Intel P35 Motherboards Roundup Review
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Date: 27.12.2007 |
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Foxconn P35A
This motherboard falls within the value category and supports only the basic expansion options. However, owners of this product may be pleased to know that P35A uses almost the same PCB design as that for Foxconn MARS. In practice, that results in a good overclocking capability and as abundant BIOS settings.
This motherboard has been made cheaper due to use of the south bridge ICH9 which offer support for only 4 SerialATA II links and does not support RAID. However, engineers at Foxconn used their best efforts to get savings. In particular, on the power supply components of the power converter there is quite a massive radiator.
Among the remaining expansion options are Gigabit network controller, 12 USB2.0 ports, and 8-channel integrated audio. Besides, the board uses an additional SerialATA II/ParallelATA RAID JMB361 controller. It has added support for 1 SerialATA II link (brought over to the rear panel) and one ParallelATA link.
There are two PCI Express x16, three PCI, and one PCI Express x1 slots:
The special trait of the rear panel is in that one SerialATA II, as well as an optical and coaxial SP-DIF output are brought over to it.
We can see that the board uses both a LPT and two COM ports (the latter - using a bracket; missing in the bundle)
Among the additional features, of note is the special FoxOne chip on the Foxconn motherboard. As you already know, the FoxOne chip is meant for executing such tasks like dynamic overclocking, system monitoring, power management, and control of the fans' rotational speeds. It also closely interacts with the the FoxOne utility that allows the user to control the mentioned features from within Windows.
The board also uses the (Power) and (Reset) buttons:
In terms of functionality, the board is rather powerful. Despite the scarcity of the set of memory latency timings, this motherboard demonstrated a good compatibility to memory modules (kinship to the MARS makes itself felt).
The system monitoring settings are also similar to the capabilities of the MARS motherboard:
The board displays the current temperatures of the CPU and the system, keeps track of the current voltage levels and rotational speeds of the two fans. There is also a feature for adjusting the rotational speed of the CPU cooler depending on the CPU temperature.
The overclocking tools have been well implemented.
In particular, the board allows adjusting the FSB speed within 200 to 750 MHz, raising the CPU voltage to +0.787 V , on the memory - by 3.0V, as well as raising voltage on the north bridge to 1.6267V and on the south bridge - to 1.95V. But you can't adjust voltage on the FSB bus. Despite that, in real overclocking the motherboard demonstrated superb results - a stable operation at FSB=500 MHz.
Pros:
- High stability and good performance level;
- Two PCI Express x16 slots;
- Support for SerialATA II/RAID (5 lines; ICH9 + JMB361);
- Support for one P-ATA link (JMB363);
- Integrated 8-channel HDA audio and the Gigabit Ethernet LAN controller;
- Support for the USB2.0 interface (12 ports);
- Additional FoxOne chip;
- Good package bundle;
- Passive system for cooling the chipset and the power supply module;
- A pack of Foxconn proprietary technologies (LiveUpdate, FoxOne);
Cons:
The board's specific features:
- Excellent CPU/memory overclocking results;
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