They have pretty much been the world's biggest motherboard maker over the last 15 years or so. FoxConn used to make a lot of Intel branded motherboards in the past.
How can you not know Intel made their own motherboards? Even AMD at one point made a few boards to launch the K7 platform.
I'm pretty sure Foxconn STILL manufactures Intel's boards, to Intel specification. All the components and connectors are usually Foxconn. You never see Amphenol and rarely see Molex-branded components. The PCB's usually have a Foxconn tag on an underside corner, indicating at least the PCB is manufactured by Foxconn.
Or, maybe he's just an average tech user who browses a site like newegg and only knows of the more popular brands like ASUS, Gigabyte, etc. Intel may make a lot of boards, but that doesn't make them the most well known. Even I forgot until I read the article.
I guess anything is possible, but I have to negate it with the probability of an average tech user leaving the first post.
While it's possible he could be just some average user browsing some article on a site that he's kind of familiar with, or that he really just hadn't heard about Intel boards, since they are more known for their procs (and now SSDs); there are many readers here that subscribe to the RSS, that are generally the first to leave comments. I guess what I'm saying is that it's highly unlikely some average user would leave the first post, whereas that is generally reserved for those that keep up with the tech news. What do you think?
I just think you guys are being a little ridiculous that he's trolling and genuinely didn't know something. It's possible for even a more advanced tech user to have just never seen something before.
I have build over 500 PCs and only about 10 times have i used a Intel boards.
All on request and 3 times it was for a server.
It comes from the old days, when chipsets ware big influence on performance, as all Intel mobos from ware 5~10% slower the ASUS or Abit or whomever.
But Intel never had a great name when it came to get the most out of there own chipsets!
And if you go to a e-seller, you only find Intel boards, some ware hidden away. As there are people that prevere to have a "genuine" Intel board, from Foxconn ^_^
Oh ya I have been using them exclusivly since arround 99, with their 440BX board for Pentium 3's. I love them, solid dependible I have never had to RMA one.
I used them exclusively for work back them. By this I mean I tested and qualify the boards and CPU's for our products. and to deploy in the mfg environment. The key characteristic is, of course, reliability.
Not sure why the person above doesn't know this :) Maybe this link can help,
I've never actually owned the Intel branded boards. I think the primary reason is that I like the potential to overclock and whenever there were articles of this, Intel either locked their settings, or their boards didn't overclock all that well (either through voltage regulation or thermal problems).
Most of the time ... Had a lot of 50 PC's with Intel mobo's go POOF within 2Q after getting our of warranty. ... THoug those were NetBurst times. KInda expected they will "Burst" :).
On a serious note, business-class Intel Mobo's are one of the best as far as reliability goes. Though, over the past 5 years since reliability actually became a marketing term in the mobo business, the gap as it was in the 90's and starting 2000's is no longer there.
A lot of OEMs use intel as their Board maker. Dell used (or still uses?) a Custom Intel board in their machines, Emachines used a rebadged off the shelf intel board in their cases too.
Intel has been making their own motherboards for a very long time. They aren't usually known for being the fastest boards around, but they are damn solid. Very very few failures comparitively, and they run forever. They also tend to be very expensive.
I have the intel DX58SO board sadly, got it in a used combo deal so not complaining about the price. Though the bios's tend to be riddled with problems and have problems OCing. While I can overclock my I7 920 to 4.2ghz on this board (pretty good clock but most boards can do it) at only 1.38V. But doing so brings on some of the bios or maybe even the motherboard itself. Can't have S3 sleep turned on at all because when you wake it up it resets the v-core back to stock and system freezes. Or sometimes it will hang at boot and just restart and boot fine or just take long time to post. System is fully stable intel burn test and 24/7 prime. At newest bios but that may be the problem, just really haven't felt like trying out a bunch of different bios yet. And poor placement of sata ports are a big let down as well.
The Boards also tend to be made up of lower quality parts and tend to have less power phases. They also tend to have the least performance. I would have to go with a gigabyte motherboard, had the ep45-ud3p and loved it. Gigabyte boards are also known to be the best overclocking motherboards, what is important to me cause I like to have the best performance I can get with the lest amount of money spent.
I have an Intel X58 board with my i7-920 and its been solid as a rock for 3 full years. Of course it cost $300 back in 2008, but, honestly it was worth it. Even today my PC is faster than 95% of the market.
Mentioned in the original i7 3960x review: "Users running dual-GPU setups can enjoy the fact that both GPUs will have a full x16 interface to SNB-E (vs x8 in SNB). If you're looking for this to deliver a tangible performance increase, you'll be disappointed:
Modern GPUs don't lose much performance in games, even at high quality settings, when going from a x16 to a x8 slot."
But here we see that the extra bandwidth for the second GPU really shows, with the X79s pulling ahead of the P67/Z68 in Dirt 3 and Metro 2033. Does this mean that X79 might make sense for multi-GPU setups?
I think you would start to notice with 3-4 gpu setups.
I would love to see a 3way for 4way sli on this board. like 3/4 580s in sli. Compare it to the old lga1366 in same 3-4 way sli setup. If you can try to get the old i7 and new i7 at the same clock so we can see how much performance per clock increases.
I picked up an Intel DP67BG "Burrage" 1155 motherboard early in the summer. I found the UEFI implementation to be excellent, and certain features were added in subsequent releases, such as the color change for changed values and the auto overclock function. I like that the board goes strictly by the book, has great fan speed controls, and is probably the most power efficient 1155 ATX board around.
From what I understand, the Extreme motherboards are developed by a separate division than the more pedestrian Intel mobos. I just felt like the people who designed the board were really in to what they were doing. There aren't many Extreme series boards out at any one time, and I have to say that they've been getting steadily more impressive. In fact, my only major gripe with the current Extreme boards is the insistence that PCI slots should take up valuble real estate. With the new Z68 Extreme board, two more 6gbps ports are added but take up more PCIe lanes -- so Intel figured that putting three PCI slots on the mobo was a good idea. While i can understand that decision on a Z68 board with extra controllers, there is no reason at all to put one on a flagship X79. Ironically, the PCI slots on the DP67BG (and the Z68 version since they share BIOSs) doesn't even work with most PCI devices anyway. If you're putting the requisite cash down for a X79 CPU and board then you should probably not need a PCI slot. I'd rather the slot not even be there since you need a PCIe to PCI bridge in order to get PCI slots on Sandy Bridge platforms to begin with.
I really like my H67 and Z68 boards and their respective fancy GUI UEFI getups, but the Intel Extreme boards are (mostly) no nonsense, powerful and efficient. In the past, I'd have suggested enthusiasts find another board, but the 1155 and 1366 (esp the SO2) shouldn't be overlooked.
I'd been using primarily Asus mobos since '96 (a T2P4 was my first one). But one day I got a C2D/EE, and paired it up with a Bad Axe II mobo. I was unable to get the system to post above 3.5GHz, which was a limitation with the mobo (note that previous boards didn't O/C at all, with the exception of the original Bad Axe). But that machine (now my primary HTPC) has always run rock-solid stable, and has never given me any fuss.
My main box now has a Smackover mobo with a Xeon 3570 (essentially a Core i7 965) and again, rock-solid stable and no fuss.
Honestly, I always had to "work at" my Asus mobos to get everything properly configured and stable...always a fuss. Sometimes, inexplicable things happened that ruined my evenings. But I considered myself an enthusiast, and always tried to get every ounce of power that I could from my system and considered it a success when I solved a problem. Now I don't solve problems...cuz I don't have them with Inel mobos. But then again, I don't go for an extreme overclock anymore with dual cards, etc.
And don't get me started on the MSI mobo on my secondary HTPC...that board has been nothing but problems since the day I was dumb enough to buy it. I should have learned my lesson with the MSI video card I'd purchased a few years earlier, but noooOOOooo...
It performs about the same as 1155 except for multithreaded performance where the 2 extra cores come into play. Disable 2 cores on 2011 CPU and its about the same.
Socket 2011 is almost DOUBLE the size of 1155 AND you get quad channel memory but it doesnt seem to add much at all except much more power use.
Add to that a cut down motherboard with VT-d problems(non-existant?) and uncertain PCI-E compatibility and I feel like Intel is taking the piss.
No wonder they didnt release a quad core CPU with SB-E at launch, it would highlight how very average this platform is when compared to SB.
From someone who has always purchased Intel's highend at launch...its very disappointing. I cant believe they actually planned for this. I have a feeling the problems and issues have caused them to cripple the performance of the board.
I may still buy it after the new revision of CPU/Motherboard that isnt crippled, but theres no way I'm paying early adopter premium price for this half-baked platform.
The only thing that might save 2011 is the Ivy Bridge-E CPUs will be compatible with socket 2011, but I'll wait until they release a completed motherboard and CPU.
A completely unnecessary addition, IMO. If you look at the charts, the x8/x8 lanes on the Z68 board keeps up just fine with the x16/x16 lanes on the X79 board. It's not until you drop to the P67 board with an x16/x4 setup that you see an impact on performance.
Granted this may change with the release of PCIe 3.0 cards, whenever that happens, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Slot bandwidth has simply not been a limiting factor to date and I don't expect it to become an issue anytime soon.
Just curious, how would SAS on the board benefit the buyers of this consumer level board? The only thing I use that has an SAS connector is an Adaptec 6805 with two SAS -> 4 each SATA connectors. I rarely see consumer level SAS drives. Is it likely that drive makers would start ramping up SAS interface drives in the consumer segment?
I am on my fourth Intel motherboard build. I use them because they work. Period ! Pperformance ? Probably not up to gamer's standards, I don't play games. But for AV use and general office work, they are fine and fast.
i've had a number of intel boards, i've started to take notice of them after 440bx boards. they always tend to lack the cutting edge features even on high-end boards, bioses are always simple and i most cases more limited than other manufacturers but on the other hand these things just work. i have honestly never seen an issue in bios (although judged by readmes their bios updates do fix some issues) and never had to rma any of them (unlike some/most other manufacturers' boards).
Well, I have always Intel branded motherboards in my computer builds. I am in the market for a new computer next year, but am so frustrated at Intel for their USB bungle. I will absolutely not buy a motherboard if it doesn't have all USB 3.0 ports. And I really doubt any OEM's will have any motherboards that meat this requirement either. Just pathetic.
I agree. There are only a couple of Intel boards with on board USB 3 controllers. I too am hoping that next years Ivy Bridge boards have at least four on the back and a couple headers on the board. I think it may be the cost of USB chips that may be slowing down all board manufacturers.
Doesn't the Ivy Bridge and new chips have native support for USB 3 ?
I always thought Intel made their boards as a "reference" like Nvidia makes "Reference" cards; great if you want a basic but reliable board that doesn't have 9001 features you can mess with and set something on fire with at least.
As for All Intel Branding... if only Intel made RAM...
Wow, the price of motherboards has really gone up. My top of the line Intel mobo from 2004 (D875PBZ) and my brother's top of the line Intel mobo from 2008 (DX48BT2) were only about $150; now they're double!
BTW, I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention the audio here. But I guess nobody cares about onboard audio anymore since they're all basically the same Realtek codec?
Anyway, thanks for the review AnandTech, you always have the best reviews on the net!
It says UV Reactive SATA Cables ARE included! Also, strangely, it lists under "Hardware Management Features" that it has "Processor Fan Speed Control" and "System Chassis Fan Speed Control!" AND it lists PCI Express 3.0 for all three ports! So if these specs are indeed correct, this review needs to be updated. Perhaps the reviewer got a crappy pre-release model/prototype?
Don't mean to be rude, but I expect a little more out of AT than:
"However, to an enthusiast, it is strange to say that they sell well " "While ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and the test have teams of designers for graphical interfaces" "I can much use for this in case errors arrive" "A lot of motherboard manufacturers in X79 should be placing the first and second PCIe slots at least an extra PCIe width apart" "There is a big gap in the I/O"
...and that was only on the first page.
Are other commenters just holding their tongues to be nice, or...?
-I love how small those chips are getting. Each year they appear more and more like if they were printed on the PCB.
-They should put the first PCI slot nearest to the processor, because is the only one place which can be used to plug video cards without being blocked. That would need extra space on the case for the last video card, if it takes 2 slots, but most cases have that extra space, so I think that blocking a potential PCI slot is worse that blocking a potential third card. You do not want to put a triple video card system on a small case, because of airflow and cooling constrains. But if you spend all that money, is more probably that you also will invest on other cards, like decent sound.
-As ever, Intel motherboards are crappy and expensive.
While I agree, dual LAN without teaming seems a bit silly at this point in history and missing other bells and whistles (new BIOS type) at it's price point is a bit disappointing. However, unless I read this review cross-eyed (trust me, I have sleep problems, it's possible), this Intel board performs better than most of the 3rd party manufacturers who have much bigger groups working on developing their bread and butter products. Slot placement has seemingly always been a gripe by consumers from every board maker at various releases and certainly not an exclusive to an Intel board. I am not defending it, I am just saying, I have seen (maybe not here) board become recommended even though slot placement was a con many times. Maybe I am missing something here, but when a board is rock solid reliable, overclocks decently (if that is a feature a customer wants), and out-performs and/or is on par with 3rd party board performance at or near the same price point, isn't that a win? I have never owned an Intel board in my life. If I read around the 'Net and see similiar performance comparisons, this could be my first.
While I agree with some points, 2 things i'd like to point out:
- looking at the /relatively/ slim and non-bloated software controls - they are already a reason for some award ('common sense' one perhaps ?). Relatively to the bloat other companies can stuff ... one often avoids using them because they are essentially a few checkboxs / sliders weighting heavy tens or hundreds (CCC, *cough*) megabytes; leaving aside well guessed reasons
- subjectively, I've always considered a front panel with knobs as a proper method to control fans, not a software
I always use this motherboards. In last times I was hoping to try a Asus. But Intel MB are very stable. The warranties are excellent. Fail is a rarity in this motherboards. I agree is rare to see a review. In the weekend, I see the 2 new enthusiast boards & I correct my decision to try Asus. What I like of this brand is they always are in emergent markets as Mexico. For so many years. You can try his technology. Asus in the other side only bring the cheap models. Maybe a disttributor in a rare ocasion brings a premium model. The price is high but is worth it. My desktops rigs endure almost 2 or 3 years with me. Then I resell the rig and my clients fight for it. They keep the anothar 2-3 years. The value of a self made desktop is very high. First his performance is better than any standard desktop, so you only need to change it when is leap forward in technology. The resell value is high too. In self-made you can always change a part to improve performance. This is the reason why I don´t like iMacs, so closed mind devices. I you feel the power, you are a hard to eclipse person. I always tell my boss that bringing my self-made equipment becasue his Enterprise Hp desktops are a shame. The idea is if you follow company guidelines you are going to be very behind of reality & speed. Have a nice week!
They prob dont even know what teaming is they are just repeating some early reviews they read.
There r two kinds of people ones who like Intel everything and they seem to remember the pros of an intel board and thoes who want a cheap alternative to an intel mb and they seem to recall any cons of an intel board even though those cons may be a farse. I've read this mb doesn't support PCI 3.0 and also that it does support it in this articles' comments. Notice the guy who states PCI 3.0 is supported includes a link. Like me he must be the type who remembers the pros I guess as a fan of intel I must go uncover the truth. My guess is maybe a relase bios left ver 3.0 unsupported as with the teaming.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
60 Comments
Back to Article
mdreed - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I had no idea Intel made their own mobos.mooninite - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
*eye squint*Not sure if troll...
mygocarp - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I wasn't aware either.Granted, I don't really follow MBs much.
kmmatney - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
They have pretty much been the world's biggest motherboard maker over the last 15 years or so. FoxConn used to make a lot of Intel branded motherboards in the past.Samus - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
How can you not know Intel made their own motherboards? Even AMD at one point made a few boards to launch the K7 platform.I'm pretty sure Foxconn STILL manufactures Intel's boards, to Intel specification. All the components and connectors are usually Foxconn. You never see Amphenol and rarely see Molex-branded components. The PCB's usually have a Foxconn tag on an underside corner, indicating at least the PCB is manufactured by Foxconn.
vol7ron - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link
He has to be a troll. What do we call comments trolls leave? Troop (troll poop, or the stuff trolls leave)?The first motherboard available for the Core2 series for months was an Intel brand, followed by ASUS and whomever else.
inighthawki - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link
Or, maybe he's just an average tech user who browses a site like newegg and only knows of the more popular brands like ASUS, Gigabyte, etc. Intel may make a lot of boards, but that doesn't make them the most well known. Even I forgot until I read the article.vol7ron - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
I guess anything is possible, but I have to negate it with the probability of an average tech user leaving the first post.While it's possible he could be just some average user browsing some article on a site that he's kind of familiar with, or that he really just hadn't heard about Intel boards, since they are more known for their procs (and now SSDs); there are many readers here that subscribe to the RSS, that are generally the first to leave comments. I guess what I'm saying is that it's highly unlikely some average user would leave the first post, whereas that is generally reserved for those that keep up with the tech news. What do you think?
inighthawki - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
I just think you guys are being a little ridiculous that he's trolling and genuinely didn't know something. It's possible for even a more advanced tech user to have just never seen something before.Havor - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
I have build over 500 PCs and only about 10 times have i used a Intel boards.All on request and 3 times it was for a server.
It comes from the old days, when chipsets ware big influence on performance, as all Intel mobos from ware 5~10% slower the ASUS or Abit or whomever.
But Intel never had a great name when it came to get the most out of there own chipsets!
And if you go to a e-seller, you only find Intel boards, some ware hidden away.
As there are people that prevere to have a "genuine" Intel board, from Foxconn ^_^
coldfiredragon - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Oh ya I have been using them exclusivly since arround 99, with their 440BX board for Pentium 3's. I love them, solid dependible I have never had to RMA one.The0ne - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I used them exclusively for work back them. By this I mean I tested and qualify the boards and CPU's for our products. and to deploy in the mfg environment. The key characteristic is, of course, reliability.Not sure why the person above doesn't know this :) Maybe this link can help,
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/futurama-fry-not-sur...
vol7ron - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
I've never actually owned the Intel branded boards. I think the primary reason is that I like the potential to overclock and whenever there were articles of this, Intel either locked their settings, or their boards didn't overclock all that well (either through voltage regulation or thermal problems).Any comments regarding this?
Bozo - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link
I have been using Intel motherboards since the mid 1990's at work. If you want stability and reliability, Intel is the way to go.mino - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
Most of the time ... Had a lot of 50 PC's with Intel mobo's go POOF within 2Q after getting our of warranty. ... THoug those were NetBurst times. KInda expected they will "Burst" :).On a serious note, business-class Intel Mobo's are one of the best as far as reliability goes.
Though, over the past 5 years since reliability actually became a marketing term in the mobo business, the gap as it was in the 90's and starting 2000's is no longer there.
acompsys - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
True...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0uXWmlMOgg
Googer - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
Intel has been in the motherboard business for about 17-18 years or so. I still have my old Intel Socket 370 FCPGA2 Motherboard from 10 years ago.Googer - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
A lot of OEMs use intel as their Board maker. Dell used (or still uses?) a Custom Intel board in their machines, Emachines used a rebadged off the shelf intel board in their cases too.mino - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
OEM's not so much. Whiteboxers mostly, along with several "wanna-be's", Dell included in its early years.PrezWeezy - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
Intel has been making their own motherboards for a very long time. They aren't usually known for being the fastest boards around, but they are damn solid. Very very few failures comparitively, and they run forever. They also tend to be very expensive.acompsys - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Check this out ....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0uXWmlMOgg
mooninite - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
*eye squint*Not sure if troll...
Alurian - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
But does having a skull on a motherboard seem like a jinx to anyone else?DanNeely - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Intel used Skull Trail as it's ultra performance branding in the past; this I suppose is a hommage to it.halo37253 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I have the intel DX58SO board sadly, got it in a used combo deal so not complaining about the price. Though the bios's tend to be riddled with problems and have problems OCing. While I can overclock my I7 920 to 4.2ghz on this board (pretty good clock but most boards can do it) at only 1.38V. But doing so brings on some of the bios or maybe even the motherboard itself. Can't have S3 sleep turned on at all because when you wake it up it resets the v-core back to stock and system freezes. Or sometimes it will hang at boot and just restart and boot fine or just take long time to post. System is fully stable intel burn test and 24/7 prime. At newest bios but that may be the problem, just really haven't felt like trying out a bunch of different bios yet. And poor placement of sata ports are a big let down as well.The Boards also tend to be made up of lower quality parts and tend to have less power phases. They also tend to have the least performance. I would have to go with a gigabyte motherboard, had the ep45-ud3p and loved it. Gigabyte boards are also known to be the best overclocking motherboards, what is important to me cause I like to have the best performance I can get with the lest amount of money spent.
Viceroy_Fizzlebottom - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Interesting, I've have the exact same motherboard paired with a core i7 920 and never have had a single issue with it.Samus - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I have an Intel X58 board with my i7-920 and its been solid as a rock for 3 full years. Of course it cost $300 back in 2008, but, honestly it was worth it. Even today my PC is faster than 95% of the market.Clorex - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Mentioned in the original i7 3960x review:"Users running dual-GPU setups can enjoy the fact that both GPUs will have a full x16 interface to SNB-E (vs x8 in SNB). If you're looking for this to deliver a tangible performance increase, you'll be disappointed:
Modern GPUs don't lose much performance in games, even at high quality settings, when going from a x16 to a x8 slot."
But here we see that the extra bandwidth for the second GPU really shows, with the X79s pulling ahead of the P67/Z68 in Dirt 3 and Metro 2033. Does this mean that X79 might make sense for multi-GPU setups?
halo37253 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I think you would start to notice with 3-4 gpu setups.I would love to see a 3way for 4way sli on this board. like 3/4 580s in sli. Compare it to the old lga1366 in same 3-4 way sli setup. If you can try to get the old i7 and new i7 at the same clock so we can see how much performance per clock increases.
Denithor - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
This would be an interesting test, to see how efficient these chips/chipsets are at managing the overhead from 3-4 GPUs.ckryan - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I picked up an Intel DP67BG "Burrage" 1155 motherboard early in the summer. I found the UEFI implementation to be excellent, and certain features were added in subsequent releases, such as the color change for changed values and the auto overclock function. I like that the board goes strictly by the book, has great fan speed controls, and is probably the most power efficient 1155 ATX board around.From what I understand, the Extreme motherboards are developed by a separate division than the more pedestrian Intel mobos. I just felt like the people who designed the board were really in to what they were doing. There aren't many Extreme series boards out at any one time, and I have to say that they've been getting steadily more impressive. In fact, my only major gripe with the current Extreme boards is the insistence that PCI slots should take up valuble real estate. With the new Z68 Extreme board, two more 6gbps ports are added but take up more PCIe lanes -- so Intel figured that putting three PCI slots on the mobo was a good idea. While i can understand that decision on a Z68 board with extra controllers, there is no reason at all to put one on a flagship X79. Ironically, the PCI slots on the DP67BG (and the Z68 version since they share BIOSs) doesn't even work with most PCI devices anyway. If you're putting the requisite cash down for a X79 CPU and board then you should probably not need a PCI slot. I'd rather the slot not even be there since you need a PCIe to PCI bridge in order to get PCI slots on Sandy Bridge platforms to begin with.
I really like my H67 and Z68 boards and their respective fancy GUI UEFI getups, but the Intel Extreme boards are (mostly) no nonsense, powerful and efficient. In the past, I'd have suggested enthusiasts find another board, but the 1155 and 1366 (esp the SO2) shouldn't be overlooked.
ClagMaster - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I agree 100%.Their mainstream boards are also no-nonsense, efficient, and most of all, reliable and long lasting.
I have never had a bad Intel Motherboard in over 15 years of PC building.
Slugbait - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I'd been using primarily Asus mobos since '96 (a T2P4 was my first one). But one day I got a C2D/EE, and paired it up with a Bad Axe II mobo. I was unable to get the system to post above 3.5GHz, which was a limitation with the mobo (note that previous boards didn't O/C at all, with the exception of the original Bad Axe). But that machine (now my primary HTPC) has always run rock-solid stable, and has never given me any fuss.My main box now has a Smackover mobo with a Xeon 3570 (essentially a Core i7 965) and again, rock-solid stable and no fuss.
Honestly, I always had to "work at" my Asus mobos to get everything properly configured and stable...always a fuss. Sometimes, inexplicable things happened that ruined my evenings. But I considered myself an enthusiast, and always tried to get every ounce of power that I could from my system and considered it a success when I solved a problem. Now I don't solve problems...cuz I don't have them with Inel mobos. But then again, I don't go for an extreme overclock anymore with dual cards, etc.
And don't get me started on the MSI mobo on my secondary HTPC...that board has been nothing but problems since the day I was dumb enough to buy it. I should have learned my lesson with the MSI video card I'd purchased a few years earlier, but noooOOOooo...
gevorg - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Very nice and solid motherboard, except that the skull graphics looks too tacky.cactusdog - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I'm still in shock about X79.It performs about the same as 1155 except for multithreaded performance where the 2 extra cores come into play. Disable 2 cores on 2011 CPU and its about the same.
Socket 2011 is almost DOUBLE the size of 1155 AND you get quad channel memory but it doesnt seem to add much at all except much more power use.
Add to that a cut down motherboard with VT-d problems(non-existant?) and uncertain PCI-E compatibility and I feel like Intel is taking the piss.
No wonder they didnt release a quad core CPU with SB-E at launch, it would highlight how very average this platform is when compared to SB.
From someone who has always purchased Intel's highend at launch...its very disappointing. I cant believe they actually planned for this. I have a feeling the problems and issues have caused them to cripple the performance of the board.
I may still buy it after the new revision of CPU/Motherboard that isnt crippled, but theres no way I'm paying early adopter premium price for this half-baked platform.
The only thing that might save 2011 is the Ivy Bridge-E CPUs will be compatible with socket 2011, but I'll wait until they release a completed motherboard and CPU.
Filiprino - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
PCIe 3.0 bandwidth is also a major adition on the integrated northbride.Denithor - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
A completely unnecessary addition, IMO. If you look at the charts, the x8/x8 lanes on the Z68 board keeps up just fine with the x16/x16 lanes on the X79 board. It's not until you drop to the P67 board with an x16/x4 setup that you see an impact on performance.Granted this may change with the release of PCIe 3.0 cards, whenever that happens, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Slot bandwidth has simply not been a limiting factor to date and I don't expect it to become an issue anytime soon.
euler007 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
PCI 3.0 is supported on many socket 1155 board, look for the Gen3 moniker.As soon as you drop an Ivy Bridge and PCI 3.0 video card in them (and flick a switch for some), you've got PCI 3.0.
futurepastnow - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Plus, every X79 motherboard has a big empty space next to the SATA ports... mocking Intel's inability to make SAS work.RealBeast - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
Just curious, how would SAS on the board benefit the buyers of this consumer level board? The only thing I use that has an SAS connector is an Adaptec 6805 with two SAS -> 4 each SATA connectors. I rarely see consumer level SAS drives. Is it likely that drive makers would start ramping up SAS interface drives in the consumer segment?StephaneP - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
The DPC Latency test is a nice addition.Did you check what peripheral gives this higher DPC ? (Lan, USB3, ...)
ochentay4 - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Expensive, not the top of the line, horrbile skull, terrible option in my opinion.tomvh - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I am on my fourth Intel motherboard build. I use them because they work. Period !Pperformance ? Probably not up to gamer's standards, I don't play games. But for AV use and general office work, they are fine and fast.
Never had a hiccup with any thing from Intel.
Death666Angel - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Why exactly do you use 2 different graphics cards, resulting in 4 different setups? What is testing an old 5850 supposed to accomplish?londiste - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
and no, skull doesn't make it flashy.i've had a number of intel boards, i've started to take notice of them after 440bx boards. they always tend to lack the cutting edge features even on high-end boards, bioses are always simple and i most cases more limited than other manufacturers but on the other hand these things just work. i have honestly never seen an issue in bios (although judged by readmes their bios updates do fix some issues) and never had to rma any of them (unlike some/most other manufacturers' boards).
specific board does seem a bit overpriced though.
dusteater - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Well, I have always Intel branded motherboards in my computer builds. I am in the market for a new computer next year, but am so frustrated at Intel for their USB bungle. I will absolutely not buy a motherboard if it doesn't have all USB 3.0 ports. And I really doubt any OEM's will have any motherboards that meat this requirement either. Just pathetic.tomvh - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I agree. There are only a couple of Intel boards with on board USB 3 controllers.I too am hoping that next years Ivy Bridge boards have at least four on the back and a couple headers on the board. I think it may be the cost of USB chips that may be slowing down all board manufacturers.
Doesn't the Ivy Bridge and new chips have native support for USB 3 ?
C300fans - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
A piece of junk. Are you ready for the 999$ cpu?CharonPDX - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Intel always includes SATA cables.ClagMaster - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Intel motherboards and BIOS are easy to understand.Intel products are 100% compliant to standards based and offer little room for tweeking because Intel wants their products to be highly reliable.
Most people who buy Intel motherboards do so for their quality and reliability.
Think of how Apple controls their Macs and understand their motivations for doing so.
Then you will understand Intel.
Blaze-Senpai - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
I always thought Intel made their boards as a "reference" like Nvidia makes "Reference" cards; great if you want a basic but reliable board that doesn't have 9001 features you can mess with and set something on fire with at least.As for All Intel Branding... if only Intel made RAM...
Bristecom - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link
Wow, the price of motherboards has really gone up. My top of the line Intel mobo from 2004 (D875PBZ) and my brother's top of the line Intel mobo from 2008 (DX48BT2) were only about $150; now they're double!BTW, I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention the audio here. But I guess nobody cares about onboard audio anymore since they're all basically the same Realtek codec?
Anyway, thanks for the review AnandTech, you always have the best reviews on the net!
Bristecom - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link
Guys, I just had a look at Intel's Product Brief on this motherboard here: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/product-brief...It says UV Reactive SATA Cables ARE included! Also, strangely, it lists under "Hardware Management Features" that it has "Processor Fan Speed Control" and "System Chassis Fan Speed Control!" AND it lists PCI Express 3.0 for all three ports! So if these specs are indeed correct, this review needs to be updated. Perhaps the reviewer got a crappy pre-release model/prototype?
rallyhard - Saturday, November 19, 2011 - link
Don't mean to be rude, but I expect a little more out of AT than:"However, to an enthusiast, it is strange to say that they sell well "
"While ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and the test have teams of designers for graphical interfaces"
"I can much use for this in case errors arrive"
"A lot of motherboard manufacturers in X79 should be placing the first and second PCIe slots at least an extra PCIe width apart"
"There is a big gap in the I/O"
...and that was only on the first page.
Are other commenters just holding their tongues to be nice, or...?
marraco - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
-I love how small those chips are getting. Each year they appear more and more like if they were printed on the PCB.-They should put the first PCI slot nearest to the processor, because is the only one place which can be used to plug video cards without being blocked.
That would need extra space on the case for the last video card, if it takes 2 slots, but most cases have that extra space, so I think that blocking a potential PCI slot is worse that blocking a potential third card.
You do not want to put a triple video card system on a small case, because of airflow and cooling constrains. But if you spend all that money, is more probably that you also will invest on other cards, like decent sound.
-As ever, Intel motherboards are crappy and expensive.
Questor - Sunday, November 20, 2011 - link
While I agree, dual LAN without teaming seems a bit silly at this point in history and missing other bells and whistles (new BIOS type) at it's price point is a bit disappointing. However, unless I read this review cross-eyed (trust me, I have sleep problems, it's possible), this Intel board performs better than most of the 3rd party manufacturers who have much bigger groups working on developing their bread and butter products. Slot placement has seemingly always been a gripe by consumers from every board maker at various releases and certainly not an exclusive to an Intel board. I am not defending it, I am just saying, I have seen (maybe not here) board become recommended even though slot placement was a con many times.Maybe I am missing something here, but when a board is rock solid reliable, overclocks decently (if that is a feature a customer wants), and out-performs and/or is on par with 3rd party board performance at or near the same price point, isn't that a win?
I have never owned an Intel board in my life. If I read around the 'Net and see similiar performance comparisons, this could be my first.
soltys - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
While I agree with some points, 2 things i'd like to point out:- looking at the /relatively/ slim and non-bloated software controls - they are already a reason for some award ('common sense' one perhaps ?). Relatively to the bloat other companies can stuff ... one often avoids using them because they are essentially a few checkboxs / sliders weighting heavy tens or hundreds (CCC, *cough*) megabytes; leaving aside well guessed reasons
- subjectively, I've always considered a front panel with knobs as a proper method to control fans, not a software
ReySys - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I always use this motherboards. In last times I was hoping to try a Asus. But Intel MB are very stable. The warranties are excellent. Fail is a rarity in this motherboards. I agree is rare to see a review. In the weekend, I see the 2 new enthusiast boards & I correct my decision to try Asus. What I like of this brand is they always are in emergent markets as Mexico. For so many years. You can try his technology. Asus in the other side only bring the cheap models. Maybe a disttributor in a rare ocasion brings a premium model. The price is high but is worth it. My desktops rigs endure almost 2 or 3 years with me. Then I resell the rig and my clients fight for it. They keep the anothar 2-3 years. The value of a self made desktop is very high. First his performance is better than any standard desktop, so you only need to change it when is leap forward in technology. The resell value is high too. In self-made you can always change a part to improve performance. This is the reason why I don´t like iMacs, so closed mind devices. I you feel the power, you are a hard to eclipse person. I always tell my boss that bringing my self-made equipment becasue his Enterprise Hp desktops are a shame. The idea is if you follow company guidelines you are going to be very behind of reality & speed. Have a nice week!bellends - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
This mobo DOES support teaming. WTF dudeRodofhot - Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - link
They prob dont even know what teaming is they are just repeating some early reviews they read.There r two kinds of people ones who like Intel everything and they seem to remember the pros of an intel board and thoes who want a cheap alternative to an intel mb and they seem to recall any cons of an intel board even though those cons may be a farse. I've read this mb doesn't support PCI 3.0 and also that it does support it in this articles' comments. Notice the guy who states PCI 3.0 is supported includes a link. Like me he must be the type who remembers the pros I guess as a fan of intel I must go uncover the truth. My guess is maybe a relase bios left ver 3.0 unsupported as with the teaming.