Slashdot Mirror
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."
The test ended rather abruptly when it was found the motherboards were not equipped with guns as ordered.
Move along. Nothing to see here folks.
it would have been even more embarrassing if the article was called "Threesome Motherboard shootout."
I used to think brands really didn't matter. Until I bought the Abit Ka7-100. It was a highend board back around 2000 with 4 Dimm slots and 6 PCIs, 1 AGP. And an ISA slot which could be used when sacrificing the last PCI slot. It was fantastic at the time.
Then the transistors fried. I paid for shipping etc and got a replacement. Then it fried again, replaced, then fried again. 4 years later Abit sends me a letter saying they lost a lawsuit for selling select board models with broken transistors including the Ka7-100. Basically they knew it, and told consumers nothing about it.
Yes, we get it. You guys can build big motherboards with gobs of features, including legacy stuff I'll never use.
... 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?
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
these motherboards contain intel's DRM technology.
pass it on.
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2449
search for DRM in the above site for confirmation and some extra info.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Printer friendly version for everyone so that this (click, load ads) doesn't (click, load ads) happen (click, load ads) to (click, load ads) you (click, load ads).
Only one thing matters. Warranty.
As a Genuine Intel Dealer, I can expect a replacement board to be overnighted even before I send the faulty one back. That way there is minimum disruption to the customer.
Try telling a customer their server is down for a few weeks while you wait for the board to be shipped back to Taiwan/China for testing before they'll issue a replacement.
Had a few customers who got non-Intel boards and had no computer for up to three months while waiting for a replacement. Think about that. That's three months paying for broadband you can't use for some people. The inconvenience cost adds up pretty quickly. Kinda makes a 5% increase in motherboard performance seem pretty irrelevant.
And Intel has a good history of actually fixing mistakes. FDIV bug -> replaced processors. VC820 SDRAM bug -> new board and free RDRAM RIMM.
Oh well. I'll stop ranting but hopefully you get my point.