by Kaeyi Dream | 1st May 2013
Last week we went to Taipei, one of the global cities in the production of technology and home to Gigabyte's Head Office. Not only did we have a really interesting tour of their factory detailing how each stage of the production process is carried out but we also had a chance to meet some of their great staff and we were shown their next generation Intel boards. Today we can show you some images as well as talk about what makes them different to the competition... and previous Gigabyte models.
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by Stuart Davidson | 25th October 2012
Now six months on from the Z77 launch manufacturers such as Gigabyte are launching their new generation of products based around the chipset. The top model in Gigabytes family is GA-Z77X-UP7 and we have one on our test bench today. It will be put through a selection of synthetic and real world tests to establish how it compares to a first generation Z77 product.
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by Stuart Davidson | 7th July 2012
On our test bench today is the latest product from the ASUS RoG brand, their Maximus V Formula motherboard. We will be comparing it to another Z77 board in a selection of real world and synthetic tests to find out how ASUS look to improve on the base design and how far they have pushed the enthusiast feature set... watercooled heatsinks anyone?
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by Stuart Davidson | 6th May 2012
CPUs like the i7-3960X sit at the top of Intel's product stack and if we are looking to build a top of the range system based around that CPU we need a quality board to maximise our features and performance. ASRock aim to deliver this with their X79 Extreme9 and today it is on our test bench as we put it through a selection of real world and synthetic tests. Can it offer as much as the newer Z77 boards, or maybe even more? Let's find out.
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by Stuart Davidson | 8th April 2012
Today we have the official Z77 launch and can talk about the boards based upon it without restrictions. So we have gathered a bundle from ASRock, ASUS, ECS, Intel and MSI to compare and find out which offers the best features and performance on Intels new chipset.
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by Stuart Davidson | 3rd January 2012
MSI are expanding their range of X79 products with today's launch of an enthusiast board which aims to be the best motherboard a consumer can buy for Intel's new high end CPUs. We have one on our test bench and will be putting it through a selection of real world and synthetic tests.
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by Stuart Davidson | 14th December 2011
Yesterday Sapphire launched their latest motherboard, the Pure Black 990FX which is based on the latest high end AMD chipset and Socket AM3+. Today we have one on our test bench and will be pairing it with an FX 8-core CPU and 16GB of memory to find out how it compares to one of the better competitors out there. In addition to that we will also take a look at Sapphires new 6450 Flex Edition which should be ideal for those looking to maximise their productivity.
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by Stuart Davidson | 8th November 2011
Today's review product is the latest to come from the ECS Black Series range and is their take on AMD's 990FX chipset. This AM3 board is ideal for use with the new FX (Bulldozer) range of 8-core CPUs and features some excellent functionality such as support for SATA3, USB 3.0, Crossfire and SLI.
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by Stuart Davidson | 17th October 2011
Designed to cater for those who want AMDs best APUs but without the cost of a high end motherboard A55 products are the ideal option and today we have one of those boards on our test bench. The GA-A55-DS3P from Gigabyte aims to provide a solid APU based system at a very low cost, let's see how it does...
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by Stuart Davidson | 22nd September 2011
The ZOTAC A75-ITX WiFi and ASUS F1A75-I Deluxe are both Mini-ITX motherboards that are packed with features as well as support for the latest A8/A6 range of desktop APUs from AMD. We will be putting these two boards head to head in order to find out what they offer.
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by Stuart Davidson | 29th July 2011
Today we have the Fatality Z68 Professional Gen 3 which is a board which works with today's PCIe 2.0 based hardware but also includes all the components required to support future 1155 CPUs and PCIe 3.0. For anyone looking to buy a board that will last through their next few upgrades this could well be the product to go for so let's put it through our usual test suite...
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by Stuart Davidson | 4th July 2011
The latest to market with a board which is a little different to the norm is ASUS with their Maximus IV Gene-Z and today we will be putting this SLI and Crossfire compatible M-ATX enthusiast board through its paces in a selection of real world and synthetic tests to find out if it can match an ATX alternative from one of ASUS key competitors.
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by Stuart Davidson | 30th June 2011
Today we have the A8-3850 APU running on Gigabytes A75-UD4H motherboard and will be putting them through a selection of tests to find out how they compare to the equivalent i3/Z68 system. Whether you are interested in media conversion, playback or gaming performance this article will demonstrate where the A8 and A75 fit into the current market.
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by Stuart Davidson | 23rd June 2011
Today we have the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 on our test bench and will be comparing it to the ASUS Crosshair V Formula as we find out which board offers the best performance.
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by Stuart Davidson | 17th June 2011
Today we will be taking a look at three different approaches to socket 1155 products as we review a board based on H67 (mini-ITX) and to larger models which use the P67 and Z68. Each will be put through a selection of synthetic and real world tests to establish how they perform in a variety of scenarios which will assist anyone thinking about buying a socket 1155 product in the near future.
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by Stuart Davidson | 30th May 2011
Today we will be taking a look at two AMD 990FX boards and comparing them to a similarly spec'd Z68 system to find out what the new boards offer in today's marketplace. As always we will be focusing on motherboard specific tests such as USB3, PCIe and SATA 6Gb/s tests with a few more general benchmarks thrown in for good measure.
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by Stuart Davidson | 11th May 2011
Today we have the launch of Intel's new socket 1155 chipset, the Z68 which brings with it a plethora of new motherboards. On our test bench we have two separate approaches; the first is Gigabyte's enthusiast Z68X-UD7-B3 and the second, the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro which is aimed at mainstream consumers. Let's find out how they compete against the P67 and 890FX...
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by Stuart Davidson | 21st April 2011
Today we have another of ASUS' models on our test bench, the B3 revision Sabertooth P67 and will be putting it through a selection of synthetic and real world tests to establish how it compares to the competition.
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by Stuart Davidson | 4th April 2011
Today we have one of the B3 revision motherboards on our test bench, a mini-ITX model from Gigabyte, which packs a whole load of features into a tiny PCB. We'll be putting that model through its paces, along with the low energy 2100/2500T CPUs, in a selection of synthetic and real world tests to find out how they perform with a mini-ITX Fusion system included as a performance baseline.
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by Stuart Davidson | 22nd January 2011
One of the first manufacturers to announce their APU based system was MSI and today we have that very product, the E350IA-E45, on our test bench. In a selection of predominantly real world tests including media encoding, gaming and HD playback we will look at the performance of the new platform and find out who the consumers are who will benefit most from the first Fusion models.
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by Stuart Davidson | 20th January 2011
Today in the latest of our Sandy Bridge articles we take a look at another aspect, performance when overclocked in a selection of synthetic and real world tests. To do this we will be using the MSI P67A-GD65 which has an excellent one touch overclock feature. Ideal for novice overclockers who want some extra performance and value from their system.
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by Stuart Davidson | 18th January 2011
Today we have two ASRock P67 based boards on our test bench and will be putting them through a selection of real world and synthetic tests. To keep things interesting for those who have already seen a number of P67/Sandy Bridge articles, in this review we will put the ASRock systems up against the similarly priced X58 / Core i7-950 combination.
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by Stuart Davidson | 13th January 2011
The subjects of our review today are the H67H2-M Black Deluxe and H67H2-I which are two boards from the m-ATX and mini ITX product families at ECS. We will be running each through a selection of synthetic and real world tests, including Blu-Ray 3D and GPU computing to see how they compare to the reference Intel board.
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by Stuart Davidson | 13th January 2011
Today we have one of the first high end P67 based boards on our test bench. With their Maximus IV Extreme ASUS hope to deliver a board which exceeds anything else on the market and we will be testing it in a selection of synthetic and real world tests to establish how good it is.
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by Stuart Davidson | 1st December 2010
On our test bench today we have one of the latest products from ASUS, the P7H55-M/USB3. Based on Intel's Socket 1156 and the H55 chipset this Micro-ATX board includes the latest features such as SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0. We will be putting it through a selection of real world tests to find out how well it performs against a comparable H57 model when using the Core i5-655K.
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by Stuart Davidson | 14th November 2010
In the coming months Intel will be refreshing their CPU and chipset ranges, introducing new models with enhanced specifications. Currently the performance of those products is under NDA however motherboard manufacturers have been given permission to preview their new products, based around the upcoming chipsets. Today we have a quick preview of one such board, the Asus P8P67 Deluxe.
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by Stuart Davidson | 1st October 2010
In addition to the ASRock Extreme6 we also have Intel's latest i7-970 CPU to test. So join us as we put some ultra-high end kit through its paces in real world testing which includes SATA3 and USB 3 performance, CrossFire Eyefinity and 3-Way SLI 3D Vision Surround gameplay in addition to our standard tests which include encoding and media playback.
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by Stuart Davidson | 29th July 2010
Todays roundup features the ASRock Extreme 3, ASUS Rampage 3 Extreme, ASUS Rampage 3 Gene, Gigabyte X58A-UD9, MSI Big Bang Xpower and ASUS P6X58D-E boards. We look at media performance, memory performance and more.
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by Stuart Davidson | 8th June 2010
A bunch of pictures just dropped into our inbox which show one of the next high end boards being designed by ASUS. It is from the Republic of Gamers brand, is Intel based and has all of the features we would expect from a high end board including SATA 6GB/s, USB3, SLI/CrossFire support and then goes a little further with items like Bluetooth.
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by Stuart Davidson | 2nd March 2010
Today on our test bench we have the latest chipset from AMD which they hope will be attractive to consumers, offering many of the features present on the 785G and adding to this functionality such as SATA 6GB/s. We will be finding out how boards from Asus, Foxconn and Gigabyte perform in a selection of real world gaming, multimedia and productivity tasks to find out which is worth your hand earned cash.
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by Stuart Davidson | 23rd February 2010
Today we have a product on our test bench which aims to fill the SATA3/USB3 gap in AMDs high end product line. We will be running the Gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 through a selection of real world tests to find out whether this is the board that AMD users with a need for the latest features have been waiting on.
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by Stuart Davidson | 3rd December 2009
Back in September Intel released the Core i5-750 and i7-870 along with their latest midrange chipset, the P55. At launch we were very impressed by the excellent value for money offered by the i5-750, especially when Turbo Boost is enabled and there was no shortage of P55 boards to combine with it. Since then Gigabyte and Asus have been expanding their P55 range and between them they have now 36 different models for users to choose from.
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by Stuart Davidson | 15th July 2009
First up on the review bench is the top model in the Asus P6T desktop family, the P6T Deluxe V2, it competes against two high performance boards from Foxconn, the FlamingBlade and BloodRage GTI. Read on to find out which best meets your requirements in regards to performance and functionality.
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by Stuart Davidson | 22nd May 2009
Since the release of Core-i7 there has been a steady release of performance motherboards which allow consumers the opportunity to create a great high specification system. In the past getting the best performance always meant using ATX boards even though technology in just about every other area has been getting more compact.
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by Stuart Davidson | 9th January 2009
Last month we took a look at a selection of boards which were released around i7 launch time, some of which were very impressive. Today we have four more X58 based boards from MSI, ECS and Foxconn and we will run each of the boards through a selection of real world tests including media encoding, Photoshop and gaming as well as some overclocking. By the end of this review you should be in no doubt which board best suits your needs when building a new Core i7 system.
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by Stuart Davidson | 11th December 2008
Today we have three boards (Intel, Gigabyte & Asus)on our review bench and we will be running them through a selection of tests, mainly in real world scenarios, to establish which deserves to be the basis for your new Core i7 system. Whether you are an overclocker, video editor, Photoshop professional or gamer... this is the article to read.
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by Stuart Davidson | 20th November 2008
In our latest Socket 775 roundup we have a collection of Socket 775 motherboards which are aimed at enthusiasts and surprisingly not all come with a huge price tag.
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by Nathan Marks | 18th November 2008
Founded in 1986, Gigabyte made a name for themselves manufacturing cutting edge motherboards and VGA solutions. They also offer a selection of other products from pre-built PC's to network equipment and mobile phones. It is in manufacturing motherboards though where their true passion is, and today were going to look at the EP45-DS3R, one of the inexpensive options among a plethora of offerings from the company.
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by Stuart Davidson | 7th October 2008
Given the recent domination of the CPU market by Intel it seems strange to think that they have any need to release new CPU models. Today we look at a hot new motherboard from Asus which supports the upcoming Intel Nehalem platform.
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by Stuart Davidson | 21st August 2008
Today we will be comparing eight motherboards for Intel processors and showing how each performs as well as looking at the features they have to offer. Tests include gaming, media playback, image manipulation and more, so by the end of the article we should be a bit better placed to know which chipset or board is ideal for consumers using Intel processors.
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by Stuart Davidson | 2nd August 2008
XFX offered us the opportunity to review a number of their value segment motherboards with onboard graphics, they told us that their products were capable of taking on the best AMD and Intel had to offer. This is quite a claim so after tracking down some impressive AM2/Socket 775 boards we put XFX to their word.
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by Vikingod | 1st August 2008
Today we are taking a look at the ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi. Based on the Intel X48 + ICH9R chipsets, this motherboard supports up to 8GB of Dual Channel DDR3 1600 and up to 4GB of Dual Channel DDR2 1066, ATI Crossfire, and WiFi-802.11g.
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by Stuart Davidson | 6th May 2008
In the near future Asus will be launching their P5Q3 Deluxe motherboard which is based on the Intel P45 chipset. We have had an early sample of the board running in our offices for a little while now and today we have a preview for you...
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by Stuart Davidson | 18th January 2008
Asus Maximus Extreme
Asus Maximus Formula
MSI P35 Platinum Combo
Asus P5E3 Deluxe
MSI X48 Platinum
For anyone buying a socket 775 motherboard the choice is now quite bewildering. For a while the number one choice was the 975X chipset but more recently the G33, P35, X38 and X48 have all been released with each targeting a specific market segment. Today we will be looking at the mainstream and enthusiast models to identify which boards offer the best value, performance and features.
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by WhO_KnOwS | 7th January 2008
Gigabyte are a Taiwan based manfacturer with a vast portfolio comprising Pc's. optical drives, LCD monitors, keyboards, mice and cooling components. They are however best known for their high quality enthusiast motherboards. Today we are taking a look at their new GA-G33M-S2H. This is based on the G33 Express Chipset that supports the latest multi-core processors up to 1333MHz FSB and the new 45nm platform.
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by Stuart Davidson | 7th August 2007
AMD's 690G chipset has proven to be very successful with a wide array of microATX boards currently available covering various price points and feature sets. At the time of our original review we found the 690G products to be impressive performers when compared to the Nvidia based GeForce 6050 and nForce 430 chipsets. However since then Nvidia have released an updated motherboard solution which features updated onboard graphics and Southbridge.
Today we are taking a look at a high specification 690G motherboard from EQS and comparing it to Abit’s new AN-M2HD which utilizes the Nvidia 7050PV/NF630a feature set.
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by Stuart Davidson | 15th July 2007
There is no doubting that XFX make truly impressive graphics cards, here at Driver Heaven we have found their 8xxx series cards to be the best in each of the market segments, they have in fact won more "Heavenly Hardware Gold Awards" than any other graphics card manufacturer. As well as making stellar hardware XFX always supply their products with great presentation and incorporate the highest engineering standards. So when they sent us a review sample of their latest high end Nvidia 6 series motherboard we were extremely interested to ascertain if this tradition of great performance and specifications was to continue.
Today’s review product is XFX’s 680i LT SLI motherboard, a product which takes the performance of the full 680i chipset and combines it with a more affordable set of features. The main differences being that the LT board lacks an extra GB lan port and a 3rd PCIe 8x slot.
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by Stuart Davidson | 3rd July 2007
It’s nearly a year since the Intel 965 chipset first made it to retail and whilst it is still a great performer these motherboards are up against some strong competition in the form of Nvidia’s 680i chipset. As well as being a little lacking compared to the aforementioned Nvidia part the upcoming move to 45nm and 1333FSB processors has resulted in a new high end chipset being produced by Intel.
As well as featuring enhanced CPU support, the new chipset is able to compete with other products in regards to memory support, finally officially breaking through the DDR2-800 limit which has been in place on many Intel based boards for some time now. Today we have four boards to review from four manufacturers which take slightly different approaches to this chipset.
The boards being tested are the Gigabyte P35-DQ6, Abit IP35 Pro Off Limits, Asus P5K Deluxe and MSI P35 Platinum, let’s see how the P35 handles.
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by Stuart Davidson | 20th June 2007
Whilst the real performance users may be a little disappointed not to have new boards available with higher specifications than the 580, those on a budget have a plethora of new boards to choose from and we have two such products to test today, Sapphires Pure Innovation and MSI’s K9GAM2. Let’s see how they compare to one of the current value segment leaders, the Asus M2NPV-VM.
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by Stuart Davidson | 12th April 2007
A few months back we took a look at the first real generation of Core2 boards which were based on the Intel 975x chipset. At the time it was arguably the best chipset available for the Core2, however in recent times both AMD and Nvidia have taken a stab at stealing the performance crown with their 680i and 690 chipsets respectively. Our first look at the 680i was hugely disappointing with the early reference designs being plagued with problems, ranging from PS2 keyboard compatibility issues to quad core bugs. That said, some manufacturers took a little more time to bring their products to market and so with this in mind we revisit the chipset in the form of Abit's IN9 32X-MAX. The recently released Fatality F-I90HD is the second product on test today, based on the brand new AMD 690 chipset it is a more budget conscious board with great potential to compete with the more expensive models. Finally we have Intel's D975XBX2, an updated version of the original XBX which is the best Intel board we have used to date.
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by Grace | 16th January 2007
Since the release of the AM2 socket, NVIDIA has been enjoying the largest share of the motherboard chipset market. The nForce 5 series chipsets dominate not only at the high end but also at the value motherboard production lines. Today we will take a look at a motherboard made by the company which created the reference nForce 590i motherboards, Foxconn. Foxconn entered the retail market only recently, but they are old in the industrial and OEM business. They must have felt confident about their work on the reference nForce 590i motherboard, because they released it nearly unchanged to the retail market. If most reference motherboards of other companies ever made it to the retail market, it would be nothing more than trouble, but we feel confident about NVIDIA’s and Foxconn’s combined effort. The name of the motherboard is C51XEM2AA, which is certainly not the easiest model number to memorise.
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by Grace | 14th November 2006
The three motherboards we have for review today are the Abit KN9-SLI, the Asus M2N-E and the MSI K9N Platinum. All of the three are in the 90-120 Euro price range. The Asus and MSI motherboards are using the nForce 570 Ultra chipset, while the Abit is the only one which supports SLI and is using the nForce 570 SLI chipset.
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by Stuart Davidson | 2nd November 2006
Back in January Intel introduced the world to the D975XBX motherboard which was the first retail board based on the 975X chipset. Since then motherboard manufacturers have been releasing their own boards based on the same chipset. Two of the most recent efforts come from DFI and Abit. The DFI offering is a reasonably basic affair with a bios that should appeal to the enthusiast where as Abit throw in everything that a consumer should ever need (and then some). Let’s take a look to see how they both compare to a recent revision of the D975XBX.
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by Aaron | 27th October 2006
It’s no secret that Intel’s new Core 2 Duo (and upcoming Quadro) has stirred up a great amount of buzz in over clocking circles. What was an AMD dominated field has been usurped by the new low voltage dual core creations of Intel.
Never one to let down its enthusiasts, Abit has unveiled their new AW9D-Max which they promise to be the Intel enthusiast/overclocking board.
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by Stuart Davidson | 11th July 2006
Today we'll take the world’s first look at Abit's new Fatality AN9 32x SLI motherboard. Abit are not the first to market with an AM2 board however they do produce some of the most feature packed products which perform to the highest level.
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by Grace | 8th June 2006
Motherboard manufacturers traditionally try to create well built, cost-effective motherboards that have as many features as possible. That makes sense of course, since most of their revenue comes from selling products to Joe User, and not to the enthusiast community. Nevertheless, for several years now the top motherboard manufacturers spend a lot of time and money designing and producing enthusiast-oriented solutions that are usually more pricey, but at the same time offer that little bit of extra that the overclocking and enthusiast community has come to expect. Abit is one of the most respected companies in this field, designing high class motherboards, which overclockers tend to love. In this article we will have a look on what is touted by many as the best motherboard for the Socket 939 platform, the AN8-32X.
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by Stuart Davidson | 28th May 2006
We have heard a lot about Intel’s Viiv for a while now however it’s taken quite some time for Viiv certified products to reach retail in any reasonable numbers. The motherboard we have to review today is ECS’s first take on the Viiv platform. For most manufacturers this would mean providing the basic specifications required to be able to add Viiv logos to their boxes, however this is certainly not so in the case of ECS.
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by Grace | 22nd May 2006
Many consumers who want to build, upgrade or migrate to a socket 939 platform believe only nForce 4 SLI motherboards to be “high end” products, especially when it comes to overclocking. This is not entirely true as there are products which are designed to perform and overclock well without offering SLI, aiming at the middle range of the market. It is a fact that the majority of gamers prefer a good VGA card than two average VGA cards anyway. We will take a thorough look at such a motherboard today, designed and built by Epox, the 9NPA+ Ultra.
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by Grace | 5th April 2006
The Gigabyte K8U-939 is a socket 939 motherboard, based on the ULi M1689 chipset. It has an AGP slot instead of a PCI-E one and works with DDR RAM, so users with older socket A/478 motherboards can upgrade to it without having to upgrade their RAM and GFX as well. It also features Dual Channel DDR, can support the newest X2 Dual Core processors and 64-bit technology so it is striving to be a competitive solution for those who are thinking about upgrading without spending a fortune. The low price of the motherboard certainly adds to that, but can it compete at all with high-end motherboards in regards to performance?
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by Stuart Davidson | 3rd April 2006
Our review on the Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe was held off for a while, as our regulars will know we were working closely with Asus in fixing some rather major clock issues and due to our intervention Asus allowed us to host and release a beta bios last week. So while other sites published reviews with the faulty bios, we waited until we could deliver an accurate and indepth look at this rather impressive board from Asus. This review is a double whammy as we are also testing a HIS X1900 Crossfire setup.
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by Stuart Davidson | 27th June 2005
The MSI 945P Neo Platinum, as the name suggests uses Intel’s non-onboard gfx 945 chipset and mixes it with MSI’s own feaures such as the DOT3 overclocking. To aid all of you pondering your next upgrade on the socket 775 platform we will include comparison results from Abit’s AA8XE Fatal1ty board and the recently released P5ND2-SLI Deluxe board from Asus which is based on the Nforce 4 chipset...
... Our synthetic tests show really interesting figures, in every single test the 945 based MSI board is faster than the 925XE and Nforce4 based boards. Considering how fast the NF4 chipset actually is this is a real achievement for MSI/Intel and as far as synthetic tests go the MSI 945P Neo Platinum is the fastest board we have tested to date.
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by Stuart Davidson | 14th June 2005
The intel sector has taken huge leaps forward in terms of catering for the power user with manufacturers such as Abit providing some excellent enthusiast features and our first board for testing today is one such board, the Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE which uses the Intel 925 chipset. If you’re not going down the Intel chipset route there are several choices, ATI, SIS, Via and now Nvidia have stepped into the arena with their Nforce 4 chipset which provides us with the basis for our second motherboard the Asus P5Nd2- SLI Deluxe…
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by Stuart Davidson | 16th April 2005
Last week we brought you a preview of the ASUS P5RD1-V Deluxe motherboard which looked specifically at the feature set of the board including the first onboard DirectX9 chipset for Intel. As the sample we received was a pre production board we refrained from publishing any information on performance as it may not have fully represented the abilities of the shipping product. Since then however we have received a retail sample of the P5RD1-V (non deluxe) which is basically the same board minus the onboard TV tuner and we’ve run it through its paces in a number of tests.
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by Stuart Davidson | 8th April 2005
Those of you with good memories may recall a picture from CeBit of a new ATI based motherboard on the Asus stand aimed at the Intel platform. Boards from that family are nearing completion at Asus and today we have a preview of the first to be released, the P5RD1-V Deluxe. This board is very interesting for many reasons though the two most important are that it’s based on the excellent Radeon Xpress chipset (with integrated DX9 graphics) and that the board is the first available in the world to come with an integrated TV tuner.
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by Stuart Davidson | 3rd February 2005
The move to PCI express can be an expensive one, depending on your current setup you could be looking at changing your CPU, memory, graphics card, power supply and motherboard – basically the whole system. So what if you want to upgrade in stages? Well one of the options is to buy an agp motherboard and keep your existing graphics card, this will you save your hard earned cash and buy the other components. For this reason and the fact that there is still a huge market out there for AGP based boards we’ve decided today to move away from PCI express for a while and see what MSI’s high end AGP based board has to offer and how it performs when compared to the Nforce 4 based SLI and Radeon Xpress reference board. The results came as somewhat of a surprise to us…
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by Stuart Davidson | 29th January 2005
Nearly two months ago ATI released their Radeon Xpress chipset for AMD cpu’s, it was one of the first boards to be with reviewers which featured PCI Express for the AMD platform. The Xpress chipset has yet to make it to market however the NForce 4 boards are beginning to trickle through; one of the first boards to do so is the Asus A8N-SLI. It’s no secret that we love Asus products here at Driverheaven, over the last 2 years every product we have received from them has been first class in terms of performance and build quality, so going into the review we hoped for the same from the A8N-SLI.
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by Chaos | 31st December 2004
Today we are going to have a look at the MSI K8N Neo Nforce 3 250Gb chipset based motherboard. This is their mainstream Nforce 3 motherboard for AMD socket 754. The K8N Neo is not capable of running in Dual channel mode so if that is a must have feature then perhaps look towards the K8N Neo Ultra based on AMD's socket 939 technology.
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by Stuart Davidson | 12th December 2004
Due to Abits decision to skip socket 940 its been a while since we looked at any of their AMD motherboards. Today though we have an AV8 to review, I was really looking forward to this one having thought the nf7-s was excellent and the AI7 even better. Our 939 board of choice up to this point has been the MSI K8T-Neo2-FIR as it was a board that provided good performance whilst being completely stable, today we will put the AV8 up against it.
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by Stuart Davidson | 8th November 2004
ATI have been building a great reputation on the Intel Chipset front over the last 3 years and on that platform have arguably the best chipsets with features like onboard graphics being far ahead of the competitor’s solution. The new Radeon Xpress chipset however is designed for AMD socket 754 and 939.
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by Stuart Davidson | 14th July 2004
With the move to socket 939 Asus have a new board for Athlon users in the shape of the A8V. We were lucky enough to receive a review sample of the new A8V from Asus and with high hopes we built a system around it.
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by Zardon | 19th June 2004
Intel have always been recognised as being the top performing maker of chipsets at default speeds but they dont tend to offer the kind of features and adjustments found on enthusiast "overclocking" boards.
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by Stuart Davidson | 23rd March 2004
The SK8V we reviewed previously is based on a VIA chipset the SK8N is based on the N-force 3 Pro 150 chipset. We shall take a look today at how it performs with 2 of AMD’s most recent processors, the FX51 and FX53.
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by Stuart Davidson | 3rd March 2004
The AI7 is based on Intel’s 865PE chipset. It supports 800/533 and 400FSB Pentium 4 processors using socket 478. Additionally the board also supports Prescott processors, or will do when they are available.
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by Stuart Davidson | 4th January 2004
The SK8V is based on a black PCB which mixed with the yellow and blue of the various slots/connectors is very cool. The board uses VIA’s K8T800 chip which is passively cooled by a stylish blue heatsink. The Southbridge is the Via VT8327 chipset.
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by Chaos | 15th January 2003
The A7N8X is ASUS's entry into the nForce2 chipset market. It supports a Dual Channel DDR400 memory bus, 8x AGP, 6-channel Dolby Sound (SoundStorm), and the only onboard 5.1 Dolby Digital encoder available in a chipset.
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