Conroe Buying Guide: Feeding the Monster
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on July 19, 2006 6:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Intel 975XBX
Basic Features
The Intel 975XBX, known by most as the BadAxe, was the first motherboard to officially support Core 2 Duo. AnandTech reviewed the board in January 2006 at Intel D975XBX: Intel brings their BadAxe to Market, but that early board was not really compatible with the just-launched Core 2 Duo processors. For Conroe compatibility the BadAxe must be Revision 0304 or later.
Since BadAxe was the only Conroe choice during much of the developmental testing, it quickly gained a list of user modifications that seems almost endless. The 975XBX is an Intel board that is actually capable of being overclocked and that actually has some decent adjustment options in the BIOS. This is not something you expect from Intel boards in the past, but it has definitely been an increasing part of Intel's top-end offerings.
The current BadAxe board has a few improved options in the BIOS, like overclock options to 50% instead of 30%, but it is otherwise still the exact same board AT reviewed this past January. For more information on the board please go to the AnandTech BadAxe review.
Basic Performance
While Intel does provide options that enable overclocking BadAxe, they still have a lot to learn about producing a motherboard for the Enthusiast. If you set a bad overclock on the BadAxe the board will NOT recover gracefully as ASUS, Gigabyte, DFI, and other Enthusiast boards normally manage. If you try to do some serious overclocking on this board you will quickly learn where the clear CMOS jumper is located and how to pop out the battery. In a failed OC on BadAxe, clearing CMOS and removing the battery are the only way to recover and reboot. This makes overclocking with BadAxe a very frustrating experience.
It is perhaps best to view the Intel 975Xbx as an incredibly stable motherboard built to last a very long time, as Intel motherboards normally are. It also allows overclocking, but the Intel BadAxe is not really set up for the kind of overclocking serious overclockers demand. It's is a difficult board to bring back from a failed OC.
Intel motherboards remain the standard against which others are measured in stock performance, and BadAxe is a fast and stable board running Core 2 Duo. It is not, though, a speed demon compared to the ASUS or other solid 975X motherboards as we have sometimes seen from Intel in the past.
Those who could care less about overclocking, or who only want to overclock modestly will likely be very pleased with BadAxe performance. So will overclockers who only want to overclock with multipliers since BadAxe supports the unlocked X6800 processor with multipliers both up and down from the stock 11x.
Overclocking
Perhaps because overclocking was so difficult compared to other boards in this Buyers Guide we only managed to reach a 22% overclock with the E6700, or 3.25GHz. We reached a similar 21% OC with the 2.93GHz X6800, reaching a stable 3.55GHz.
Others who have modified the BadAxe board, or who have a much greater tolerance to OC pain than we do, have reached much higher overclocks than we reached in our tests. However, two editors, with different boards and processors, reached almost the same results with BadAxe.
If you want to run your 2.93 or E6600 at 4GHz without a huge hassle then choose another motherboard, like the ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe. If you want to run almost forever with no problems then choose BadAxe. You can even take BadAxe to stratospheric overclocks, but that requires hardware modifications.
Basic Features
| Intel 975XBX | |
| Market Segment | High-End/Enthusiast |
| CPU Interface | Socket T (Socket 775) |
| Chipset | Intel 975X + ICH7R |
| CPU Support | Core 2 Duo, Pentium D, Celeron D, Pentium XE, LGA-775 based Pentium 4 |
| Thermal Design | 8-phase power Fan-less (Passive) Cooling |
| Front Side Bus | 1333 / 1067 / 800 / 533 MHz |
| Host Burn-In Mode | 0 - 50% (in 1 percent increments) |
| Memory Speeds | Default, DDR2 333, 400, 533, 667, and 800MHz |
| PCI Bus Speeds | Default, 40.00MHz |
| PCIe Speeds | Default, 101.32, 102.64, 103.96, 105.28, 106.6, 107.92, 109.24MHz |
| Set Processor Multiplier | 6 to 40 (Depends on CPU) in 1X increments |
| Core Voltage | Default, 1.2750V to 1.6000V (in 0.0125V increments) |
| DRAM Voltage | Default, 1.80V, 1.90V, 2.00V, 2.10V, 2.20V |
| MCH Chipset Voltage | Default, 1.525V, 1.600V, 1.650V, 1.725V |
| FSB Termination Voltage | Default, 1.271V, 1.333V, 1.395V |
| Multi-GPU Option | CrossFire (2 X8 PCIe) |
| Memory Slots | Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Unbuffered ECC/non ECC Memory to 8GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 2 PCIe X16 (operates in 1X16 and 1X8 or 2X8 mode) 1 PCIe X16 (operates in X4 mode) 2 PCI 2.3 |
| Onboard SATA | 4 SATA 3Gb/s by ICH7R |
| Onboard IDE | 1 UltraDMA 100/66/33 (2 Drives) by ICH7R |
| SATA/IDE RAID | Intel ICH7R: (4) x SATA 3Gb/s RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, and Intel Matrix Storage technology Silicon Image SiI3114: (4) x SATA 1.5Gb/s RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 (operates on PCI bus) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB2.0 ports by ICH7R 2 IEEE 1394a FireWire Ports by TI TSB43AB23 |
| Onboard LAN | Intel 82573L PCIe X1 Gb LAN |
| Onboard Audio | Sigmatel STAC9221D, 8-channel capable HD Audio Codec featuring Dolby Master Studio technology |
| Power Connectors | 24-pin ATX 8-pin EATX 12V 4-pin Molex Plug |
| Back Panel I/O Ports | 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x Parallel 1 x Serial 1 x Audio I/O Panel 1 x Optical S/PDIF Out Port 1 x Coaxial S/PDIF Out Port 1 x RJ45 4 x USB |
| BIOS Revision | Intel 6/20/2006 |
The Intel 975XBX, known by most as the BadAxe, was the first motherboard to officially support Core 2 Duo. AnandTech reviewed the board in January 2006 at Intel D975XBX: Intel brings their BadAxe to Market, but that early board was not really compatible with the just-launched Core 2 Duo processors. For Conroe compatibility the BadAxe must be Revision 0304 or later.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Since BadAxe was the only Conroe choice during much of the developmental testing, it quickly gained a list of user modifications that seems almost endless. The 975XBX is an Intel board that is actually capable of being overclocked and that actually has some decent adjustment options in the BIOS. This is not something you expect from Intel boards in the past, but it has definitely been an increasing part of Intel's top-end offerings.
The current BadAxe board has a few improved options in the BIOS, like overclock options to 50% instead of 30%, but it is otherwise still the exact same board AT reviewed this past January. For more information on the board please go to the AnandTech BadAxe review.
Basic Performance
While Intel does provide options that enable overclocking BadAxe, they still have a lot to learn about producing a motherboard for the Enthusiast. If you set a bad overclock on the BadAxe the board will NOT recover gracefully as ASUS, Gigabyte, DFI, and other Enthusiast boards normally manage. If you try to do some serious overclocking on this board you will quickly learn where the clear CMOS jumper is located and how to pop out the battery. In a failed OC on BadAxe, clearing CMOS and removing the battery are the only way to recover and reboot. This makes overclocking with BadAxe a very frustrating experience.
It is perhaps best to view the Intel 975Xbx as an incredibly stable motherboard built to last a very long time, as Intel motherboards normally are. It also allows overclocking, but the Intel BadAxe is not really set up for the kind of overclocking serious overclockers demand. It's is a difficult board to bring back from a failed OC.
Intel motherboards remain the standard against which others are measured in stock performance, and BadAxe is a fast and stable board running Core 2 Duo. It is not, though, a speed demon compared to the ASUS or other solid 975X motherboards as we have sometimes seen from Intel in the past.
Those who could care less about overclocking, or who only want to overclock modestly will likely be very pleased with BadAxe performance. So will overclockers who only want to overclock with multipliers since BadAxe supports the unlocked X6800 processor with multipliers both up and down from the stock 11x.
Overclocking
| Intel 975XBX Overclocking Testbed |
|
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Dual Core, 2.67GHz, 4MB Unified Cache 1066FSB, 10x Multiplier |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.395v (default 1.2V) |
| Cooling: | Tuniq Tower 120 Air Cooling |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GameXstream 700W |
| Memory: | Corsair Twin2X2048-PC2-8500C5 (2x1GB) (Micron Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive | Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM SATA2 16MB Cache |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio) |
325x10 3250MHz (+22%) |
Perhaps because overclocking was so difficult compared to other boards in this Buyers Guide we only managed to reach a 22% overclock with the E6700, or 3.25GHz. We reached a similar 21% OC with the 2.93GHz X6800, reaching a stable 3.55GHz.
Others who have modified the BadAxe board, or who have a much greater tolerance to OC pain than we do, have reached much higher overclocks than we reached in our tests. However, two editors, with different boards and processors, reached almost the same results with BadAxe.
If you want to run your 2.93 or E6600 at 4GHz without a huge hassle then choose another motherboard, like the ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe. If you want to run almost forever with no problems then choose BadAxe. You can even take BadAxe to stratospheric overclocks, but that requires hardware modifications.
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Gary Key - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Thank you for the comments. Our focus on the first cooler roundup will be on units that cost under $25 but the Tuniq will be included as a reference point along with the retail Intel unit. Our follow up will include the high end air coolers and some water cooling units.The Tuniq is considered to be one of the best air coolers available at this time although we are starting to see this design being incorporated by other suppliers quickly.
biggersteve - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - link
Hope you can get an Arctic Cooler Pro 7 into that cooler review. Quiet as a tomb and mighty cool.jonmcguffin - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
A feature built into the Core 2 Duo processors is this new Digital Thermal Sensor that supposedly has the ability to provide much quicker and more accurate thermal information about each processor. The key with this though is that it requires support from the motherboard. Why did you guys not mention this feature in any of the motherboards you tested?My guess is that since the P965 was "built" for Core 2 Duo, my guess would be that it supports this feature while the older 975 does not. In going back and forth between pro's and con's of the P965, if this feature is in fact built into the chipset/motherboard, it is worth pointing out. I'm not really an overclocker though I do want to buy a system that will be rock solid in stability for many years to come. Quite PC's that are very reliable and stable are critical and this is a good feature.
Also, you reviewed the Abit AB9 Pro motherboard a few weeks back but somehow it was left out of this overview. At $160 on the street, despite it's layout issue's, this looks to me like perhaps the best board right now for the guy who isn't rich and just wants a very solid Core 2 Duo mobo.
Hope you get a chance to review and respond.
Jon
Gary Key - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Jon,The Gigabyte DQ6 actually has the ability to select readings from either sensor (Digital/Legacy) on the CPU in the power management settings. We will go over this in detail in our full review of the board or other Conroe capable boards in the future. These type of features along with audio and storage performance are not generally not reviewed in the guide articles but covered in the full product reviews.
The Abit AB9-Pro is shaping up to be a very good mid-range board (prices around $142 already) once the bios is complete. We are due to receive bios B6 next week that is optimized for Conroe and allows full memory configuration from both a timing and ratio viewpoint. The board was not ready to be included in the buyers guide until Abit had a final bios to us. We will report the results as soon as we complete testing.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
We had planned to include the Abit AB9 in our roundup IF Abit got the memory issue fixed before the review. Unfortunately even the latest beta BIOS we received on Tuesday does not fix the issue. There is no means on the current Abit board to change memory speed or timings. It supposedly reads the SPD and boots at DDR2-533 5-5-5-15 with every dimm we tried. You can't run Value Ram at DDR2-800 for example or run DDR2-800 at rated speed. Or change timings to 3-2-3 at DDR-533 even if you know the ram can run at those timings. We did not think it fair to make a big deal of this in a review since Abit is supposedly working on it, but we see they are now also selling the board at some retailers and memory is still broken as far as we know.We consider this problem, if not fixed, to disqualify the Abit from consideration by any Enthusiast. We plan to do a full review of the Abit AB9 Pro if and when Abit fixes this major problem.
supremelaw - Thursday, July 20, 2006 - link
Jon,Why would more accurate thermal sensors
have high priority, if the Conroe runs
much cooler and more efficiently?
Are you planning extreme O/C, perhaps?
Wouldn't a superior HSF have higher priority?
e.g.:
http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/heatsinks/warnin...">http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/heatsinks/warnin...
Just curious here.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/">http://www.supremelaw.org/
falc0ne - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
The usual best from Anandtech..I was in a bit of fog if switching to conroe or not, but now I have a mutch more clearer picture. After the part2 of this suite, it will all be clear to me.P.S. Your articles on Nvidia's NForce 4 platform made me choose that platform and AMD64.
My sincere thanks, I owe you a lot
wackypete - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Thanks for putting this article together. Your effort has not gone unnoticed.Howard - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Anybody know what chips it uses? The 5-5-5-15 DDR2-667 variety, that is.Gary Key - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
We still have additional memory selections from a variety of suppliers arriving for further memory reviews at this time.