craig5320

X58 Round-up Jan 09 Review
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In November last year Intel released their Core i7 range of CPUs along with the X58 chipset and as we demonstrated in our original review the platform is very impressive.

Last month we took a look at a selection of boards which were released around i7 launch time, some of which were very impressive. (X58 Round-Up December 08)

Today we have four more X58 based boards from MSI, ECS and Foxconn and we will run each of the boards through a selection of real world tests including media encoding, Photoshop and gaming as well as some overclocking. By the end of this review you should be in no doubt which board best suits your needs when building a new Core i7 system.

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IvanV

I'm not in the position to get my hands on one of those boards right now, but this was still an interesting read, I like the amount of good stuff DH has been outputing lately (not that I didn't like your previous articles, they just seem to appear more often then they used to ).

I was a quite pleasantly surprised to see such a nice product from ECS, as I more or less remember them as a manufacturer of cheap boards that I wouldn't touch with a very long stick.

Another big impression is how cute yet efficient the heatsinks on Renaissance are.

And finally, I was surprised to see a board pull away from others built on the same chipset, and with nothing wrong with them, the way Bloodrage did in some of the tests.

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Feed the porkers and don't touch the buttons!

Mac Daddy

Nice review and thanks guys for the info. I think I skipped over the X48 platform completely but looking at the new CPU architecture some things to think about for sure

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Cow_160483

I dint expect foxconn to do so well had some issues in the past with their boards but am glad they are doing well i wonder though, how well it compares to ASUS boards??

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CyberpowerUK

Foxconn Renaissance looks interesting for the mid-range and not surprised with the performance of the Bloodrage - had one to test and they're awesome.

Mike

IvanV

Well, I don't know, Renaissance is sweet, but if I were to buy a $275 motherboard, I'd throw in another $25 and get the best one there is.

Similarily, I'd say that the ECS's board is too expensive considering that it has no distinguishing features and it's only $5 cheaper than the Renaissance and 10% cheaper than Bloodrage.

As for the MSI's board, if one can live without SLI and isn't chasing overclocking records, I'd say that it's the absolute best buy.

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Feed the porkers and don't touch the buttons!

slugbug

Personally I think I'll wait until boards appear with USB 3.0 and SATA 600 before I upgrade.