Stephen MSI X48 Platinum @ PCStats
“The raw specs for MSI’s X48 Platinum motherboard are equally impressive. The board is based on the Intel X48 Express and ICH9-R variant Southbridge, and supports DDR3-800/1066/1333 and 1600 (XMP) memory formats. It has four DDR3 memory slots which may accommodate up to 8GB of RAM in a dual channel configuration. The real beauty of MSI’s X48 Platinum is broad accommodation of videocards.”
abit AN78GS @ OC Club
“I was impressed by the Abit AN78GS performance. In almost every game test, it had the advantage over the comparison boards. It was always a few frames per second over the top of the pile, except in Call of Duty 4, where it fell short at higher resolutions. Furthermore, the GeForce 8200 integrated graphics processor can allow great energy savings if the Hybrid power technology is turned on.”
ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe @ Neoseeker
“While it is true that a quad core Penryn on a nice X48 board will significantly out perform it, a Phenom on a good 780 or 790 board is still a viable choice as high end games tend to be GPU bound – and the money you save on the CPU and motherboard is probably better spent on getting a better GPU.”
MSI P7NGM @ Neoseeker
“I have a feeling that the GeForce 9300 was rushed to market, and enough time was not spend optimizing the BIOS, especially when it came to memory timings. There is no other way to put it – the memory performance is atrocious, with the exception of writes – latencies are especially bad. I have to wonder if the BIOS thinks DDR2 is DDR3 and thus forces such ridiculous (even for DDR3!) timing values.”
ECS GF9300T-A Black Series @ Big Bruin
“The ECS GF9300T-A Black Series GeForce 9300 motherboard is hopefully a BIOS update away from being an incredible motherboard. It seems well conceived and well designed, but there are just too many issues and limiting factors to get overly excited about it as is. The performance was respectable in many tests anyway, and it makes me wonder just how good this board could be (at stock speeds or overclocked) if it wasn’t being held back.”
ECS GF9300TA @ Guru3D
“We’ll see integrated IGPs more and more in the years to come, and mark my words… we feel that this trend is becoming normalized in the mainstream market. We peek at a GF9300 mainboard, the model tested comes from the fine folks at ECS, and as always… they were quick enough to send us their “Black Edition” model, a product series that is doing so very well in the EU and USA thanks to it’s nice design and additional features.”
DFI LANPARTY DK P45-T2RS Plus @ MadShrimps
“The P45 chipset has been out on the market for quite some time now and motherboards are widely available. But as usual, it takes a bit more time for DFI to tweak and tune their version of the P45. Today, we have a look at the P45-T2RS Plus motherboard, let’s find out if it was worth the wait.”
ASUS M3N78 Pro @ Motherboards.org
“Overclocking features are adequate, but this board is really not for the hardcore gamer or enthusiast buyer.As a HTPC motherboard this is great as the onboard video has HDMI and has the ability to run 7.1 surround- sound through the HDMI port. NVIDIA really needs to launch a faster integrated graphics processor if they intend to compete with ATI on pure performance comparisons.”
Gigabyte EP45-T Extreme @ Neoseeker
“On one hand, it ran fine with up to 500MHz (2000MHz) FSB with few changes other than Vcore and Vfsb being bumped to 1.45V and 1.4V respectively, as long as the DDR3 timings were left at “Auto” and no attempt was made to exceed about 1600MHz memory speed with pretty sad auto timings. On the other hand, the memory performance of the P45 chipset – as my other P45 reviews showed – is sub-standard compared to the X38 and even P35 chipsets.”
ECS A790GXM @ Guru3D
“A mainboard in the sub 140 USD range, yet ECS style – with a bucket load of features like integrated graphics, HDMI connector, passive cooling, 8-channel sound, dual GigE Ethernet, Crossfire ready … and decent tweakability. Overall for the money these motherboards is just very interesting, and the performance and power-consumption, really amazing.”