Intel 925

comments?

[RainMaker]

The new crop of Intel hardware has been out and I am saliaviating and I really want it bad. Right now I am looking at an intel mobo that has the new 925 chipset on it with 4 pci's and gigabit lan on it. I was wondering if anyone has purchased this and didn't have any likes about it or had problems with it?

[Macro]

No matter what you do ... you will lose.

LGA 775 replaces 478 pin which replaced 423 pin which replaced socket 370 which replaced slot 1 which replaced... it goes on.

The only thing that's guaranteed is that one of the main reasons you are going 775 (925/915 chipsets) is future-protection, but that is not a good reason. Sure, you have PCI Express, DDRII etc. But in a few months BTX will take over from ATX. Cases, PSUs etc will all move over. Intel will change the number of pins in their CPUs, DDRII may be replaced by the new RDRAM, TCQ (new, improved flavour SATA) advantages will be overtaken by a better technology, etc. And you'll be stuck.

If you can't be dissuaded Asus have some good 925 boards and Asus are usually a good bet for quality products. But, if you are practical, you'll look at all the 775s and settle for a 478. Otherwise you'll join the legion of people who amaze me with their eagerness to be guinea pigs ;)

Almost all 925 chipset boards today have gigabit LAN.

[RainMaker]

I was wondering if anyone has purchased this and didn't have any likes about it or had problems with it?

Well thanks Macro for your advice...but I am guessing that you haven't bought the mobo yet?

Off Topic

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 8:30 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2004]

[Macro]

Rainmaker, no I haven't bought any. The three boards that came in for review were all free. I've done detailed benchmarks on all of them, did some mods to get around Intel's locks on overclocking, ran comparison testing with older boards, particularly on RAM speeds. I've also written one article on the DDRII on the 775 being of limited use at this time and compared it with the Intel 850E with PC1066 RDRAM which provided in excess of 4 GB/sec in bandwidth, something that DDR never got close to and DDRII still hasn't touched. I've also commented on other new technologies in the 925/915 line-up before turning my attention to the Turnwater and Nocona benchmarks (dual CPU Xeons - for your information).

Off topic

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 8:31 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2004]