Intel’s Desktop Board D975XBX, a.k.a Bad Axe, is designed to deliver the best experience for advanced gamers and power-users. Based on the company’s 975X Express Chipset and Pentium 4 LGA775 CPUs, the follow-up to the D955XBK has the potential to deliver the ultimate performance for those seeking the most raw power.

Not only that, it offers flexible PCIe x16 or 2x PCie x8. CrossFire is also supported when two ATI Radeon X800/X850 or X1K series of cards are paired up using the latest Catalyst drivers. This product series is a departure for Intel as it’s geared towards the Intel power-user and high-end gamer while maintaining the exceptional security and stability of Intel's desktop board solutions.

The chipset also offers Integrated Intel HD Audio enabling 7.1 surround sound and multiple channel support for voice applications such as online chat and VoIP. It also supports four ports of SATA II with NCQ in RAID 0,1,5 and 10.The AHCI provides native hot plug capability too. Memory support comes in the way of four 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM Dual Inline Memory Module (DIMM) sockets, which accommodate up to 8GB of 667- and 533MHz DDR2 DIMMs.

The new architecture also supports both asynchronous and isochronous data traffic, with dedicated internal pipelines and specialized arbitration. In addition, the 975X chipset has improved electricals with optimised ball-out for better latency compared to the 955X chipset. Intel has chosen to augment this feature set with additional SATA capabilities via the Silicon Image SiI 3114 chipset, and FireWire 1394a support via the TI TSB43AB23 chipset.

Intel’s latest CPU, the Pentium Processor Extreme Edition 955 with Hyper-Threading Technology is the first dual-core processor for desktop PCs with 1066 SB and 2MB of L2 cache per execution core. The Pentium Processor Extreme Edition 955 is also the first dual-core processor that combines Intel Virtualization Technology, enabling platforms to run multiple operating systems and/or applications in independent partitions or environments, with Execute Disable Bit and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology. The processor runs at a clock speed of 3.46GHz 1066FSB. It has two x2MB L2 cache.

More details about the motherboard can be found here. It costs around $274 (£155).

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BIOS, Jan 30, 06 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Motherboard