at some of these product offerings.
Motherboards:
Intel Performance
The continuing introduction of new chipsets and revisions to previous generation chipsets for the Intel Core 2 Duo processor series has created an enormous amount of product introductions since the end of June. So much so that our labs are literally stacked with motherboards that are in the process of testing and review analysis. 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 amazing.
The ASUS Striker Extreme is based upon the recently released NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset that we reviewed a few weeks ago. The board supports LGA775 socket processors, features two full speed PCI Express x16 slots (SLI support), one x8 PCI Express slot (x16 physical), one x1 PCI Express slot, and two PCI 2.2 capable slots. Besides the six native Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, ASUS has also included two external Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the Silicon Image 3132 chipset. The board features ASUS's new SupremeFX Audio Card that uses the ADI 1988B 8-channel HD audio codec and it includes an Array Microphone. Since the board is part of ASUS's Republic of Gamers product family it is equipped with a rear LCD status panel, onboard switches for power, reset, and clear CMOS, and a full software suite including Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Futuremark 3DMark06 Advanced Edition, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, and several Windows utilities. In initial testing we have reached 7x534FSB with our retail E6600 sample and general performance has been excellent. We will be comparing this board to our EVGA 680i, Intel BadAxe2, and hopefully the DFI RD600 board if it is not delayed again in the near future.
The Intel D975XBX2KR is based upon the 975X chipset that has proven itself over the course of the last year to offer excellent performance and stability. The D975XBX2 is a follow up to the original D975XBX board and features improved electricals and enhanced BIOS tuning for greater performance potential with the Core 2 Duo along with Core 2 Extreme quad-core support. The board supports LGA775 socket processors, features two full speed PCI Express x8 slots (x16 physical, CrossFire support), one x4 PCI Express slot (x16 physical), and two PCI 2.3 capable slots. The board comes with four native Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the Intel ICH7R and Intel added an additional four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the Marvell 88SE6145 RAID controller.
The board is also equipped with a SigmaTel 9274D 8-channel HD audio codec. In initial testing this board has shown some very good overclocking tendencies, although the inability to reduce the CPU multiplier is a hindrance when compared to other 975X/P965 boards. The BIOS options available for an Intel branded motherboard are a wonderful surprise. The stock performance and stability is equal to other 975X motherboards on the market and the board is backed by an excellent support team. We will be comparing this product to our MSI 975X Platinum, Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2H, and DFI 975X Infinity boards shortly.
Motherboards:
Intel Performance
The continuing introduction of new chipsets and revisions to previous generation chipsets for the Intel Core 2 Duo processor series has created an enormous amount of product introductions since the end of June. So much so that our labs are literally stacked with motherboards that are in the process of testing and review analysis. 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 amazing.
The ASUS Striker Extreme is based upon the recently released NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset that we reviewed a few weeks ago. The board supports LGA775 socket processors, features two full speed PCI Express x16 slots (SLI support), one x8 PCI Express slot (x16 physical), one x1 PCI Express slot, and two PCI 2.2 capable slots. Besides the six native Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports, ASUS has also included two external Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the Silicon Image 3132 chipset. The board features ASUS's new SupremeFX Audio Card that uses the ADI 1988B 8-channel HD audio codec and it includes an Array Microphone. Since the board is part of ASUS's Republic of Gamers product family it is equipped with a rear LCD status panel, onboard switches for power, reset, and clear CMOS, and a full software suite including Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Futuremark 3DMark06 Advanced Edition, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, and several Windows utilities. In initial testing we have reached 7x534FSB with our retail E6600 sample and general performance has been excellent. We will be comparing this board to our EVGA 680i, Intel BadAxe2, and hopefully the DFI RD600 board if it is not delayed again in the near future.
The Intel D975XBX2KR is based upon the 975X chipset that has proven itself over the course of the last year to offer excellent performance and stability. The D975XBX2 is a follow up to the original D975XBX board and features improved electricals and enhanced BIOS tuning for greater performance potential with the Core 2 Duo along with Core 2 Extreme quad-core support. The board supports LGA775 socket processors, features two full speed PCI Express x8 slots (x16 physical, CrossFire support), one x4 PCI Express slot (x16 physical), and two PCI 2.3 capable slots. The board comes with four native Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the Intel ICH7R and Intel added an additional four Serial ATA 3Gb/s ports via the Marvell 88SE6145 RAID controller.
The board is also equipped with a SigmaTel 9274D 8-channel HD audio codec. In initial testing this board has shown some very good overclocking tendencies, although the inability to reduce the CPU multiplier is a hindrance when compared to other 975X/P965 boards. The BIOS options available for an Intel branded motherboard are a wonderful surprise. The stock performance and stability is equal to other 975X motherboards on the market and the board is backed by an excellent support team. We will be comparing this product to our MSI 975X Platinum, Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2H, and DFI 975X Infinity boards shortly.
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mino - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
Well, Sempron 2600+ goes for as low as $35... seems peanuts to the board...VooDooAddict - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
You see any other mini ITX boards that are 64-bit capable and have onboard video with DVI and 3D capable of running vista?Compare to other Mini ITX boards and you'll see it's comperable.
I would have liked to see it AM2 with the prospect of using the SFF edition X2s and aking the PCI slot PCIe x16 instead.
orion23 - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
I'm sure this has been asked before, but so what....Why is it that Anandtech doesn't review other critical products that are needed for a complete PC building project?
Many times we are told which motherboard, processor or GPU is the best, but other important parts such as the PSU or the CPU cooler are never reviewed here, reason why so many of us have to go elsewhere to look at some mediocre reviews done by some not so reputable sites.
Come on Anandtech, review a few more, different components from time to time, besides, it wouldn't hurt you to put more than 1 article a week.....
yyrkoon - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
Owning one of these boards, I feel compelled to share my opinion of it.When I purchased it through newegg, I was very enthusiastic, about getting it via UPS. When all my parts finally arrived (less than 24 hours later) I pieced the parts together, and TRIED to install XP pro. The series of problems I ran into along the way, were as follows:
1) Hooked up a USB DVD/CD writter, to boot from, and before I could even get into bluescreen setup part of XP, the system would hang. I chocked this up to the system not being able to run from a USB opitcal drive (after playign with the BIOS a few times, I'd like to add), and finally gave up, and put the optical drive on the secondary IDE connector.
2) System still wouldnt make it into the blue screen part of setup (hanging before), and I was starting to get worried, until I finally figured out the SATA drive was was what was causing the issue, so I disconnected it, and viola . .
3) Keep in mind, #2 was happening during WinPE, so was in no way driver related. Anyhow, after finally getting the OS installed on the IDE drive I placed in it, I reconnected the SATA drive, and it showed up . . .
3) After about a week, I finally decided that booting from an IDE HDD, was un acceptable, and emailed technical support . . . 2 days later . . .no reply. So calling technical support, I was greated with a friendly rep, who then instructed me how to IN CORRECTLY setup my system. However, this representative, gave me his dirrect email address, and we corresponded over the course of about 5 days, until I finally found a working solution (on my own, with a bit of help from him). Keep in mind, that "Jimmy" was very helpfull, and without his help, I may have not been able to fix this issue in such a short time period.
Long story short, the SATA drive needs to be connected, you MUST enable SATA RAID in the BIOS, and in the RAID BIOS configuration, if you only have one HDD attached, you MUST set it up as a JBOD volume. If you do not have the drivers on a floppy, or do not have a floppy in your system period (like me), part of the pre install process, it would BEHOOVE you to slipstream the SATA drivers, and RAID drivers from the install CD provided with the motherboard.
Once I had all this working, I set out to OC the system, and finally arrived at a top OC of around 2.76GHZ (on a AM2 3800+ single core), but keep in mind, there is no chance of raising voltages for memory, or CPU, unless, perhaps, you hard mod the board. Also, for the board to be fairly stable, I had to drop the multiplier to 10x vs. 11x, although my memory (Corsair 5-5-5-18 6400 XMS) was able to run at 4-4-4-12 timings, at 880MHZ DDR2.
Other things I've noticed about this board and Asrock:
1) technical support informed me that this board does not support NCQ, but is a SATA2 board, funny, NCQ is part of the SATA2 specification I thought . . .
2) this system has not been stable, and running for more than 9 days at a time, and typically, it likes to crash, hang, or force a reboot about once every 4-5 days.
3) Asrock does not seem to have the driver support of other well known companies, this board was released, 3 weeks later, all drivers were appearantly perfect, and havent been updated since.
Now I do realize, this is a budget board, however, comming from using 100% ABIT boards, perhaps I'm a bit spoiled ? I mean sure, having only paid $54 USD for it, perhaps I can not expect too much ? My advice . . . would be to stay away, if you can afford at least $30 more, buy a Gigabyte board or something, which is what I should have done. Sure, I'd have $30 less today, but atleast if this were an ABIT, or Gigabyte board, I'd have the odd BIOS update, or driver to look forward to.
mino - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
AsRock as usual. One gets what one pays for. ...Had similar experience some time ago - have SiS748 running at FSB/DDR333 speeds as 400 is completely unstable, also any TV tuner(AIW or PCI) crashes the system on regular basis.
yyrkoon - Monday, December 4, 2006 - link
Well, one fairly cool thing is that I just installed Vista RC2 (had to do some fenagling to get the ISO, but was easy to get CD-KEYS from MS), anyhow, once Vista installed, the majority of my devices were auto detected, and installed. Matter of fact, the only device that wasnt detected, was a 4-5 year old Ultra 100 Promise PCI ATA controller (which i easily fixed by going to Promises site, and installed their XP drivers for it).Graphics sub system weighs in at a 5.9 score with a 7600GT, but overall score is 4.2 because of the HDD Installed it on (ATA 100). I must say, I'm enjoying Vista, although performance wise, it needs a bit of work to catch up to XP pro. Games play slower, and my 3xRAID0 array that benched at over 100MB/s in XP pro, only does 78MB/s in Vista :(
BUT Aero looks awesome !
crydee - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
Are you going to do a review of that PSU with respect to SLI G80 or in specific cases?Jedi2155 - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
Are you guys doing a review of the Striker Extreme?I was very interested in that board. Even though I already purchased a eVGA 680i board (I was under a time constraint to get my new system up), I was wondering if I made a mistake and should've waited for the Striker to get in stock...Buy.com had it for $350-20 google checkout which meant the striker was on sale for $330. Unfortunately it wasn't in stock :(.
MemberSince97 - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
WhereTF are the new AMD/775 Boards....