Intel DX38BT - Motherboard

Product Price : Rs. 10,000

The Intel DX38BT (Bonetrail) motherboard is supposed to replace the BadAxe 2 D975XBX as Intel’s top of the line enthusiast motherboard. Unfortunately, the board is obsolete at launch, since it does not support a 1600 Mhz Front Side Bus, thereby ruling out Intel’s fastest processor — the QX9770. However, let’s examine the things the board does offer. PCI Express 2.0 is supported, and Intel has done away with all legacy ports, including the floppy drive and PS/2 connectors. Eight USB ports on the back panel along with four on the board take care of peripheral connectivity. Six SATA ports and two eSATA ports mean that you can hook up a whole lot of storage. This board only supports DDR-3 memory, which is a bit of a shame. Gigabit LAN and a single FireWire 400 port are par for the course.

The board performed quitewell, scoring exactly 100 on our WorldBench tests. We tested it with an Intel Quad Core Q6600 and 4 GB of DDR-3 RAM. A PCMark score of 8800 meant that the board is not holding back the CPU. Intel also makes it easy to overclock with BIOS options for CPU and memory clock speeds and voltages. You can also use Intel’s Desktop Control Center to tinker about without having to reboot. The BIOS suffers from a little bit of lag, which surprised us.

Intel is poised to launch the X48 chipset, which will add support for 1600MHz and further enhance overclocking. We’d suggest holding off for a month or so to see what Intel serves up next.

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Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H - Motherboard

The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard is the first platform based on the new AMD 780G chipset. This new chipset includes a DirectX 10.1-compliant graphics core reused from the Radeon HD 3200; with AMD making use of ATI technology inherited from the July 2006 merger of AMD and ATI. The AMD 780G chipset enables decode acceleration of Blu-ray movie playback, second-generation PCI Express, Hybrid CrossFire, a new SB700 south bridge, and a Phenom-ready HyperTransport 3 processor link. Corresponding with the March 4th, 2008 announcement of this board, AMD is introducing a new energy-efficient 45 Watt Athlon X2 4850e for $89. The GA-MA78GM-S2H retails for $95.


Pros:

•Best IGP solution (March 2008)
•low power consumption
•HDMI output
•Connect up to 4 displays with Hybrid CrossFireX - 3rd, and 4th display requires additional graphics card
•DirectX 10.1 compliant
•GPU decoding of HD codecs makes this board HD compatible with a relatively slow CPU
•Integrated Gigabit Ethernet

More information

AMD 780G Chipset

•Supports AMD AM2+ Phenom/ AM2 Athlon64 series processors
•Solid capacitors design in CPU VRM
•Dual Channel DDR2 1066
•Integrated ATI Radeon HD3200-based graphics (DX10)
•Ultimate graphics performance with PCI-E 2.0 x16 interface with ATI Hybrid •CrossFireX support
•Integrated SATA 3Gb/s with RAID function
•Features high speed Gigabit Ethernet and IEEE1394
•High quality 106dB SNR ALC889A HD audio
•Integrated HDMI/ DVI interface with HDCP

http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2647