X48 Roundup: ASUS, ECS & Intel @ TechGage
“With so much X48 selection on the market, choosing the right board can be tough. To help make the choice easier, we are taking a look at three such boards all at once, ASUS’ DDR2 Rampage Formula and also the DDR3 ECS X48T-A and Intel’s DX48BT2.”
MSI P45 Platinum @ Neoseeker
“Everything was fine until I tried to go over 450MHz FSB. It then became intensely painful, as most attempts would result in the board not posting – and even worse yet, not recovering, requiring that I clear the CMOS pretty much after every attempt.”
ECS X48T-A @ Guru3D
“Typically an X48 chipset based mainboard will start at roughly 250 USD. The two chips the mainboard manufacturer has to purchase from Intel total up towards 90 USD alone. Pretty high-end gear for sure as Intel’s X48 chipset brings support for the all new 1600 MHz FSB processors, two 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots, which you can use for ATI CrossFire, two ATI graphics cards and heaps of nice features.”
ASUS P5QL-E @ OC Club
“When it came to overclocking the Intel Core 2 Q9450 on the ASUS P5QL-E I ran into a few problems getting it stable anywhere above 2940MHz (420×7). Leaving all of the voltage settings on auto, I was able to get the FSB frequency all the way up to 400MHz with a multiplier of 7x. However, I did end up jumping to 1.355V on the CPU voltage to get it stable at 420MHz x 7 Multi giving me the speed of 2940MHz.”
ECS GF8200A Black Series @ Hardware Secrets
“GF8200A Black Series is an entry-level socket AM2+ motherboard with on-board video from ECS based on GeForce 8200 (MCP78M-A) chipset from nVidia. Since it features an HDMI output, this board is clearly targeted to users willing to build a media center PC based on an AMD CPU like Athlon X2. In this review we will compare the performance of GeForce 8200 to its main competitor, AMD 780G. Check it out.”
MSI P45 Platinum @ Motherboards.org
“The board was stable throughout testing and performed about on average with other P45 boards we have seen. One cool feature of the board is the GreenPower utility which can save energy when enabled. This is similar in concept to the EPU on ASUS motherboards and the Dynamic Energy Saver on the Gigabyte motherboards.”
XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI @ TweakTown
“Today’s adventure takes us back once again to NVIDIA, which seems to be getting a lot of press lately. The introduction of the GTX200 Series GPU has brought NVIDIA new fame with impressive scores. And with the option of SLI, NVIDIA has another ace up its sleeve; the only chipsets to support it.”
ASUS P5Q-E @ Think Computers
“Today I am looking at the Asus P5Q-E, one of Asus’ three budget-minded P45 motherboards, this one supporting CrossfireX, with two x 8 slots, and one x 4 slot (the primary PCI-E slot is x 16 when a single video card is used). It also sports heatpipe chipset cooling, and other features we’d expect only on Asus boards costing much more, all with an energy-saving theme. How will this board stand up to the requirements of enthusiasts?”
Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H @ OC Club
“I must say, I was quite amazed by the performance of the Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H motherboard. I mean, I know it is a mini board and not meant for hardcore applications and gaming, but it did very well for itself. In the majority of the tests, the Gigabyte 8200 board came close or the same as even the 780a full featured motherboards, but costs less than a third of some of them.”
ASUS M3N78 Pro @ OC Club
“Overclocking this board took a lot of trial and error, but I finally managed to get it stable and good to go. The CPU core voltage maxes out at 1.30v on this board, so you are limited in how far you can push it. Also it did not like a multiplier greater than 14x, after that the computer would not even boot. I also had to put the HyperTransport multiplier to 10x to have the link remain stable.”