There is a detached group of models among Socket 775 motherboards, which is based on Intel chipsets of the previous generation (i865/875). As a rule they are no less fast than boards on i915/925. Besides, such systems turn out even cheaper. However, marketing advantages of such models are not quite clear: if you purchase a motherboard on i865/875, why not choose the one for Socket 478? (Besides, you will be able to buy a processor on Northwood core, which generally offers no less performance than Prescott core at the minimum.) Well, at least Foxconn made a good show of the price advantage: at the time this article was written, the 865PE7AF-8EKS with 8-channel audio (on the cheapest codec), gigabit network (on the cheapest controller) and even with FireWire(!) was about 55 USD (!!!). If it had used ICH5R instead of ICH5 to provide RAID features, it would have been a dream of any user.
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Digit-life
Mar 11, 2005, 08:56 PM
