Conclusion
My initial musings that the PX875P Pro was built for speed and speed alone seem to ring true. The benchmarks give the musings credence; it certainly seems fast from the results. However problems getting stability at massive bus speed give cause for concern. It's not isolated, I know someone else with the board seeing the same things.In general however, performance was as good as it's going to get on P4 at stock settings. That applies to all Canterwood boards that implement a decent BIOS and PAT though, each and everyone one is going to be as fast in general, the derivative performance of the DFI is testament to that. SiS are building a brilliant core logic part now too, that undercuts the per bridge cost of i875P by a fair bit. Cheaper boards don't mean worse boards, the ASUS P4S800E-D shows that.
It should sit under £100 at retail, not bad for Canterwood, but with the bare bundle you might be looking elsewhere for similar performance, better bundle and the same price.
Albatron's continued BIOS eccentricities do them no favours either. The voltage resolution and range needs adjusting for Vcore at the very least.
Overall, provided it's cheap, it's recommended. You can buy better, there's no getting away from that, but you can buy much much worse at the same time. Above average from Albatron, they stay on the enthusiast's radar, but it feels like their effort has been reduced recently. Subjective I know, but other companies are executing better at the time of writing.
For the crazy overclocker, seek it out, but be prepared to do a little work with Vmods if you're after hardcore speeds.
Could be better.
Score
Pros
Excellent performanceDecent layout and presentation
Decent presentation
Should be cheap
Prescott support
3-year warranty
Cons
Very bland feature setUnstable at the claimed 1200MHz front side bus frequency
Hard to find at retail in the UK
Thanks
Albatron for the sample.James for confirmation testing and BIOS help.
