Foxconn MARS, and abit IP35 Pro (Intel P35)
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Date: 08.10.2007 |
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Layout and Features
The abit IP35 Pro belongs to the IP35 product line which also includes IP35 Dark Rider and IP35-E. They all are made on the same PCB design.
Engineers at Foxconn have even used the ready design of P35A. But upon a detailed look, we found some differences, the most important being about the enhanced power supply module.
Note that abit and Foxconn have equipped their boards with three power connectors. The main connector is positioned on the bottom edge of the board, and the additional 8-pin one - on the upper right-hand corner.
Another connector (Molex) is installed on the abit board between the first PCI and the second PCI Express x16 slots (therefore, it won't be easy to plug in a power supply cable with the expansion cards already in place). The Foxconn board has the same connector, between the north bridge and the rear panel.
To cool the chipset, the boards have massive radiators, with heat pipes used for heat transfer. At the same time, the cooling system on the Foxconn board looks somehow more massive.
Besides, the user can install an additional fan (available in the package bundle) on the north bridge:
The motherboards have four 240-pin DIMM slots each for DDR2 memory modules, with the overall supported memory capacity being 8 GB.
Note that the abit board uses a dual 7-stage indicator which lights up once voltage is applied to the board. Once board starts up, a red LED lights up. The Foxconn board also has a couple of LEDs: the green one is in charge of the voltage monitoring, the red one - system operation.
Now a few words on the connectors to plug in fans. On each of the boards, there is a mandatory 4-pin connector to plug in the CPU cooler.
Besides it, the abit board has five 3-pin connectors: AUXFAN1, AUXFAN2 - in the bottom right-hand corner, AUXFAN3 - near the DIMM slots, SYSFAN1 - near the north bridge, and AUXFAN4 - on the left-hand corner of the board. On the Foxconn board, there are four 3-pin connectors: FAN1 and NB_FAN - near the north bridge, FAN2 - near the DIMM slots, and SYS_FAN - on the left-hand edge of the board.
Each of the boards uses two PCI Express x16 slots.
However, because of the chipset's limitations, the full-featured 16 bus lanes are allocated to the first slot only. For the second slot, only 4 lanes are left. In the end, if the user intends to use the Crossfire, it will run in the slowest mode (16+4).
abit IP35 Pro also uses three PCI and one PCI Express x1 slots. On Foxconn MARS, there are three PCI and two PCI Express x1 slots.
Both the motherboards use the ICH9R south bridge with a radiator. In the end, each of the boards offer 6 SerialATA II ports, with the option of setting up a RAID array.
Besides, the boards use the additional ParallelATA/SerialATA controller.
On the abit board, it is the JMB363 chip made by JMicron; on the Foxconn board - the JMB361 chip made by the same manufacturer. In the end, you can plug in 10 hard disks (8 SATA + 2 PATA) to the abit board, and 9 hard disks (7 SATA + 2 PATA) to the Foxconn board.
Then, the south bridge ICH9R supports 12 USB2.0 ports. Four ports are on the rear panel of the abit board, with 8 more plugged in with a bracket (the board comes bundled with 1 bracket for 2 connectors). On the Foxconn board, the configuration of ports is more balanced: six on the rear panel, with six additional (the board comes bundled with 1 bracket for 2 connectors).
Besides, both boards support the Firewire. For that, there is an additional controller made by Texas Instruments. This is the TSB43AB22A chip which supports 2 matching ports.
The configuration of the ports is the following: on the abit board, both the ports are external, and on the Foxconn board one port is installed on the rear panel, with the other one plugged in with a bracket. By the way, you don't have to buy brackets additionally - they are available in the package bundle of both the boards.
The Intel High Definition Audio subsystem is implemented based on the same ALC888 codec.
A few words on the network support: both the motherboards offer support for a high-speed network connection. The abit board offers two RTL 8110SC Gigabit controllers, and Foxconn - only one RTL 8111B (also Gigabit Ethernet):
The board's rear panel is of the following configuration:
On the abit board, there is an optical SP-DIF input and output, as well as two SerialATA II ports. On the rear panel of the Foxconn board, there is only one Serial ATAII port, a Firewire port, as well as optical and coaxial SP-DIF outputs.
The boards' components layout diagram:
Now move on to examining the boards' specific traits. We start with abit IP35 Pro on which there is an additional uGuru chip, a 7-stage POST indicator, buttons to power-on and reset, as well as a connector to plug in the uGuru-Panel.
The procedure of resetting the BIOS settings has been implemented in an interesting way: on the rear panel, there is a small switch:
In fact, conservative users can clear the BIOS with a regular jumper. By the way, on the Foxconn board as well, the CMOS reset is implemented in a nonstandard way - using a button.
There is a couple more buttons: one to power-on, and one to reset the system. On the Foxconn MARS, there is an additional FoxOne chip whose functionality has been repeatedly examined in the previous reviews:
Now on to the BIOS settings.
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