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As mentioned before, there are a number of Intel P35 motherboards that offer support for DDR3 memory, and while we have a few of these boards on hand, such as the ASUS P5K3 Deluxe/Premium and the Gigabyte P35T-DQ6, we are deliberately excluding them from the comparison. At the moment just 2GBs of DDR3 memory will set you back around $400 which is quite ridiculous, making it pointless (for the time being) to buy a DDR3-capable motherboard given the price premium. That leaves us with the nine motherboards we are testing today that support DDR2 memory exclusively.

For this P35 round-up we have tried to include a high-end version and a budget version motherboard from each manufacturer. The boards will be put through the usual batch of tests, while we will also compare their overclocking abilities side by side. Before jumping into the benchmarks we will briefly list the features and go over the layout and design of each motherboard.


Initially we had planned to include a few MSI motherboards that were going to be supplied by the manufacturer itself. Unfortunately once we explained our plan for a comparison against competing boards, they got cold feet and pulled out. Not sure exactly what we should make of this, so make of it what you will. Because the news came somewhat last minute we did not have time to purchase these motherboards without delaying the article further, we apologize for the omission.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Abit IP35-E – Features

The Abit IP35-E is a cut down version of the IP35 Pro offering a few less integrated features. However at just $120 the IP35-E is significantly more affordable offering users a $65 saving, so what has been removed to allow this 35% saving? Well actually quite a lot has been cut out of the board, largely due to the southbridge chip being downgraded from the ICH9R to the plain old ICH9. This directly affects how many PCI Express lanes this motherboard has and SATA ports while adding two more USB 2.0 ports.

The IP35-E features a single Gigabit LAN port using the Marvell 88E8056 controller. Personally I would much prefer a single PCI Express controller over the two included on the more expensive IP35 Pro, so this is a bonus for the IP35-E. The audio controller remains the same as the IP35-E uses the Realtek ALC888 chip.

The storage abilities of the IP35-E have been severely crippled as this board supports only four SATA ports without the option of RAID. This is due to the use of the ICH9 southbridge which is quite featureless when it comes to storage as Intel's Matrix storage technology is not included. Abit has not included a third party chip for eSATA support so the IP35-E also misses out on this feature. The board manages to retain its PATA support through a single IDE port which is connected to a JMB368 controller which again uses a single PCI Express x1 lane.

Other more typical features include a 24-pin power connector along with an 8-pin 12v power connector and four DDR2 memory DIMM slots supporting up to 8GB of either DDR2-667 or DDR2-800 memory in dual-channel mode. For expansion the IP35-E includes a single PCI Express x16 port along with two PCIe x1 ports and three traditional PCI ports. This means Crossfire multi-GPU technology is not supported on this motherboard which is not an issue really. Given how much it costs to purchase two Radeon graphics cards I am sure anyone considering this option will be prepared to spend more on the motherboard.

The IP35-E does not offer Abit's µGuru technology for advanced monitoring. There is also no reset CMOS switch, no on-board power/reset buttons and no LED status display. Finally the last feature to go missing in action is Firewire as the IP35-E does not offer support for this interface.

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9-way Intel P35 motherboard round-up

Anyone looking at building a new desktop system should not look any further than Intel Core 2 processors, and when time comes to pick a platform you should have Intel's own P35 chipset in mind as it officially offers 1333MHz FSB support and will be compatible with upcoming 45nm processors. This translates in a fairly 'future-proof' platform, with some models currently available supporting DDR3 memory already.

But as new as this chipset is, deciding that you want a P35-based motherboard is not enough. Most major manufacturers have already launched several different models powered by the chipset, to give an example, ASUS currently offers a dozen motherboards models all based on the Intel P35.

We have rounded up some of the better examples available for one big article where we shall compare them side by side. Although we have nine motherboards to compare, they come from just four different manufacturers: Abit, ASUS, ECS and Gigabyte. These boards range from $90, all the way up to $230.