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<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">There are numerous changes occurring around the lab in how we review product. Put simply, a return to the basics is the mantra for the motherboard team in 2009. We discussed some of these changes in our first X58 roundup. In fact, our first retail experience reviews will be published next week. As we discovered during the new review process, testing every single hardware or software feature on a board with several dozen top selling components in various combination's has proven to be a bit time consuming. But we think the efforts are worth it and will expand this type of testing as we progress through 2009. More on the details next week.</font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">In the meantime, we will also provide quarterly updates on some of the products we review during the year to see if the manufacturer has addressed any potential problems, improved performance/stability/compatibility, and customer service aspects related to the product. Our goal here is to provide an ownership experience summary and to see which suppliers just talk the talk or those willing to walk the walk when it comes to product support. </font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">We sometimes forget one of the most important aspects when it comes to purchasing a product is customer service, technical support, and warranty procedures when that shiny new trinket arrives in the lab. Well, no more, and expect us to call out a few suppliers in the coming weeks when it comes to overall support of a product. I know of one that already has me mad as hell from a consumer viewpoint, but that is a discussion for another day.</font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><strong itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">EVGA X58 SLI - Return to Greatness</font></strong></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">This is our third and final look at the EVGA X58 SLI motherboard. Put simply, in the first set of X58 boards that we received, this was the one board that intrigued us most. After a history of releasing motherboards based on <nobr style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 100%">NVIDIA </nobr> chipsets only, this was their first Intel offering. Not only that, but a fairly new team was assembled to design and manufacture this board.<br />
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<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=538">Read more...</a></font></p>
<span class="content" itxtvisited="1"><font size="2"> Things are at a fever pitch in the labs at present because we've got a plethora of products from the proverbial who's who of the motherboard industry all awaiting testing and final review. Some of these "superstars" have already received some airtime in our $300 motherboard roundup. Final report compilation is ongoing, with products from ASUS, Biostar, DFI, MSI, ECS, EVGA, and Gigabyte, each presenting its own set of merits and quirks depending on your needs.</font>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">If you read the opening page of the first look round-up article, you'll already know what scintillating fun the past two months of BIOS testing has been for us. We'll sum this up by saying, "You can beat us up, but we're never down for long." Yes, we're still excited when we get something new, and the latest contender from Foxconn has certainly been at the center of enough internet-based ballyhoo to provoke our interests enough to march on into the unknown.</font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">Much of the initial crowd "pop" reaction to Foxconn's Blood Rage is related to pictures of the motherboard that have been on the forum based cha-cha-cha circuit for several months now. We'll be the first to tell you, good looks do not necessarily a great motherboard make. But we have to admit, a passing glance at the Blood Rage is compelling enough to create the desire of at least taking a deeper look into what makes this thing tick.<br />
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Foxconn's last big foray into the enthusiast segment was with the Intel X48-based Black Ops motherboard. It was a market tester with the goal of establishing their brand name whilst simultaneously demanding accelerated learning from their newly employed Quantum Force BIOS programmers, support staff, and engineering team.</font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">We reviewed the Black Ops back in July. Although the board threw us a few curve balls on occasion, it happened to possess enough substance to make it one of our favorites in what would now be cited as a product from Intel's last generation technology -- a technology that we still think is viable for most users. Those that had positive experiences with the Black Ops by using it in the intended manner have been imbibed with plenty of thought provoking fodder to wonder what's coming next from the Quantum Force development team.</font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">Part of the Blood Rage development process was getting Foxconn personnel to work with the inquisitive consumers who frequent their support forum. The forum staff asked Quantum Force team members and support forum goers what they'd like to see on their upcoming boards, ranging from component choices to color schemes. Although this takes place in various forms at other companies, it's not often you get to provide direct feedback to those who are close to the engineers and design teams. Some of this public brainstorming filtered its way into the final rendition of the Blood Rage, possibly making it the birth-child of a thousand collaborative fathers -- and that could be a good thing. Think of it as a throwback to the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny Devito film called "Twins", only this time the outcome is focused solely on releasing the physically superior "Junior" to the public while successfully incinerating Danny Devito's inadequate character before birth. (At least, we think that's the plan Foxconn had in mind.)</font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">Anyway, let's not dwell on those aspects for too long; what matters is whether the Blood Rage really delivers on the promise of its super-charged appearance. Although this first look will concentrate mainly on the overclocking side of things, we'll also be telling you what we like so far and what, if anything, makes us grit our teeth. By the way, the board has performed like any other X58 based product in application and game testing so no worries on that end. Read on if you like to overclock.<br />
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<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3489">Read more...</a></font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3489">Update...<!-- google_ad_section_end --></a></font></p>
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<p class="subtitle" itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">We are going to review the ultimately best overclocker mainboard for LGA775 processors with DDR3 SDRAM support and the largest heatsink system you have ever seen on a mainboard!<br />
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<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/ga-ep45t-extreme.html">Read more...</a></font></p>
Unusual layout and three PCI Express x16 slots – is that all a contemporary mainboard can surprise you with these days?
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As of November 17th you can officially buy an Intel Core i7 processor - the new heavyweight champion of the world. When it comes to media encoding and 3D animation/rendering tasks, the Core i7 is not only without peer but also provides us the sort of generational performance gap that we've come to expect from Intel every two years. By now you've already decided whether or not you want to buy one, and if you're in a rush to spend money, the next question is what motherboard do you pick?
Current Core i7 CPUs work in Intel's new LGA-1366 socket, currently only found on motherboards based on the X58 chipset. While Intel did a great job of making sure the Core i7 was available at a wide range of price points ($284, $562, and $999), the X58 boards themselves are pretty pricey. We've got a consistent group of $300+ motherboards on the market, and honestly we're not expecting ~$100 Nehalem boards until the introduction of the mainstream Lynnfield/Havendale CPUs in 2H 2009. Boards using the P55 chipset should arrive early next year and at least bring in true sub-$200 options, but for now it's an X58 world.
These boards are very high end - with the exception of Intel's own X58, these motherboards all feature six DDR3 DIMM slots, easily enabling 12GB of memory on a desktop platform. Certification for 24GB and 48GB is coming, but that's absolutely ridiculous on a desktop motherboard. Combine that with the fact that all three Core i7 parts are capable of working on 8 threads at a time and you've got the makings of an extremely powerful system. A desktop Core i7 system has the potential to embarrass quite a few upper end workstations already on the market.
What we've put together today is a roundup of the "midrange" X58 motherboards currently on the market, a sort of first look at the state of the X58 realm for early adopters who are lucky enough to be buying today. We've got motherboards ranging from $220 to $390 in the labs that we will go through over the next couple of weeks; if you're building a Core i7 system before the end of this year, we'll help you pick a motherboard in each category.
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<font size="2">Today we are going to talk about an affordable mainboard on Intel P43 Express chipset that will challenge an expensive Intel P45 Express based solution from the upper price segment.<br />
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<a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-p5ql-e.html">Read more...</a></font>
<span class="content" itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">EVGA formally introduced their first motherboard based on an Intel chipset today, the EVGA X58 SLI. For a long time launch partner of NVIDIA based chipsets, this event was somewhat of a surprise when the rumors started spreading a few months ago about the possibility of EVGA utilizing other chipsets. Considering EVGA’s continuing in-house development of boards based on their FTW moniker and a quickened pace away from the cookie cutter reference designs, this development really did not surprise us. </font>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">What did surprise us is their ability to take a completely new chipset, proceed with a crash development program, and offer a motherboard on the official launch date that is rock solid and very polished for a first time effort. Of course it helps that several engineers from the former EPoX group are on staff and two of the top overclockers around are hand-tuning the product. However, it’s not perfect as we mentioned in our early preview blog today, but several of the problems we discussed with EVGA this weekend have already been addressed today with a new BIOS. </font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">The Intel X58/ICH10R combination has been a known commodity for several months and Intel has been providing significant engineering resources to the motherboard suppliers in terms of information and technical support. Of course this helps to speed along a development program from a hardware viewpoint but with everyone utilizing the same chipset and basic hardware components the ability to differentiate a board in a crowded market comes down to hardware/software features, support, compatibility, and BIOS design. Does EVGA meet this differentiation criterion? We think so.<br />
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Our experiences to date with the EVGA X58 SLI board indicate to us that EVGA has developed a very solid hardware platform with a nice mix of features, a nifty tuning utility, and a board that after the latest BIOS has offered excellent compatibility with a wide range of peripherals and software. EVGA is recognized for its excellent customer support and the BIOS design/tuning is being headed up by Peter Tan, better known as Shamino in the overclocking circles. Add in a limited lifetime warranty for most locations and a step-up program for the next LGA1366 product and you can see why this board might grab some market share away from other players in the X58 market.</font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">Of course, none of this really matters unless the board performs well for users looking to cough up $329.99 for this product. We are still running a variety of benchmarks for the upcoming X58 roundup, but at this point the EVGA X58 SLI is at or near the top of the class. However, while we tend to get carried away at times with a frame per second improvement or a half second difference in a benchmark, the real test for these über enthusiast boards generally center on overclocking and stability. Neither of which the EVGA board has failed in up to this point and to be honest, has excelled at for the most part. </font></p>
<p itxtvisited="1"><font size="2">Although you would never know it from the advertising, the board does support both CrossFire X and SLI operation. That said, let’s take a look around the board and review its features today.<br />
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<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3459">Read more...</a></font></p>
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Although the past 3-4 months have seen plenty of verbal abuse thrown towards NVIDIA developed chipsets, EVGA has thrown caution to the wind and released an updated 790i based motherboard known as the 790i FTW. To clarify, the FTW (For the Win) naming suffix merely denotes a more extreme version of the earlier released NVIDIA reference 790i Ultra SLI motherboard. The main "improvements" are centered around the Volterra VT115 PWM controller, solid capacitors throughout, 3x PCI-E 2.0 slots, onboard power/reset and CMOS clear buttons, and a slew of increased voltage ranges to appease the demands of the extreme user community.
In order to stir the pot and encourage adoption, Peter Tan (Aka Shamino), who formerly worked at Foxconn, has been enlisted by EVGA to make their latest offering palatable for the niche extreme overclocking market. As a first task, this is no small undertaking for anyone regardless of prior credentials. With NVIDIA succumbing to pressure from Intel (by providing SLI licensing rights to the upcoming X58 chipset), it seems there's little reason for anyone to be looking at a short-term stopgap SLI mainboard - unless we factor in the cost of a new processor that the X58 chipset will require if you're moving up from an older platform.
It appears that Nehalem/Core i7 won't universally benefit gaming performance, but even with that small nugget of hope for the 790i FTW, we have to acknowledge that there are already plenty of SLI capable motherboards in the marketplace. Boards based on the 650i, 680i, 750i, and 780i are all perfectly capable of providing decent performance for SLI aficionados, at a lower cost than the 790i FTW. Nevertheless, the 790i FTW is available for those who must have the top NVIDIA chipset, and EVGA's solid reputation as a consumer friendly organization may inspire enough confidence for such users to take the plunge.
As the NVIDIA 790i reference boards have been in the marketplace for over six months now, our initial expectations for general peripheral compatibility on the 790i FTW are quite high. We'd expect that many of the faults highlighted by prolonged use of the reference design boards will now be ironed out, so these fixes can be transplanted directly into the backbone of the 790i FTW BIOS. On the flipside, we already know there's a few things we need to look out for based our past experiences with the 790i SPP/MCP Northbridge/Southbridge combination. Specifically, there's the notorious potential for SATA OS drive corruption when the790i chipset is pushed to its limits. Of course, this can happen on any board and chipset if you get a little over zealous, but it seems the NVIDIA 6 and 7 series chipsets have been more susceptible to this issue than any other competing chipset. There's not really anything positive we can say about this situation other than the fact that boards based on these chipsets are usually best run in a conservative rather than aggressive manner. However, the FTW does beg to be pushed a little, so we're going to put our convictions aside while we do just that. This won't be a hugely in depth review, as a very comprehensive 790i chipset overclocking guide has already been provided within our ASUS Striker II Extreme review. We'll briefly compare performance against some of the other enthusiast boards we've reviewed this year, and then perhaps throw caution to the wind and try our hands at a little sub-zero benchmarking. With all that said, let's move on to board specifications and features.
Today we are going to introduce to you the first Unified Extensible Firmware Interface from MSI called Click BIOS. Find out how it is different from the traditional BIOS and what its advantages are.
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<p><font size="2">We are rapidly approaching the i7 Core and X58 launch date. With that in mind, we are starting to receive final production motherboards from a variety of manufacturers. The latest board in the labs is the MSI Eclipse featuring the X58 and ICH10R chipsets. Let's take a quick look at it.<br />
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<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=510">Read more...</a></font></p>