Fall 2004 Motherboard Preview: A Sea of New
by Wesley Fink on June 4, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
DFI LANParty 925X-T2 and Asus P5AD2 Premium
Intel 915 chipset boards were everywhere at Computex, but the 925X - the Enthusiast version with support for DDR2 only - was harder to spot at Computex than a day without thunderstorms in Taiwan. Two of the most interesting 925X boards to target the high-end were at DFI and Asus.
Click to enlarge.
DFI has won over many hard-core Enthusiasts with their LANParty series and the new 925X-T2 is a Socket T version for the LANParty Series. This LANParty finally adds Firewire to the package, along with Dual Gigabit Ethernet and the exciting 8-channel Karajan Audio.
Click to enlarge.
Among the major manufacturers, Asus is always watched for their high-end boards that always attract the attention of hard-core enthusiasts. Asus will not likely disappoint with their new p5AD2 Premium. The feature set includes just about everything that you could ever think of for a desktop PC, like both Firewire 1394B and 1394A, theater-quality 8-channel audio at 192Khz/24bit, Dolby Digital Live, dual gigabit LAN, built-in WiFi-G for a high-speed wireless network, and triple RAID that even can support RAID 5.
Asus has also addressed many of the heat issues with the newest Prescott chips very aggressively, including a new CPU cooling device called "Stack Cool" on the back side of the motherboard.
If you look closely at the Asus and DFI boards, you will see 4-phase power regulation, which we saw on almost all of the new Socket 775 boards. With over 100 watts needed for the new Prescotts, 4-phase power appears a must to deliver stable power to the CPU.
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Wesley Fink - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
#1 -Based on what we now know we expect the new graphics integrated in 915 will be the best performing integrated graphics we have tested. We are told performance is roughly equivalent to 5200FX. That will not excite many of our readers, but it is still a fact that 60% of motherboard shipments are integrated graphics.
Cygni - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
Depressing is when you see the performance "gain" PCI-E 16x was supposed to offer in real life. Hint: Its not there.JGF - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
September at the earliest for A64 nvidia PCI-E is more than a little depressing. :(Bozo Galora - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=858&s=2Speaking of 4 phase power...
Is that 5 phase power on the shuttle board?
RyanVM - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
On page 3: "As we reported, PCI-X and AGP on the same 915 board is supposedly an impossible engineering feat."PCI-E!!!!!!!!!
jrphoenix - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
Good to see all the news on the Athlon 939 boards and PCI-Express. Does anyone have an idea when we will see these boards? It was kind of depressing hearing that Nvidia may not support this until Q3 or Q4 :(Heck... when will we see any socket 939 boards?
SDA - Friday, June 4, 2004 - link
"A Sea of NEW"?Hm. Problem with an A64 with decently powerful integrated graphics is that the A64's so expensive that I don't see much of a need for it. .. ehm, but OEMs would like that, I'm sure. Save them money on cheapo add-in cards, for sure, and they could still advertise "64-bit power!"
DDR2 and DDR1 on the same board, eh. What, is the yellow slot DDR2? What the hell? I thought the purpose of a key was to make it HARDER TO STICK THINGS IN THE WRONG WAY? It's practically in the fscking middle! Rrrrr. And I thought DDR1 was bad. Also, "Intel's excellent new integrated graphics"? Excellent must be a relative term.
Also, Tyan now has nine Opteron boards. On one hand, that's an amusingly diverse selection.. on the other hand, it's great that there are so many choices there, and Tyan boards ARE quality.