June 12th, 2007
Three motherboards for Intel and AMD CPUs: June 2007
It’s June 2007 and we have a whole new generation of motherboards for AMD and Intel. If you’re looking to buy (or build) a new computer, you’ll want to read on. See more images of these motherboards at higher resolution.
[UPDATE 6/13/2007 - Learn out to use these motherboards to build a brand new computer]
Intel 3-Series Chipset
Intel launched a new set of motherboard chipsets called the “3-Series”. The lower-end G33 integrated graphics chipset and the mid- to high-end P35 chipset became available this month. A high-end X38 chipset and G35 integrated graphics chipset will be available from Intel in the fall. The 3-series chipset supports DDR3 memory in addition to DDR2 memory (excluding the G33) and the upcoming 45 nm Intel “Penryn” CPUs coming out later in the year. Power consumption has also been improved and the north- and south-bridge are passively cooled. The upcoming G35 will also feature full DX10 embedded graphics for better Vista gaming graphics.
The 3-series has the new ICH9 storage controller it improves on an already solid ICH8 which had phenomenal RAID performance. The Intel ICH9R (”R” designates the RAID version of the ICH controllers) now lets you create a RAID Level 5 array with up to 6 drives. Another really interesting feature of the ICH9 south-bridge storage controller is that it has a 4x eSATA (external SATA) expander which means each SATA port can connect up to 4 hard drives and this opens up a lot of possibilities for fast external storage.
AMD 690G Chipset
AMD launched the G690 integrated graphics chipset back in March. Intel has long dominated the embedded graphics chipset market but AMD wants a piece of the action. While there’s little glory in the embedded graphics chipset market since no one gets excited about baseline performance, more than 90% of retail PCs sold come with embedded graphics and the stakes are extremely high. AMD with a merged ATI wants to invade the market with its new 690G and 690V chipset and eat away at Intel’s incumbent G965 with an aggressive price point. But now the Intel G33 is out and we’ll see how these motherboards stack up.
Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 Intel P35
The Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 comes with the newest Intel P35 “3-Series” chipset and it comes in an unusually large box. This motherboard has a street price starting at $180 [UPDATE 10:11PM - $249 is the starting street price. I was looking at a very similar model that sold for $179].
The newest Intel P35 chipset supports all current socket 775 CPUs as well as the upcoming Intel “Penryn” 45 nm processors.
Key features of the Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 are the 6-port SATA-300 Intel ICH9R RAID controller with eSATA expander, DDR2 as well as DDR3 memory support, 2 additional SATA-300 ports, floppy drive port, PATA UDMA-100, 2 IEEE 1394a, 8-channel audio, 4 USB 2.0 connectors with 8-ports, Gigabit Ethernet.
Another box within a box to further protect the Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 motherboard. No packaging expense is spared for this mid- to high-end motherboard with a street price starting at $180.
After removing the plastic cover and the paper/foam protector for the exotic heat pipes and fins, we can see some serious cooling capability for the north- and south-bridge chipsets. This allows for some hardcore overclocking because the chipset can stay cool while the motherboard clock speed is raised. The 3-series chipset motherboards all use passive chipset cooling whereas some older chipsets permitted noisy and unreliable fans.
This is a detailed top view of the Gigabyte P35T-DQ6.
The Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 contains lots of cables, manuals and quick start guides. There is a 2-port eSATA with a Molex power connector for fast external storage. Along with the killer storage features of the ICH9R, the two extra SATA ports let you hookup SATA-based DVD burners and other optical drives without using up any of your RAID ports though you can still attach hard drives to these ports. Storage is unfortunately one of those things people skimp on even in so-called performance PCs, but the performance of a computer is mostly limited to storage I/O performance and you can’t call a computer high-performance unless the storage performs well. With the whopping 8 SATA ports, the Gigabyte P35T-DQ6 hits the spot on storage capacity and performance.
If you’re looking for a high-performance computer with aggressive overclocking capability and compatibility with future Intel 45 nm chips, the P35T-DQ6 is a very good choice.
<Next page - Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R Intel G33 graphics motherboard>
George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
