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• Pipe Dreams: Six P35-DDR3 Motherboards Compared

  Editor's Note: As mentioned below, Biostar's TP35D3-A7 Deluxe motherboard with BIOS Revision 0.51 would not boot when overclocked even 1 MHz. We obtained a TP35D3-A7 with an updated BIOS. It is discussed here. With support for DDR3 memory and the next generation of FSB1333 Intel Core 2 processors, Intel's P35 Express chipset is the most forward-looking part in its portfolio. But support for advanced technology isn't going to alter its market: The P35 Express is designed to replace Intel's legendary-overclocking P965 mainstream part. Driving Intel's latest technology "downward" into the mainstream is support for only a single PCI-Express graphic card at full x16 bus width and official DDR3 memory support extending only to 1066 MHz data rate. As a mainstream part, the P35 Express officially supports a single graphics card and memory speeds up to DDR3-1066. Adding a second graphics card slot or DDR3-1333 RAM compatibility are features Intel left to the discretion of motherboard producers. The sixteen PCI-Express lanes delivered by the Northbridge are capable of supporting only one device, so there is no option to split them across two slots as previously seen in the high-end Intel 975X and later in the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200. Like the P965, any second graphics card must instead use some of the six PCI-Express lanes from the Southbridge, so most "CrossFire Compatible" P35 Express motherboards will have the two x16 slots wired with x16 and x4 pathways. Rather than being a true CrossFire solution, any second graphics card is really more useful for adding multiple displays than it is for boosting graphics performance. Great single-card performance and high overclocking capabilities pushed the P965 Express chipset to the forefront of mid-priced performance, so a major part of P35 Express testing will be to make sure this new product lives up to the reputation of its predecessor. Buyers looking to upgrade their motherboard for future processor support while keep their old DRAM modules will be more interested in the P35 Express Chipset's DDR2 capabilities, while others will want to see how DDR3 motherboards compare to DDR2 versions. However, DDR3 still has to mature, and today's modules run such high latency that it makes a fair comparison impossible. Today, we focus on DDR3 performance. We will detail DDR2 performance in an upcoming review, and readers who still need to be convinced that DDR2-1066 CAS4 can be quicker than DDR3-1066 CAS7 can look back to this review for a comparison. Join our discussion on this topic

• At this point we would have liked to pitch the project into the trash. But as fate would have it, the product manager for the Hiper case called unexpectedly. After describing our misfortunes, we were told that the case was designed more for an AMD-based motherboard. A cooperative effort between Hiper, AMD and MSI would bear fruit soon, we were told. This is likely to produce an HTPC in short order. Hiper also acknowledged the problem immediately and will present an alternative slimline case in the next few months. The problems that we had even in the last HTPC test with the Hiper chassis would then be a thing of the past. An HTPC with a display and remote control is also reportedly being planned. A Hiper chassis with a common interface for pay TV smart cards is also in the planning stages. Second Attempt: Alternative HTPC Based On The AMD64 Processor DIY HTPC, second try: This time with an AMD Athlon64 processor Once we saw that our pipe dream with the Intel mobile processor and the AOpen board was not all we'd cracked it up to be, we wanted to realize the project again with different hardware. The same specifications were in effect as the first time. But we ran into unexpected problems even in searching for the appropriate board. We finally found one, the AOpen s760GX-M. The board is based on an SIS chipset for Socket 754 CPUs and also offers integrated graphics along with the AGP port. However, this board doesn't have S-Video or composite jacks. But it's not the only board that doesn't. We don't know of any board (except for the AOpen i915GMm-HFS) that comes with these functions. Because the Hiper Media Chassis included a suitable CPU fan to begin with, this board was just right for us. Other motherboards seemed to be lacking even in terms of the CPU fan.

• System Hardware Socket 775 Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (Conroe 65 nm, 2.67 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache) RAM Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-8888C4DF 2x 1024 MB DDR2-1111 (CL 4.0-4-4-12) Hard Drive Western Digital WD1500ADFD-00NLR1, Firmware: 20.07P20 150 GB, 10,000 RPM, 16 MB cache, SATA/150 Graphics Card Foxconn GeForce 8800GTX, P/N: FV-N88XMAD2-OD NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX - 768 MB Power Supply OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI - 700W System Software & Drivers OS Windows XP Professional 5.10.2600, Service Pack 2 DirectX Version 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) Platform Drivers Intel INF 8.3.0.1013 Graphics Driver NVIDIA Forceware 158.19 With no other DDR3 chipsets to compare, P35 Express motherboards will stand against each other in this round. Anyone interested in seeing how its performance compares to nVidia's directly-competitive DDR2 chipset can find an identical configuration in our recent 650i Roundup New to this comparison is Corsair's DDR3-1066 CAS7. Because DDR3 is still an early-development product, we don't expect significantly lower latencies to reach the mass market for several weeks Though the P35 Express chipset can support a limited-performance Crossfire configuration through an x16 and x4 slot, the high-performance Foxconn 8800GTX was instead chosen in a single-card configuration. Hard drives don't progress nearly as quickly as core logic, and Western Digital's relatively-old 150 GB Raptor still represents pinnacle performance. Benchmarks and Settings 3D-Games Call of Duty 2 Version: 1.03 Video Mode: 1024x768 Anti-aliasing: off Shadows: no timedemo demo2 F.E.A.R Version: 1.0 Retail Video Mode: 1024x768 Computer: Medium Graphics: Medium Test Path: Options/Performance/Test Settings Quake 4 Version: 1.2 (Dual-Core Patch) Video Mode: 1024x768 Video Quality: default THG Timedemo waste.map timedemo demo8.demo 1 (1 = load textures) Audio Lame MP3 Version 3.97 Beta 2 (12-22-2005) Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min wave to mp3 160 kbps OGG Version 1.1.2 (Intel P4 MOD) Version 1.1.2 (Intel AMD MOD) Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min wave to ogg Quality: 5 Video TMPEG 3.0 Express Version: 3.0.4.24 (no Audio) fist 5 Minutes DVD Terminator 2 SE (704x576) 16:9 Multithreading by rendering DivX 6.1 Profile: High Definition Profile 1-pass, 3000 kbit/s Encoding mode: Insane Quality Enhanced multithreading no Audio XviD 1.1.0 Version: 1.1.0 Beta 2 Target qantizer: 1.00 Applications Autodesk 3D Studio Max Version: 8.0 Characters "Dragon_Charater_rig" rendering HTDV 1920x1080 Synthetics PCMark05 Pro Version: 1.1.0 System, CPU and Memory Tests Windows Media Player 10.00.00.3646 Windows Media Encoder 9.00.00.2980 SiSoftware Sandra 2005 Version 2005.7.10.60 CPU Test = Arithmetic, Multimedia Benchmarks Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark