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Foxconn 975X7AA Crossfire Mainboard The Firewire connector on the mainboard is color coded (yellow) and sports a shroud as does the blue COM connector. You may be asking why there is a COM connector here. With some of the changes on the rear I/O area, the COM port got bumped to be a connector requiring an aftermarket bracket to utilize that unfortunately, Foxconn did not include. Other items of note are the passively cooled Intel ICH7R Southbridge and very pleasing dual PCI-E slots supporting ATi’s Crossfire dual card technology. The two PCI-E x16 cards when utilizing Crossfire half the available bandwidth to run at x8 each. Of less note, are the two PCI-E x 1 slots and two PCI slots. There was a time that I liked having multiple PCI slots but with dual onboard NIC, onboard 7.1 audio, coaxial and optical S/PDIF ports there isn’t much left you would need an add in card for on this board.
Between the Northbridge and the rear I/O area are several connectors that seem oddly placed. The first of these is just above the top most PCI-E x1 slot, a standard 4-pin Molex power connector. With all the power required in a dual VGA card system, you are going to simply need more power to draw from and this is it. The other connectors you see below are the 8-pin 12v power connector (a standard 4-pin 12v ATX will also work) and a secondary SATA connector. This secondary SATA connector is one of two (the other is externally accessible via the I/O panel) and powered by a Silicon Image Sil3193 controller supporting RAID 0, 1 and JBOD.
Wrapping up the physical tour is the I/O panel. Lots of goodies here; dual Gigabit LAN, 7.1 audio, four USB 2.0 ports, external SATA port, Firewire, coaxial S/PDIF and optical S/PDIF, parallel port and PS/2 mouse and keyboard. No COM port. You have the header on the mainboard if you need it but the expansion bracket will have to be something you pickup elsewhere unfortunately.
BIOS Rather than completely boar you with a length text description of the BIOS, let's look at some screen shots of the main screens within the Phoenix Award BIOS that commands the Foxconn 975X7AA mainboard. I shouldn't say 'commands' the board since a lot of credit for tweaking ability will go to the Fox One Hardware that makes many overclocker friendly options available for adjustment within Windows but we'll get to that soon. First the BIOS.
In order of appearance, first up are the memory adjustments. This is a DDR2 board supporting index frequencies of 533, 667 and 800MHz with a litany of options to fine tune your rig to and with.
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