- Aug 2, 2006
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THE BAD AXE Reviewed... Part 1
The Intel D975XBX, better known as the Bad Axe, is a follow-up to the Intel's D955XBK, which was based on the Intel 955x chipset (of course). The Extreme Series product line includes the Intel D955XBK, Intel D955XCS, and the Intel D975XBX2. The Bad Axe seems like a departure for Intel as it is geared towards high-end gamers. But, don't be mistaken, it maintains the security and stability that Intel's desktop solutions are known for.
With full support for two PCI Express x8 slots, ATI CrossFire technology, Intel Memory Pipeline Technology, Intel Flex Memory Technology, 8GB memory address-ability, and ECC memory support its chock full of goodies for the enthusiastic enthusiast. I would guess that just about anyone that gets this solid looking piece of hardware would be excited also. Free from gimmicks, or anything that could be mistaken as such, this board gives off the feeling that it is something to be reckoned with.
But the question is simple. Is this false bravado or does the Bad Axe put its money where its mouth is?
THE FEATURES
The Intel D975XBX is from the Extreme Series family and is a full featured board aimed at enthusiasts. The board ships with an huge accessory package that includes a 3.5" front panel bay for audio, IEEE1394 (Firewire), and USB 2.0 connections. Intel also includes several desktop utilities for monitoring.
Intel designed a beautifully laid out board with all connections easily reached. The board is lacking clearance problems and was simple to install in a ATX case.
All the SATA and IDE ports are located in areas that make you praise the sensibility of Intel. All the RAID jumpers are located on the left side of the board, which, in my humble opinion is probably the best place to put anything dealing with the word RAID. The BIOS jumper is in a readily accessible place. Why would this concern you? Just trust me. It'll concern you quite much.
The board has a 5-phase voltage regulator power design that contributed to the standard of stability Intel is known for. The MOFSETS are passively cooled via heat sinks that offer additional stability when you compare it to earlier boards using a 4-phase regulator. This new setup from Intel also aids in effectively cooling the CPU. Nice work Intel. Could of really used this on the Netburst chips (yes, I know I'm beating an old horse. No I take no pleasure from it.)
The board comes with 3 physical PCI Express x16 connectors and 2 PCI connectors. The layout offers a good balance of slots and allows for additional cards like sound cards or NIC's like the Bigfoot Killer NIC, if one is foolish enough to get one.
The first x16 connector located next to the heat sink is the main PCI Express connector and is set up for x16 or x8 usage. The x16 interface supports full duplex transfers up to 8 GB/sec in x16 operation and single transfers are up to 4 GB/sec in x8 mode.
The next physical x16 connector is the secondary PCI Express connector and is set up for x8 operation. This connector also supports x4 and x1 PCI Express cards.
The final physical x16 connector is set up for x4 modes and fully supports x4 or x1 PCI Express cards.
If you chose to run SLI or Crossfire, this setup is quite nice in my opinion and allows you to have even two 7950GX2's running in SLI mode. Keep in mind though, that only ATI's Crossfire interface is officially supported, but home brew and hacked SLI drivers can be found all over the wonderful little thing called the Internet. As always, Google is your friend.
THE BIOS
The advanced screen allows you to set individual settings for voltage, multipliers, and chipset settings. You must first answer "yes" to the standard legal disclaimer (yes, you have to actually read it) before being allowed to modify the limited range of settings. Did I say limited? More on that later. The Host Burn-In Mode Type option allows you to set a positive or negative value when choosing whether to raise or lower the front side bus (FSB). The Host Burn-In Mode Percentage option allows you to increase the front side bus up to 30% in 1% increments.
The BIOS options are quite Spartan on the Intel D975XBx when you compare it to other enthusiast boards like the Gigabyte DS3 series or the Abit 975x option, with memory voltage to 2.2V (bleh), and a limited range of chipset, bus, and VCore voltage adjustments. Please note though, the BIOS will not recover by itself if you choose an incorrect setting (i.e screw up). You will need to power down the system, switch the jumper, power on, make the changes in the BIOS, power down, switch the BIOS jumper, and then power on the system. My only question is this... What the hell for? Why does Intel always do this to us?
OVERCLOCKING
Ah, the litmus test on which all boards must be measured. Considering the limited settings available in the BIOS this board is a decent overclocker. And by decent, I mean that's all you get. With the limited VCore, VDIMM, and chipset parameters, I was able to achieve a mild overclock of 3.663GHz, well within the thermal limits of the X6800 that I used, and only slightly above the 3.4GHz limit of the stock heatsink. What hurts even more is the low VDIMM settings available. With 2.2v being the max with a 2.4v possible thru Clockgen (read, you run the risk of crashing if you do this) those of us with high voltage RAM like OCZ will be feeling a pinch that you wouldn't expect on a $250 board.
The board was stable at 4-4-4-12 and at 5-5-5-15 timings, but if you try to drop the CAS latency to 3 or lower be prepared to face instability. Keep in mind though, you don't need super tight timings or extremely low latencies to achieve good performance from Intel CPU's. Still this is quite a disappointment when considering the market is aimed at.
PERFORMANCE
It is quite interesting to note that the difference in the scores between the tested boards are only marginal, and will not be seen by the user in anything but synthetic benchmarks.
CONCLUSION
You've seen the evidence, you seen the screens. Is this the board for you? Well the board does come with many features and supports dual GPU interfaces. It has efficient cooling, good clearance and easy access to important jumpers and ports. Its stable at mild overclocks and rock solid at stock speeds. But there are too many things that really deduct from the Bad Axe to make me really fall in love with this board. The low voltage options, limited BIOS and OC cap.
For the money you'd spend on this board, you could get a 965P series board with a more user friendly BIOS, and higher voltage settings. Heck, you could get the Bad Axe 2 for around the same price from Newegg, and be relieved of many of the issues plaguing this board. Its a great board for gamers, those who are building a home server or those planning low OC's or for those just starting to overclock, but its a disappointment on par with the nForce N70 when it comes to doing any overclocks that truly start to push the limits of the modern Core 2 series. Its good for some, bad for others.
Stay tuned though, because there are little tricks to overcome the normal limits imposed by the board. That'll be coming up in Part 2
of the review
The word is this. The Ninja gives it 8.0 out of 10.
Nice effort.
Author & tester: DaSickNinja.
Advice & aid: 3lfk1ng and rwaritsdario (myself).
You can also check it out at DaBlog. Enjoy!
The Intel D975XBX, better known as the Bad Axe, is a follow-up to the Intel's D955XBK, which was based on the Intel 955x chipset (of course). The Extreme Series product line includes the Intel D955XBK, Intel D955XCS, and the Intel D975XBX2. The Bad Axe seems like a departure for Intel as it is geared towards high-end gamers. But, don't be mistaken, it maintains the security and stability that Intel's desktop solutions are known for.
With full support for two PCI Express x8 slots, ATI CrossFire technology, Intel Memory Pipeline Technology, Intel Flex Memory Technology, 8GB memory address-ability, and ECC memory support its chock full of goodies for the enthusiastic enthusiast. I would guess that just about anyone that gets this solid looking piece of hardware would be excited also. Free from gimmicks, or anything that could be mistaken as such, this board gives off the feeling that it is something to be reckoned with.
But the question is simple. Is this false bravado or does the Bad Axe put its money where its mouth is?
THE FEATURES
The Intel D975XBX is from the Extreme Series family and is a full featured board aimed at enthusiasts. The board ships with an huge accessory package that includes a 3.5" front panel bay for audio, IEEE1394 (Firewire), and USB 2.0 connections. Intel also includes several desktop utilities for monitoring.
Intel designed a beautifully laid out board with all connections easily reached. The board is lacking clearance problems and was simple to install in a ATX case.
All the SATA and IDE ports are located in areas that make you praise the sensibility of Intel. All the RAID jumpers are located on the left side of the board, which, in my humble opinion is probably the best place to put anything dealing with the word RAID. The BIOS jumper is in a readily accessible place. Why would this concern you? Just trust me. It'll concern you quite much.
The board has a 5-phase voltage regulator power design that contributed to the standard of stability Intel is known for. The MOFSETS are passively cooled via heat sinks that offer additional stability when you compare it to earlier boards using a 4-phase regulator. This new setup from Intel also aids in effectively cooling the CPU. Nice work Intel. Could of really used this on the Netburst chips (yes, I know I'm beating an old horse. No I take no pleasure from it.)
The board comes with 3 physical PCI Express x16 connectors and 2 PCI connectors. The layout offers a good balance of slots and allows for additional cards like sound cards or NIC's like the Bigfoot Killer NIC, if one is foolish enough to get one.
The first x16 connector located next to the heat sink is the main PCI Express connector and is set up for x16 or x8 usage. The x16 interface supports full duplex transfers up to 8 GB/sec in x16 operation and single transfers are up to 4 GB/sec in x8 mode.
The next physical x16 connector is the secondary PCI Express connector and is set up for x8 operation. This connector also supports x4 and x1 PCI Express cards.
The final physical x16 connector is set up for x4 modes and fully supports x4 or x1 PCI Express cards.
If you chose to run SLI or Crossfire, this setup is quite nice in my opinion and allows you to have even two 7950GX2's running in SLI mode. Keep in mind though, that only ATI's Crossfire interface is officially supported, but home brew and hacked SLI drivers can be found all over the wonderful little thing called the Internet. As always, Google is your friend.
THE BIOS
The advanced screen allows you to set individual settings for voltage, multipliers, and chipset settings. You must first answer "yes" to the standard legal disclaimer (yes, you have to actually read it) before being allowed to modify the limited range of settings. Did I say limited? More on that later. The Host Burn-In Mode Type option allows you to set a positive or negative value when choosing whether to raise or lower the front side bus (FSB). The Host Burn-In Mode Percentage option allows you to increase the front side bus up to 30% in 1% increments.
The BIOS options are quite Spartan on the Intel D975XBx when you compare it to other enthusiast boards like the Gigabyte DS3 series or the Abit 975x option, with memory voltage to 2.2V (bleh), and a limited range of chipset, bus, and VCore voltage adjustments. Please note though, the BIOS will not recover by itself if you choose an incorrect setting (i.e screw up). You will need to power down the system, switch the jumper, power on, make the changes in the BIOS, power down, switch the BIOS jumper, and then power on the system. My only question is this... What the hell for? Why does Intel always do this to us?
OVERCLOCKING
Ah, the litmus test on which all boards must be measured. Considering the limited settings available in the BIOS this board is a decent overclocker. And by decent, I mean that's all you get. With the limited VCore, VDIMM, and chipset parameters, I was able to achieve a mild overclock of 3.663GHz, well within the thermal limits of the X6800 that I used, and only slightly above the 3.4GHz limit of the stock heatsink. What hurts even more is the low VDIMM settings available. With 2.2v being the max with a 2.4v possible thru Clockgen (read, you run the risk of crashing if you do this) those of us with high voltage RAM like OCZ will be feeling a pinch that you wouldn't expect on a $250 board.
The board was stable at 4-4-4-12 and at 5-5-5-15 timings, but if you try to drop the CAS latency to 3 or lower be prepared to face instability. Keep in mind though, you don't need super tight timings or extremely low latencies to achieve good performance from Intel CPU's. Still this is quite a disappointment when considering the market is aimed at.
PERFORMANCE
It is quite interesting to note that the difference in the scores between the tested boards are only marginal, and will not be seen by the user in anything but synthetic benchmarks.
CONCLUSION
You've seen the evidence, you seen the screens. Is this the board for you? Well the board does come with many features and supports dual GPU interfaces. It has efficient cooling, good clearance and easy access to important jumpers and ports. Its stable at mild overclocks and rock solid at stock speeds. But there are too many things that really deduct from the Bad Axe to make me really fall in love with this board. The low voltage options, limited BIOS and OC cap.
For the money you'd spend on this board, you could get a 965P series board with a more user friendly BIOS, and higher voltage settings. Heck, you could get the Bad Axe 2 for around the same price from Newegg, and be relieved of many of the issues plaguing this board. Its a great board for gamers, those who are building a home server or those planning low OC's or for those just starting to overclock, but its a disappointment on par with the nForce N70 when it comes to doing any overclocks that truly start to push the limits of the modern Core 2 series. Its good for some, bad for others.
Stay tuned though, because there are little tricks to overcome the normal limits imposed by the board. That'll be coming up in Part 2
of the review
The word is this. The Ninja gives it 8.0 out of 10.
Nice effort.
Author & tester: DaSickNinja.
Advice & aid: 3lfk1ng and rwaritsdario (myself).
You can also check it out at DaBlog. Enjoy!
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