1/28 - Intel's new motherboard for high performance PCs is now available. While Intel's 975x chipset has been out for several months, and competing motherboards based on the 975x from other companies have come to market, this is Intel's first motherboard that makes use of the chipset.

The basics of the motherboard are solid. It supports dual graphics cards in a CrossFire configuration, 3 gbps SATA, Firewire, and other standard features. The D975XBX improves upon its predecessor, the D955XBK, without surpassing the competition. Its value lies in stability, not performance. Not that it's a bad performer. It's just not the best.

For starters, the memory controller is not as efficient as the memory controller offered by comparable NVIDIA-based motherboards. NVIDIA is a great competitor. This alone accounts for many of the performance scores. "The memory latency test continues to show a 10% advantage for the nForce4's memory controller".

That being said, the performance of the D975XBX motherboard ought to improve with future BIOS updates. "Based upon the history of Intel's BIOS releases, we can expect additional performance from this board".

Another reason why other boards can outperform the D975XBX is that the tweaking options in its BIOS are limited compared to competing boards. Intel boards are still not the best overclockers. While the D975XBX offers some features, the BIOS options nonetheless "hinder this board compared to the more performance-oriented solutions from Asus and Gigabyte".

Intel's Input/Output Controller Hub, the ICH7R, supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. However, Intel goes on to supplement its native storage controller with an additional storage controller from Silicon Image. The key word here is supplement. The additional chip allows the motherboard to be competitive with other high performance motherboards that offer a whole slew of hard drive and SATA device options.

One of the complaints about SATA hard drives in the past was that the connectors were fragile and snapped loose too easily. To remedy this, the "SATA ports feature the new clamp and latch design'.

Comparison tests with other systems show the NVIDIA nForce4 SATA storage controller beating out all other contenders and "providing the fastest IO".

In comparison tests of networking performance, a Marvell chip beat out all others. "The Marvell 88E8062 PCI Express x4 LAN solution continues to offer the highest standard throughput of the tested options".

The board supports a front side bus of 1333MHz, DDR2 memory running at 800MHz, and future CPU processors that are not available yet such as "the upcoming Cedar Mill processor".

Fully populating all of the memory slots on a board tends to stress the memory subsystem more than just putting in two sticks of memory. The D975XBX bears out this, and the memory timings had to be set less aggressively when all of the memory slots were populated. It was the first i975x board that did not allow a CAS Latency of 3 in "testing with 4 DDR2 modules".

For some reason, Intel dropped Firewire 800 from the motherboard. This was not good: "benchmarks show Firewire 800 is up to 46% faster than a drive connected to the more common Firewire 400".

Intel also used a third party Sigmatel chip for audio. This is a great chip for everything except gaming. If you play games on your computer, and you want this board, then get a sound card. "The Sigmatel 9221D audio solution displayed excellent sound characteristics in music, video, and DVD playback throughout our testing and should seriously be considered as the main audio component if gaming is not your priority".

All in all, the D975XBX is a performance motherboard built for stability. The board is geared towards power-users, "while maintaining the exceptional security and stability of Intel's desktop board solutions".