Specification Details of Intel X38 Express

[Aandaleeb]

I need some specification details of Intel X38 Express motherboard. I want to get one but I think that is too costly. But the same is reliable for a Gaming PC. What is the complete specification of this tool and does you consider this board for gaming or programming. What hardware does is supports.

[Hardwareman]

With the imminent arrival of Core 2 Duo in stores, one begins to see land the first motherboards based P965 Express chipset. At the MCH, there is a management necessary to support FSB1066 Core 2 Duo, running a single PCI Express x16 link (not so CrossFire) and a memory controller supporting DDR2 officially DDR2-533 modes, 667 and 800. The latter has a set of small improvements grouped under the banner "Fast Memory Access" which are supposed to allow it to be more efficient than previous controllers.

[Maxforu]

ICH side is version 8 which is the assignation. The main changes from the ICH7 are at the network level, with the integration of a controller 10/100/1000 Mbps and at the SATA as the R version which supports RAID is reached now 6 ports. This is usually at the expense of Parallel ATA is simply abandoned.

[Killen]

To circumvent this manufacturers such as Asustek involve additional solutions. Thus, the P5B Deluxe used for this little test, found a chip JMicron JMB363 PCI Express can manage 1 PATA 2 SATA but also including an additional external for a total of 8. The PATA port can handle two devices and we have no problem to connect with old DVD players such as Pioneer ATAPI DVD-114.

[T.J.]

Asustek has decided to put the packet network side, because the board includes two gigabit chips: a Marvell 88E8001 on the PCI and the Marvell 88E8056 PCI Express - there is a choice not to use network management integrated in ICH8 . The card incorporates an extra chip WiFi 802.11a/b/g Realtek RTL8187L via the USB, HD Audio is assigned to a chip Analog Devices SoundMAX AD1988B and FireWire are supported by chip Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A. Note that the motherboard has two PCI Express ports are physically type x16: Only the first is cable so to MCH, the latter being connected to the ICH via a x4 link. Even with a hack driver to enable SLI and / or CrossFire setup in such a performance should not be famous.

[Rawko]

It arrived in the bios of the P5B, the first thing that surprises is that ASUS back to bad habits ratios displayed in the form of fixed speed DDR. Thus, with FSB1066, if you select DDR2-533 you have a ratio FSB: DDR 1:1. But if you choose such a FSB of 333 MHz and select DDR2-533, you simply select the same ratio of 1:1, and the memory will run at 333 MHz or DDR2-666 in practice. We prefer the bios of the P5W DH Deluxe (Intel i975X) which does not then a beast DDR2-533 but the actual speed at which the memory will function.