Foxconn 975X7AA Crossfire Mainboard 

Manufactured by: Foxconn
Supplied by: Foxconn
Street Price: $210.00

by Dean Barker (5/24/2006)

Introduction

Foxconn has grown out of its original beginnings of an OEM component producer to be a premier maker of high end mainboards.  Their packages can now go head to head with any other tier 1 manufacturer on the market in my opinion and their 975X7AA board is no exception.  Opening up the door to ATi’s Crossfire Technology to the Intel crowd is welcomed by many.  Today, we have a sample of Foxconn's flagship, the Foxconn 975X7AA mainboard on deck.  Aside from our usual perusal of the board in this review, we hope to look at things from another standpoint as well; that of the reluctant user and upgrading.

Until recently, Crossfire and DDR2 haven’t been exactly been heavy draws to the masses for the upgrade of a major component such as a mainboard.  ‘Until recently’ being the operative words here however.  It has only been somewhat recently that it came to pass that DDR2 is going to have an AMD audience effectively solidifying its place in the market.  Likewise, ATi's Crossfire is now mainstream enough that it also is gaining market share.  So is the Foxconn 975X7AA the board to give the Intel followers a reason to pile on with DDR2 and Crossfire?  It’s a big step for many, so let’s see if we can take some of the fear out of things by looking at what Foxconn brings to the table with the 975X7AA.

Specifications:

• Application: Intel Pentium 4 Socket LGA775

• Chipset: Intel 975 Express Northbridge, ICH7R Southbridge

• Memory: Dual channel, unbuffered, 1.8v DDR2 533/667 w/ or w/o ECC; four slots; max memory 2GB/slot

• Expansion slots: 2 x PCI Express x16 (function at x8 under ATi Crossfire), 2 x PCI Express x1, 2 x PCI

• Audio: Integrated, 7.1 channel AC97 (Realtek)

• LAN: Dual Integrated Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) controller (Marvell)

• USB: Up to 8; 4 in rear I/O area, 2 internal 2-port headers; ver. 2.0

• IEEE-1394:  One 6-pin in rear I/O area + one front via internal header; Add in bracket included for 6-pin or 4-pin off internal header

• IDE/SATA: 1 x ATA/100; 4 x SATA/300 (supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1 and the Matrix Storage Technology); 2 x SATA/300 (w/ RAID 0, 1)

• Rear I/O: 1 x PS/2 keyboard; 1 x PS/2 mouse; 2 x RJ45 (LAN); 4 x USB 2.0; 1 x line-in/line-out/mic (audio); 1 x parallel (SPP/ECP/EPP); Additional line-outs for 7.1 channel audio; 1 x IEEE 1394; 2 x S/PDIF (1 x coax out + 1 x optical out)

• Internal Connections: 1 x floppy disk drive; Front audio header; 2 x USB 2-port headers, ver. 2.0; 1 x IEEE-1394 header

• BIOS: 4Mb flash EEPROM w/ LAN boot, PnP, ACPI, WfM, DMI 2.0

• ATX Form Factor 12" x 9.6"

NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - The board
Pg 3 - More board / BIOS
pg 4 - BIOS / Fox One
Pg 5 - Testing: Business Winstone
Pg 6 - Content Creation, SiSoft Sandra 2007 Pro
Pg 7 - Super Pi, 3D Mark 2006, Battlefield 2
Pg 8 - NFS:MW / Overclocking / Conclusion