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Digital-Daily : Motherboard Reviews : p35-roundup

Intel P35 Motherboards Roundup Review

Intel P35 Motherboards Roundup Review
Author:
Date: 27.12.2007

Although the P35 chipset in combination with the south bridge ICH9(R) is a little bit better than the previous generation (P965 + ICH8(R)), by the end of 2007 it has taken a firm position in the middle-end and partly in the high-end sector. Intrusion into the high-end sector was quite short-lived, up to the release of the top-end Intel X38 chipset. That is a logical and consistent process, and we can expect its repetition in the new generation of Intel chipsets P45 and X48 which are to be released in the second quarter of 2008.

But until the summer of 2008, P35 and X38 will be the major products. We note it straight off that, because of the novelty and the high price of X38, motherboards on its base seriously lose to products based on P35 in terms of attraction to users. The exception is only those users who need top-end compromise-free systems with two AMD video cards in the Crossfire mode, with a 4-core CPU and DDR3 memory. Therefore, we leave a review of X38-based motherboard for a later time and focus on P35-based products.

A few words on NVIDIA chipsets. Recently, this chip maker has not presented anything new, and among its best products are nForce 680i SLI and 650i SLI. Recently, we found out that motherboards based on 650i SLI are not so attractive as it used to be on the moment of release. Now we are making the same conclusion regarding the nForce 680i SLI as well: the motherboards are not fully compatible to the new generation of 45-nm Intel processors but fully support the PCI Express v2.0 bus. However, one day to the next NVIDIA is going to present the improved version of 680i SLI named 780i SLI. Using an additional chip, motherboards based on 780i SLI will offer support for the PCI-E v2.0, and while developing motherboards the manufacturers will take account of the requirements for operability of Yorkfield and Wolfdale. However, we should not think that fist products will appear on sale before the New Year eve, which is not very good from the financial viewpoint: manufacturers normally omit the peak of Christmas sales. So, we forget about NVIDIA products with one reservation though: if support for SLI is needed right now, the only motherboards are those based on nForce 680i SLI and 650i SLI. The thing is, although P35 and X38 technologically can provide the SLI functioning, NVIDIA disables this feature in its drivers.

Chipsets

Let's talk about Intel P35 and X38 chipsets in a bit more detail. To start with, look at the comparative specifications table.

NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI IE NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI NVIDIA nForce 650i Ultra Intel 975X Intel P965 Intel P35 Intel X38
Market sector high-end + SLI high-end + SLI middle-end + SLI middle-end high-end + Crossfire high-end/ middle-end + Crossfire high-end/ middle-end + Crossfire high-end + Crossfire
Socket Intel Socket 775
Supported processors
Core 2 Extreme (dual and quad core), Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Celeron D, Pentium 4, Pentium D 9XX, Pentium D 8XX
the same + support for Yorkfield, Wolfdale the same + support for Yorkfield, Wolfdale
FSB speed (MHz) 1333 1066 1333 1066 MHz 1066/ 1333* 1066/ 1333* 1333 1333/ 1600*
Overclocking capability (3dnews.ru) Good Poor n/a n/a Good Very Good Excellent Excellent*
Support for NVIDIA SLI/ AMD-ATI Crossfire SLI (2 x16) SLI (2 x16) SLI (2 x 8) - Crossfire (2 x 8) Crossfire (16 + 4) Crossfire (16 + 4) Crossfire (16 + 16)
Support for the third PCI Express x16 slot + (8 lanes) + (8 lanes) - - + (2/4 lanes) - - + (4 lanes)
Support for SLI-Ready Memory (MHz) with EPP 1200 MHz n/a - - - - - -
Support for Intel XMP (Extended Memory Profiles) - - - - - - - +
Support for DDR2 memory (MHz) 800 667 800 800 667 800 1066 1066/1200*
Support for DDR3 memory (MHz) - - - - - - 1333 1333/1600*
Support for PCI Express
No. of lanes
46 48 18 18 20 20 20 40
Q-ty of links
9 11 4 3 n/a n/a n/a n/a
PCI Express configuration
16, 16, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 16, 16, 8, 1, 1, 1,1, 1, 1, 1, 1 8, 8, 1, 1
or
16, 1, 1
16, 1, 1 8, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1 16, 1, 1, 1, 1 16, 1, 1, 1, 1 16, 16, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1
Q-ty of SATA/PATA links 6/1 6/1 4/2 4/2 4/1 6/0 6/0 6/0
Support for RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 0, 1, 0+1, 5 0, 1, 0+1, 5 0, 1, 0+1, 5 0, 1, 0+1, MatrixRAID 0, 1, 0+1, MatrixRAID 0, 1, 0+1, MatrixRAID 0, 1, 0+1, MatrixRAID
Integrated support for Gigabit Ethernet 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
Support for USB 10 10 8 8 8 10 12 12
PCI 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
Sound HDA (Azalia) HDA (Azalia) HDA (Azalia) HDA (Azalia) HDA HDA HDA HDA

Content:

Top Stories:
MoBo:


ECS X58B-A (Intel X58)
ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58)
MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra
MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300)
Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe
MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45)
Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G)
VGA Card:


NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics!
ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one"
Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870!
XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode
Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3
Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features
Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850
CPU & Memory:

GSkill high-capacity memory modules
CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield)
DDR3 memory: late 2008
CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman)
AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price
CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville)
Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600

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