3-Way Motherboard Shootout

Steve writes "Hexus.net has put three high-end i955X-based motherboards through their paces, to see which is the best LGA775 platform motherboard. Intel's own offering falls a little short, but Gigabyte and ABIT both make compelling boards, with ABIT taking the top-spot by a small margin."

Comments

3-ways are hot.

[PSXer]

They are.

Re:3-ways are hot.

[Ceribia]

"3-ways are hot" This is slashdot, thats not insightful it's redundant. Seriously, find one of us who didn't say it internally the moment we looked at the article.

I prefer the Gigabyte

[StarHeart]

Even if the Abit has a slight performance lead, I like all the features on the Gigabyte more. It is nice to see two pata connectors instead of just one like the other two boards. It also has more PCI slots than the Abit.

Re:What about quality?

[WIAKywbfatw]

How is the quality of these boards? Will they still be working in two or three years? Or will they have leaking capacitors by that time?

You want to know if they'll still be working in two or three years time? Ok, let me just take a short trip in my time machine so I can find out.

Oh wait...

Faster, higher, stronger?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we get it. You guys can build big motherboards with gobs of features, including legacy stuff I'll never use.

For once, I'd like to see somebody build a small motherboard with modern connectors, quiet (or no) fans, and no legacy crap that just takes up space. Right now, about the only way to get that is out of a Mac mini.

I'm still using a 5-year-old computer that I've only upgraded once (bought a new 80 GB disk to replace the old 9 GB one). It's still fast enough for everything I do -- if/when I upgrade, I hope to get something smaller and quieter. I don't care about faster, because the slowest new computer available is faster than this sub-GHz Athlon.

It's kind of sad that, over the past 10 years, the only thing that's really changed about motherboards is that they've gotten faster. They've gone to all the work to come up with new and faster and smaller busses (Firewire, USB2, S-ATA, etc.), but it doesn't make the boards any smaller if they're still including all the big old legacy ports, still, too!

(Yay, floppy, IDE, and PCI slots! What, no ISA?)

ISTM that all motherboard manufacturers today build pretty much the same product, which is aimed at ... everybody, which means "nobody in particular". This is a market ripe for picking. If somebody had the brains and balls, they could really make a killing. How about a Mac mini-like motherboard?

Re:Faster, higher, stronger?

[eLDeR_MMHS]

There's been stuff out there for several years now.

A lot of the "small form factor" barebone cases by Shuttle, Biostar, Soltek, etc. might fit your spec.

Most of those cases are still at least four times bigger than a Mac Mini to accomodate full-size AGP/PCI-Express/PCI cards and 3.5" and 5.25" bays but then they are probably four times smaller than a regular PC tower. Price-wise they are somewhat more expensive than a DIY PC.

But yes, someone has thought of this.

OpenHardware anyone?

[SolitaryMan]

Looks like the time has come for OpenHardware and OpenMusic...

Not really.

[Some Random Username]

First of all, its not like a cryptographic hash at all, its like a checksum, because it is a checksum.

Second, do you care a pointer that used to point to one memory address suddenly and mysteriously points to another, leading to a segfault, or blue screen if its kernel memory?

Errr...

[HaydnH]

From the article: "Having to replace a motherboard usually necessitates a long-winded process of reinstalling an OS, programs, and personal data."

Since when has swapping a motherboard forced me to format my hard disks???