This is a compact mainboard with lots of highs and but a few lows. It is just as good as other mainboards in its specs, BIOS options, CPU compatibility and even CPU overclocking functionality.

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<p><span style="font-size: small;"> By now ASRock is a familiar household name for many enthusiasts, noted by generally decent product quality, budget-friendliness, and tendency to equip with innovative, if not interesting, features. Of course this did not happen overnight, and in the past ASRock's offerings were rather known for experimental features that were rarely seen on other vendors&rsquo; products. Boards like 4CoreDual-SATA2/VSTA are prime examples of such endeavors, and these products enjoyed enormous popularity among forum enthusiasts. Over time, ASRock&rsquo;s efforts have expanded to cover wider market segments and lately much of the focus has shifted toward high-end offerings on various fronts. Products like the X58 SuperComputer and X58 Extreme series are a testament of ASRock&rsquo;s determination to reach the high echelon motherboard market.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> With this short background today we&rsquo;re taking a look at ASRock&rsquo;s latest and ongoing attempt to tackle the high-end motherboard market: ASRock 890FX Deluxe 4. In the past ASRock&rsquo;s portfolio on the AMD platform pretty much remained in budget and mid-range sectors, largely based on IGP-based products.&nbsp; ASRock attempts to rectify the situation with the 890FX Deluxe 4, a product squarely aimed at AMD enthusiasts and power users. They even try to one-up the big players by giving more features, while maintaining a reputation of wallet-friendliness.&nbsp;&nbsp; Whether (or to what extent) ASRock succeed, is what we&rsquo;re going to find out today.&nbsp; We are also going to take this opportunity for a short brush up of AMD&rsquo;s Leo platform and a quick inquiry into Thuban&rsquo;s performance relative IMC scaling.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/3877/asrock-890fx-deluxe-full-review-and-an-investigation-of-thuban-performance-scaling" target="_blank">Read more...</a><br /> </span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;"> Last year one of the most exciting product combinations to grace consumer shelves was the NVIDIA&rsquo;s ION platform teamed up with an Intel <em>Atom</em> processor. The ultra-low power consumption, low heat output and ability to play HD video better than competing solutions of the time made it a difficult combo to ignore. Zotac took full advantage of this and successfully filled a niche demand with a slew of ION based products, offering various levels of plug and play functionality.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> It was only a matter of time though before Intel would present us with something new and at the turn of 2010, <em>Clarkdale</em> was launched. In many ways, <em>Clarkdale</em> turned out to be the perfect successor to <em>Atom</em> + ION based systems by doing almost everything better. <em>Clarkdale&rsquo;s </em>IGP is capable of delivering high definition video and the platform also offers Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA bitstreaming over HDMI - the latter a feature that eludes NVIDIA&rsquo;s ION. <em>Clarkdale</em> also manages to deliver a lot more grunt should there be a need for the odd file zip or encode and can also be used to deliver a decent gaming experience with the addition of a discrete GPU thanks to an on-die PCIe controller. To boot, all of this comes within a rather attractive power consumption curve thanks to comprehensive power gating.<br /> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">Naturally, Zotac jumped on the <em>Clarkdale</em> bandwagon, and pulled the first H55 chipset based mini-ITX motherboard out of the hat back in February this year. Since then, several motherboard vendors have followed suit, and we&rsquo;re at a point now where it makes very little sense to consider anything ION based for desktop use unless you&rsquo;re on a really tight budget. It&rsquo;s rather surprising then that Zotac are launching new ION based motherboards and media solutions today based around Intel&rsquo;s CULV processors.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">We&rsquo;ve got the IONITX-P-E model in house, and that&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;ll be looking at today.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">The IONITX-P-E teams up a 1.2GHz CULV Celeron SU2300 with the ION GF9400 chipset. The MSRP for the P-E model is $170, while the Pentium SU4100 model will cost around $200. The SU4100 based board is a built on retail demand only product, though. So we&rsquo;re not sure if you&rsquo;ll see it on sale at all considering the $200 MSRP. At the lower end of the scale, a single core Celeron 743 running at 1.3GHz should in theory appeal to uber-low power consumption enthusiasts.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/3869/zotac-ionitxpe-can-intels-culv-processors-reinvigorate-interest-in-nvidias-ion">Read more...</a><br /> </span></p>

This review will talk about a compact mainboard on Intel H57 Express chipset that doesn’t boast any specific advantages, but has no serious drawbacks either.

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Today we are going to talk about six mainboards on AMD 890FX chipset, namely: ASRock 890FX Deluxe3, Asus M4A89TD Pro and Asus M4A89TD Pro/USB3, Biostar TA890FXE, Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 and MSI 890FXA-GD70. We will compare their technical specifications, BIOS functionality, overclocking potential; will check out their performance and power consumption.

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Round one of the high-priced enthusiast end of X58 went to EVGA last year, who set the pace with their Classified line of motherboards. While not perfect in every regard, the E759 and E760 broke and set more overclocking records than any other product, elevating the Classified series to must have status in the eyes of overclocking and gaming enthusiasts.

In light of this success, it was clear that ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI would have to go back to the drawing board and come up with new designs to captivate the audience. The launch of Intel’s i7-980X Gulftown together with the availability of SATA 6G and USB 3 controllers from Marvell and NEC provided the excuse for a revamp and here we are a couple of months down the road with everyone vying to capitalize on sales thanks to the longevity of the X58 platform. That’s where we pick up today, we’ve got the very best ASUS, Gigabyte, EVGA and MSI have to offer and have lined up a compare taking a look at basic functionality, overclocking and overall stability.

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Our today’s article is devoted to a comparison between two top mainboards based on the latest and highly functional AMD 890FX chipset. We are going to study their features, investigate CPU and memory overclocking potential, compare performance, USB 3.0 speed and power consumption.

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<p><span style="font-size: small;">These two top-of-the-line models won&rsquo;t cause any problems during system assembly and operation in nominal mode; they will allow you to easily overclock your system due to extensive BIOS functionality. Both of them have a lot of additional onboard controllers, including the today&rsquo;s acute SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0. Each of the two mainboards has its unique distinguishing features and its unique shortcomings.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/ga_p55a_ud6-ga_p55a_ud7.html">Read more...</a><br /> </span></p>

Demand for mini-ITX boards built around Intel’s socket 1156 has been rather high this year, and as a result, vendors like DFI, ECS, Intel and Zotac have enjoyed free reign of sales despite releasing products that don’t necessarily live up to or meet user expectations. Going mini-ITX means there will always be a few compromises on the hardware/peripheral front (many of which users are prepared to stomach), but what makes things less palatable all-round is when boards are delivered with partially functional BIOSes that lack any real finesse or control of key features. Sensing an opportunity, Gigabyte has stepped in to the fray with the keenly priced H55N-USB3 (MSRP $105) and is looking for a slice of the mini-ITX pie. It’s certainly a welcome move, because in general, Gigabyte delivers feature-packed BIOSes that are well laid out and easy to use.

We’ve been lucky enough to get acquainted with Gigabyte’s H55N-USB3 motherboard over the past week, and for once have our review ready around launch time. We’ll tell you right now that we rather like this little board, there are a few things that need attention, but overall it’s the best socket 1156 mini-ITX motherboard that’s passed through our hands to date.

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<p><span style="font-size: small;">ASRock's current X58 line-up consist of the SuperComputer ($275), Deluxe3 ($225), Deluxe, and the Extreme3's predecessor, the Extreme (AT review, $170). The Extreme3 is available today for $190. Other products in this price range that the Extreme3 is competing with are the Gigabyte EX58-UD3R at $189, the MSI Pro-E for $190, the MSI Pro-E USB3 for $200, and the Foxconn FlamingBlade at $180.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;">The ASRock X58 Extreme3 is available (at time of writing) for $189.99, one dollar above the EX58-UD3R.&nbsp; For your extra dollar, a plethora of extra features over the Gigabyte board are available on the ASRock board - a full set of 6 DIMM slots for DDR3 memory, USB3 compatibility, SATA 6Gb/s connectivity, three PCIe slots (x16, x16, x4), Power/Clear CMOS/Reset buttons, and support for DDR3 ECC memory.&nbsp; The main question is whether this board performs as well as the UD3R, given any of these extra features, or even above the ASRock Extreme, which is $20 cheaper. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> What we want to see in a budget board is finesse and capability - a BIOS that works, compatibility with components, and something that runs happily above stock.&nbsp; While the best budget boards undoubtedly won't have all the bells and whistles of a premium enthusiast board, if it runs decent and we can play around without too many issues, and the price is right, then it will sell.&nbsp; Off the bat, the ASRock Extreme3 is a happy little runner, with a few issues.&nbsp; We've had this board running for a couple of weeks now, with an overclock, in a variety of situations, and it's a board worth considering if USB3 and SATA6Gb/s are two features you're dying to have with a Socket 1366 processor on a budget.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"> In this review, We&rsquo;re pitting the Extreme3 against the board that has been the stalwart of my PC cavalcade - the Gigabyte EX58-UD3R, revision 1.0.&nbsp; The EX58-UD3R appeared on the market in Q4 2008, and is still one of the best budget X58 boards available in terms of capability and performance.&nbsp; ASRock have known their competition for over a year, so they have to show that their product can provide a distinct improvement over the competition.&nbsp; The marketed additions of USB3 and SATA 6Gb/s is a start, but ASRock is having trouble applying BIOS polish to the motherboard, which we will explain later.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/3751/asrock-x58-extreme3an-enthusiast-x58-motherboard-at-a-budget-price">Read more...</a><br /> </span></p>