Intel D975XBX (Bad Axe)

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by emgarf

Wow... according to the packing slip, your full name is actually Sandog!

LOL. I liked that myself a lot. He has my full name and it was listed on the FEDEX packing slip but I whited it out. It was a total surprise when it arrived because I never received notification that it had shipped like I have in the past. Very sweet surprise. It kind of re-adjusts your evening a little bit if you know what I mean.

[bingo13]

Our initial review of this board is up - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2681

Our retail board will arrive next week and hopefully the performance aspects will improve. I know we can expect another bios release shortly and hopefully it will improve the memory timings. The stability of the board was superb but performance was all over the map. We will be testing it with the X1900 CrossFire setup next week. I highly recommend a quality power supply based upon my results tonight with another new 975x board, 955EE, and X1900 CrossFire setup. I think my neighborhood is still in a brown out condition not too mention my need for fire control.

[DBoone]

Great looking board. I'm very envious right now. I'm still waiting at least until late this year before building a new pc. But the waiting just got harder!

[pointreyes]

bingo13, I was wondering about the P5WDG2-WS review. Were you planning to test the PCI-X? I would love to see how well or bad the PCI-X did. I would suspect that the PCI-X is on a separate bus from the PCI. Is that true?

[Miles]

Originally Posted by pointreyes

AFAIK, that was an Apple commercial - not an Intel commercial. I thought Intel was even shocked by it.

I'm aware it was an Apple commercial. The first of it completely parallels the announced new marketing strategy by Intel, so I assumed they were in collusion when they made the commercial.

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by Paragon

I'm aware it was an Apple commercial. The first of it completely parallels the announced new marketing strategy by Intel, so I assumed they were in collusion when they made the commercial.

I think they have a rosy business relationship now but I don't think it's a partnership. Apple rolled out a new commercial making themselves look different while making Intel look dull. I don't believe Intel saw this coming or would approve of this ad.

There was a regular news story on this subject but this is all I could find.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28956

[Sandog]

Originally Posted by bingo13

Our initial review of this board is up - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2681

Our retail board will arrive next week and hopefully the performance aspects will improve. I know we can expect another bios release shortly and hopefully it will improve the memory timings. The stability of the board was superb but performance was all over the map. We will be testing it with the X1900 CrossFire setup next week. I highly recommend a quality power supply based upon my results tonight with another new 975x board, 955EE, and X1900 CrossFire setup. I think my neighborhood is still in a brown out condition not too mention my need for fire control.

Good review, looks like AnandTech put the board right up there next to the other extreme enthusiast mobo's. I'm sure somebody at Intel will read that discussion and might follow up on some issues. I am sure even Intel has budget and somebody in the mobo division probably says the buck stops here and they needed to limit some things in order to add Crossfire support, custom heat sinks, licensing, etc. Just a guess. Fortunately for me the SI SATA RAID on PCI bus will not get used, neither onboard sound, and neither Firewire. Those were some of the things missing or lacking in the review.

The review taught me a few things like how well the board uses 4 sticks of memory. 8-2-3-4 at 2.2V is not bad. I could except that but I still want to use only 2 sticks in my system. I also didn't know about the missing IEEE 1394b (800Mbps Firewire) or that the SI controller was RAID only. This is why I had difficulty hooking up a single HD or my Plextor drive to these ports initially on my D955XBK. I did not notice this fact in any documentation with the board.

Like Bingo13 stated the board should improve slightly with future BIOS's which is why we always look forward to them. I already have the retail boxed board so there are probably improvements in it compared to the reviewed board (at least my Intel SATA connectors are black). I will also have the ATI X1900XTX this weekend (1ea.) and Corsair 5400UL so I will have a pretty nice setup going and can see what the 840EE will do in benchmarks on this new board. I expect to reach at least 4.2GHz like I did on my D955XBK and maybe lower clock settings for memory with the improved DDR voltage. I will definitely get higher benchmark scores due to the new ATI card.

This is an exciting board but there is still plenty of excitement left coming from Intel this year. There will be new 965 chipset boards coinciding with the introduction of Conroe that will be worth considering as well.

[bingo13]

Originally Posted by pointreyes

bingo13, I was wondering about the P5WDG2-WS review. Were you planning to test the PCI-X? I would love to see how well or bad the PCI-X did. I would suspect that the PCI-X is on a separate bus from the PCI. Is that true?

The Intel 6702PXH is a 64-bit PCI Hub chipset that bridges i/o functions between the PCI Express interface and PCI bus. The hub itself is a single PCI bus interface that can be configured in PCI (33/66MHz) or PCI-X (66/100/133MHz) operation.

The PCI Express interface can be configured in X8, X4, or X1 operation and the PCI-X is configured as Mode 1. Our board was configured in X4 operation but this could change before production release.

We did not have any other PCI-X based boards with this hub to compare to and probably will not in the future. However, the board worked fine with our Areca ARC-1110 SATA II RAID host adapter and two WD Raptors.

If I remember any other specs off the top of my head I will edit this response.

[pointreyes]

Thanks bingo13. You don't happen to have the burst rates on the PCI-X with the Raptors? The r/w speeds of my SCSI drives are consistent between PCI and PCI-X which is to be expected since I'm using a single drive configuration instead of RAID. The difference of the Raptor I now have on the ICH7 and that of my SCSI drives when residing in a Tyan K8W Thunder (133Mhz 64-bit PCI-X bus was being used) is quite large: Raptor 124, SCSI 219. On the PCI bus the SCSI dropped to a miserable 83.

Here's the HD Tach on one of the SCSI drives when residing on the PCI-X bus.
http://members.dsl-only.net/~pointreyes/ga/Seagate.jpg

[drayon]

Originally Posted by pointreyes

My dual Xeon system is quieter than my dual-core P-D system but not by much. Temps are about the same though. The dual-core Opteron was very, very quiet.

Have 5 Seagate SATA drives and the 6600GT in the Xeon. (1 90mm and 1 120mm fan) (4 120mm fans)
Have 3 SATA drives and 2 SCSI drives and the X800GTO in the P-D system. (4 120mm fans)

The Apple is the quietest but then again we are talking about 1.33Ghz compared to 2.66x2 and 3.0Ghz systems.

A Dual Core Dual CPU Apple G5 is also much quieter than anything you have in this list.

[Sandog]

Hey guys, just got home and opened another box. Going to be a long weekend for me filled with home and computer improvement.

Pic1****Pic2****Pic3

Who am I kidding?...the cards going in tonight.

[drayon]

why do they alway put the USB ports too close to each other. PITA, because u if u have software protection dongle plugged in you can 't plug in a USB Flash drive.

[pointreyes]

Geez. I finally get a chance to package up the RMA stuff I have and what does my wife do now? "Honey, I think tonight might be the night that the baby comes. I feel like I'm starting to go into labor."

BTW: Sandog if that baby does come tonight then my package cost more than the package you got today. However, I can't RMA or sell that package. Have fun with that ATi card.

[Sandog]

Congrats on the upcoming family addition. I'd keep that hardware to if I were you.

[AHLnut]

Nice stuff you got there Sandog Fire up that 3D Mark 06 and tell us how it does!!!! Looking forward to see that new mobo in the case of yours with that card