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Asus Maximus II Formula

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:45:33 -0600

It’s official: People who buy motherboards with mainstream chipsets such as the P45 don’t want to pay for DDR3. At least, that’s what it seems like to us. Asus’s impressive Maximus II Formula is the third P45-based board we’ve tested, and not one of them sports DDR3 slots. But that doesn’t take anything away from the MIIF, the coolest P45 board we’ve encountered.

Hit the jump for more.

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

If you don’t just like Gigabit ports—you love them— Gigabyte’s GA-EP45-DQ6 is the motherboard for you. This mobo has four Gigabit ports that can be teamed together for one seriously fat-ass network connection.

Elsewhere, the board is typical Gigabyte; it includes surface-mounted buttons and the most clearly marked USB and FireWire ports we’ve ever seen. So if you nuke your USB drive because you plugged the USB connector into a FireWire header, it’s your own fault, brother.

Hit the jump for the rest of the review

MSI P45 Platinum

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:58:07 -0500

We admit it, sexy chipsets such as Nvidia’s nForce 790i SLI Ultra and Intel’s X48 get all the ink, but in reality, most of the world runs on plain-vanilla chipsets such as Intel’s new P45. And the truth is, you don’t necessarily give up performance or features when you choose a middle-of-the-road board; in fact, the affordable MSI Platinum has just about everything you’d want in a motherboard.

Hit the jump to read the full story.

MSI P35 Combo Platinum

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:07:56 -0500

You can change CPU sockets, dump PCI, and jettison legacy ports all day long, but nothing, absolutely nothing, pisses people off like moving to a new type of RAM. Luckily, there’s a fallback: dual-format RAM motherboards such as MSI’s P35 Combo Platinum board.

Hit the jump to read our review of this dual-format monster.

MSI K9A2 Platinum

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:08:47 -0500

If you want AMD performance without the cost, MSI’s K9A2 Platinum might be the ticket. It’s a bare-bones yet performance-oriented board for Phenom procs that boasts no fewer than four x16 physical PCI-E 2.0 slots, as well as support for eSATA and SAS drives and loads more features than you'd expect from a board of this price.

Hit the jump for the full review!

Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe Wi-Fi

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:33:24 -0500

Out of sight and out of mind usually means no one even knows–or cares–that you're alive. That’s the problem AMD’s chipset division has faced lately.

With Nvidia still ruling the roost in Phenom and Athlon 64 chipsets, AMD’s chipset division doesn’t get much press for its new chipsets. Here’s a news flash though, some pretty compelling motherboards are using the new 790FX chipset.

Asus's M3A32-MVP Deluxe is one of them. One of the first boards to support AMD’s Phenom, the M3A32-MVP is pretty much the reference board as far as Phenoms go.

Hit the jump for a full review!

Intel DX48BT2

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:49:55 -0500

Maybe Intel should give up on making performance motherboards. You’d think an Intel chipset would stand the best chance in a board designed by Intel. That’s not the case. The desktop partner to Intel’s crazy-ass Skulltrail platform, the DX48BT2 board is code-named Bonetrail, and of the four boards here, it is the most disappointing.

Asus Striker II Extreme

Gordon Mah Ung — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:49:55 -0500

If the EVGA nForce 790i board is a Shelby Cobra—a bristling big-block V8 with drum brakes and leaf springs—Asus’s Striker II Extreme is a high-tech, twin-turbo, all-wheel-steering Nissan Skyline GT-R R35. In other words, the Striker II Extreme is a spectacle of bells, whistles, and doohickeys. So much so that you actually won’t mind shelling out $450 for it. Read on to find what your dough'll getcha.