Thoughts
During testing we encountered no major issues, although the latest version of nTune (5.00.03.06) wouldn't work fully (a known issue being fixed), with NVIDIA Monitor instead displaying an error message and closing down. The board shipped with nTune 4 on CD, and that works for monitoring, but obviously doesn't work for system adjustment due to its age.It also seems to report the CPU temperatures too high and they don't fluctuate much, leading us to believe that with nTune 4 installed, NVMonitor isn't accurately reporting the temperatures .
Niggling layout issues aside, the Foxconn C51XEM2AA performs as expected and in some cases offers class-leading performance, in addition to providing a myriad of BIOS parameters to adjust in order to get the most out of the system.
Initial indications to HEXUS were that the Foxconn C51XEM2AA would be offered for retail in the UK at £170.00 +VAT (just shy of a fairly eye-watering £200 inc. VAT), which, compared to the £136.59 inc. VAT (£116.25 +VAT) for the ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition would’ve meant a £65 price delta that we think would’ve put it out of contention.
However, at the eleventh hour, Foxconn seems to have had a change of heart and have just advised HEXUS that the C51XEM2AA will be available for £115.00 +VAT (£135.12 inc. VAT).
Foxconn, in reconsidering and adjusting the price of its flagship mainboard for AMD’s new socket AM2 processors, to around a quid (£1) below that of ASUSTeK’s own offering, rather reveals its intentions we think…
Foxconn, a significantly larger beast than ASUS, has - in the retail, PC enthusiast focussed market – been Taiwan’s sleeping dragon, but, clearly now focussed on invading the lair long dominated by ASUS, is really starting to stir from its slumber.
Said to have revenues beyond $27 billion, Foxconn is arguably the only Taiwanese operation with the financial resources to get medieval with ASUS, and win.
HEXUS has seen the writing on the wall in this respect for some time now, with Foxconn recently aggressively poaching ASUS UK’s marketing and PR manager - Michael Littler - to spearhead Foxconn’s European marketing operation (and who promptly took with him one of ASUS UK’s other marketing executives, Lawrence Felice).
It seems obvious to us that, in the UK at least, many Taiwanese mainboard manufacturers have badly suffered, for not appointing into their company’s most senior positions, personnel who are either indigenous to the territories in which they wish to challenge, or those who at least have a genuine understanding of the local market and the nuances of the local language.
But, at some point, Foxconn obviously decided to break with this flawed ‘tradition’, and Foxconn UK is headed up by another Englishman, Stephen Ling.
All Foxconn needs now is some innovative thinking - and execution - at an R&D level, and the game will be truly on.
In any event, at a price of £115.00 +VAT (£135.12 inc. VAT) we think that the Foxconn C51XEM2AA is a safe buy for those going down the Socket AM2 route, and well justified especially if you want to make full use of its system clock and advanced memory parameters.
One particular reason we think the C51XEM2AA is a ‘safe buy’, is because it was co-operatively developed with NVIDIA as the nForce 590 SLi reference mainboard, and, with the stakes so high, the joint R&D resources of these two operations would’ve been very thorough indeed; additionally ongoing feedback from both Foxconn and NVIDIA’s OEM, trade and end-user customers is likely to mean particularly rapid BIOS development (and, if needed, hardware revisions).
Furthermore, as NVIDIA’s reference mainboard, it also seems logical that NVIDIA ForceWare device drivers for its nForce 500 series chipsets will have been, and may continue to be, primarily developed, and presumably thoroughly tested, on the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, which means that compatibility issues may well be less than on other manufacturer’s products.
It’s clear to HEXUS that NVIDIA’s target with Foxconn’s project ‘Tritium’, which spawned the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, was to showcase a product to beat down ATi Technologies’ RADEON XPRESS 3200 (RD580) core logic based ‘Manta’ and ‘Sturgeon’ reference mainboards.
The development of these (ATi) reference mainboards primarily focussed on capturing the minds and wallets of multi-GPU PC performance and overclocking enthusiasts, and therefore the ‘tweakabilty’ and high performance of the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, especially with EPP capable memory modules such as Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 EPP DDR2, and NVIDIA’s forthcoming GeForce 7950 GTX 1024MB integrated SLi accelerators, was likely to have been a very high design criteria indeed.
We’ll reserve judgement as to whether the Foxconn C51XEM2AA is absolutely the best nForce 590 SLi mainboard, or indeed the best extreme mainboard for AMD AM2 processors once we’ve completed testing of other products in the HEXUS Labs.
But if you’re currently in the market for an AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 and you want to run NVIDIA SLi, then, for now, Foxconn C51XEM2AA is the best nForce 590 SLi mainboard HEXUS has yet written about, and you won’t go far wrong.
