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It pays to be an Intel fan these days. You have not only the supremely powerful Penryn CPU in your corner, but also a host of performance-oriented, feature-packed motherboards to choose from. Contributing to the bounty are two recently released enthusiast core-logic chipsets—Intel’s own X48 and Nvidia’s nForce 790i Ultra SLI—which represent the pinnacle of LGA775 computing.
Long delayed, but much anticipated, the X48 is a sequel to Intel’s impressive but short-lived X38 chipset. While the latter worked with Intel’s premiere Core 2 Extreme QX9770 CPU, the X48 offers official 1,600MHz front-side-bus support. It also offers support for DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, and CrossFire X.
The 790i chipset also offers 1,600MHz FSB support, DDR3, and native PCI-E 2.0, but it diverges from X48 in its support for SLI multi-videocard configs.
Sounds fairly straightforward, but choosing a motherboard is far from simple. Even two chipsets that offer similar features can differ markedly in performance. And the variations even persist within different mobos using the same chipset. There’s likely to be significant deviation between vendor A’s nForce motherboard and vendor B’s product.
While they share the same basic core logic, the boards reflect each vendor’s unique approach to leveraging the chipset’s features. From the number of PCI Express slots, to the location of USB ports, to how the BIOS is written and optimized, a motherboard’s design is no small matter.
That’s why we’ve called in four of the hottest Intel-based motherboards currently available, two representing X48 and two representing 790i. We’ll put these boards through their paces to determine a winner in each camp—and ultimately, the superior chipset.
Naturally, AMD fans will wonder, where's the love? After all, AMD's performance 790FX chipset offers comparable features for its processors. Not to worry. We have reviews of two top-of-the-line 790FX motherboards too.
Comments are closed on this article
darkliquids
July 04, 2008 at 6:04pm
how about a post message that would be an actual audio of a person speaking in english what the hell is up with the machine?
anyone else find the post beep codes enigmatic???
