Intel 925X Roundup: Creative Engineering 101

Final Words

For the last seven weeks since the 925X/915 chipsets were released, AnandTech has felt like an R&D lab for motherboard manufacturers. It seems as if every day brought new revelations and some new BIOS to fix some overclocking or performance issue. If we look at where performance started and where it is today, we would have to conclude that the improvements are remarkable. This is particularly true in the overclocking arena, where real progress has been made in meeting the challenges of the new Intel design.

But if, as the old saying goes, "confession is good for the soul", then we have to confess that the whole process has been a lot harder than it needed to be. All of this work was only necessary because Intel decided, after a couple of years of the remarkable overclocking abilities of the Northwood processor, that it was giving away too much performance for free. So, in designing the 925X/915, Intel made any significant overclocking as difficult as possible. We suspect Intel's plan was that significant overclocking of Intel chips would now be a thing of the past.

It turns out that the motherboard manufacturers have been up to the task of finding ways around these issues, but what we are left with, by and large, are band-aids on a fester. The issue isn't really fixed because we are certain that Intel does not see the constraints to overclocking as a real issue. What is most remarkable is that these new challenges are thrown at the Enthusiast community just at the time when Intel is losing significant ground to AMD in the performance arena. We have to wonder what Intel is thinking these days in trying to take away the one performance advantage they still held over Athlon 64, and that is the remarkable overclocking ability of the Pentium 4.

The five 925X boards in this roundup have all finally found some method of achieving reasonable success in reaching performance levels that Intel never intended you to reach. However, they are far from fixed and there is still much room for improvement - with one notable exception. The overclocking field for 925X right now seems to be clearly the Asus P5AD2 Premium, followed by a wide margin by everything else. We don't know how Asus did it, but for the past month, every other manufacturer has also been trying to figure it out, and they haven't completely figured it out either. So, Asus wins the Creative Engineering 101 award in a very spirited race. It is the only motherboard in the running that managed a 280 FSB with a top-line PCIe video card and a SATA hard drive on air cooling, and number 2 is at 265 after many, many BIOS revisions.

However, it would also be a mistake to look only at overclocking ability in evaluating these five top 925X motherboards because it totally dismisses the important performance differences that we found in these five at stock speed. Fortunately, this is one situation where the winner in the overclocking wars is also the top performer in stock speed benchmarks. In benchmark after benchmark, Asus and Gigabyte were the top 2 performers. That combined with the Asus domination of the 925X overclocking gives that rare clear winner of the 925X roundup.

Based on top performance at stock speeds, the wonderful implementation of Intel 925X/ICH6R features, the excellent enhancements to those features such as Stack Cool, Dolby Digital Live encoding, WiFi G networking, dual PCI Express LAN, high-speed 1394b firewire, and the best overclocking abilities of any 925X motherboard, we are pleased to award the AnandTech Gold Editors Choice to the Asus P5AD2 Premium. The P5AD2 hardly qualifies as cheap, but it does deliver excellent value with a standout range of features, enhancements, and performance.

All four of the remaining boards in our roundup excel in one or more areas. The Gigabyte 9ANXP-D is essentially the equal of the Asus in performance at stock speed, and it is second only to the Asus P5AD2 in features. Both the Abit and DFI are excellent in overclocking, and both boards deliver a range of BIOS adjustments that will satisfy any Enthusiast. The Abit and Foxconn boards both deliver excellent value for the features that they deliver and both are cheaper than the other boards in the roundup.

In the end, the other four boards in our roundup are far too close in performance, value, overclocking abilities, or features compared to price to select a Silver or Bronze winner. There is just too little to distinguish them from the other excellent boards in the roundup, though the Gigabyte, Abit, and DFI are clearly a step ahead.

The question that remains is the value that these 925X boards deliver relative to what the competition offers. If you are buying a whole new system, then perhaps there is value here. If we had confidence that the new technologies, which are heaped on the 925X/915/LGA 775, were lasting, then that could sway a decision to one of the new systems. If we had confidence that the bus and DDR2 speeds would be viable for more than a couple of months, then a new 925X/915 might make sense. Unfortunately, we don't have confidence in any of these compelling reasons to buy a new 925X/915 system at this point.

What we can say is that the features delivered by the 925X/915 are truly excellent, and some of the new technologies, like PCI Express and High Definition audio, will either become the norm or heavily influence directions in the computer industry. We can also say with confidence that if you are looking for a new Intel system, you won't find a better motherboard than the Asus P5AD2 Premium to be the heart of your new LGA 775 system. The Asus is expensive, but it does deliver value. If the price is too much for your budget, then any of the other four boards can be recommended as decent alternatives.