Intel X48 Motherboard Reviews - ASUS, Foxconn, J&W

• PC Perspective: ASUS Rampage Formula Intel X48 Motherboard Review:
  
  

  “The Rampage Formula belongs to the Republic of Gamers (ROG) line of ASUS products. Since it belongs to the before mentioned product category, it offers unprecedented control over BIOS and system settings. Even the experienced tweaker can become lost in the memory settings alone, but the hardcore enthusiasts will defiantly appreciate the added BIOS flexibility. In the memory department Asus decided to follow the DDR2 1200/1066 support path, not really a bad thing, when you considered the relatively low cost of DDR2 at this point. The board even includes 2-Phase DDR2 voltage regulation to aid in system stability. The motherboard chipset cooling takes on a unique and fairly exotic approach. The board incorporates large copper heatsinks in a “Pin-Fin Thermal Module” configuration. Basically, it increases surface area to facilitate more efficient cooling, and also allows more air to flow through the passive heatsinks.”

  
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• TweakTown: J&W X48D2-EXTREME Motherboard:
  
  

  “J&W truly surprised us by jumping straight into the X48 platform. And to be honest, the performance was extremely impressive. While it doesn’t seem that way when you look at the scores, there are a few things to consider. First off, compared to P45, the X48 is the first gen 4 series chipset from which the P45 has since evolved. P45 contains the same DDR2 and DDR3 memory controllers, but with a few features disabled. So, X48 and P45 on the memory and CPU fronts should perform identically, making X48 and DDR2 really a waste; only with DDR3 and XMP does it become attractive.”

  
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• X-bit Labs: Foxconn BlackOps: Extraordinary Mainboard on Intel X48 Express Chipset:
  
  

  “Foxconn BlackOps mainboard looks very attractive. Moreover, it boasts excellent, thoroughly thought-through BIOS functionality and has very few drawbacks. But for some reason it can’t overclock processors well enough. Why is it so that we can take a mainstream overclocker mainboard from Gigabyte, for instance, and successfully overclock processors on it, while a super-overclocker high-end board can’t show the same result? Are these boards way too complicated? Do they have too many settings that need to be taken into account and specifically selected? Then why do we need boards like that at all?”

  
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