The i875P chipset has strengthen the position of the most efficient solution after almost two months of its existence, and now it keeps on carrying the baton taken from the i850/E in detour of the iE7205. But its market position is not clear as compared to the previous chipsets developed for workstation/enthusiasts, and even the AGP Pro port, a traditional accessory of the workstation class which often came with iE7205 based boards, will be attached to i875P based boards only in 50% of cases. Many board makers grasped the idea of an expensive board fully compatible with "usual" products, the boards based on the Canterwood do not move to a separate niche - they just take upper positions in wide lines of respective companies.
Sure, the price for a board with such desktop chipset (as if accelerated) is not low, and different companies justify it differently: some add rich suites of accessories, others install controllers of exotic peripherals... Such boards are sold mostly to home enthusiasts, and the marketing tricks are widely used here. Thus, almost everyone uses an expensive chip of the Intel's 1Gbit controller, because of the name rather than because of the characteristics. The only unique technology of the i875P - PAT - is also taken advantage of, though ASUS is pressed from above as it tries to use this term out of the frames of the context confirmed.
Among all players in this sector it was only EPoX who tried to fix a reasonable price. Its 4PCA3+ looks poorer than the other boards, but the price is also more attractive. However, the EPoX's board won't be tested today. This time we have mainboards from such companies as ABIT, ASUS, Chaintech, Gigabyte, Intel and MSI.
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