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A word or two on the chipset first. The Intel P35 builds upon the mid-to-high-priced P965 by adding, in the main, support for upcoming 1333Hz FSB CPUs, 45nm-based processors, and the possibility of using high-speed DDR3 for increased bandwidth.
The P35 northbridge can be paired with the ICH9 /R /DH southbridges, as the manufacturer sees fit, and all offer varying degrees of feature integration, including possible Turbo Memory and eSATA support.
We're still nonplussed by the lack of integrated PATA and a little concerned that the basic ICH9 provides only 4 non-RAIDable SATA ports.
The overall feature-set, then, is a little light when compared to NVIDIA's nForce 680i LT SLI or, for that matter, the nForce 650i SLI. The only real advantage, we suppose, is the guaranteed support for Penryn CPUs.
Foxconn is releasing two P35-based motherboards. The feature-laden P35A-S will follow a few weeks after the P35A.
The P35A (thank God for proper naming) adds the lightweight ICH9 southbridge and leaves out FireWire support, thereby keeping the expected retail price down to around £99.
We appreciate that our pre-production board had the usual teething problems and we'll see just how good Foxconn's R+D team is in eradicating the issues we encountered when mass-produced boards are released.
Thinking of the board in particular, we like the clean layout and eSATA support. We're also fans of noiseless (geddit?) chipset heatsinks and pleased to see Foxconn use the chipset's PCIe lanes to add a x4 slot that's capable of housing a CrossFire card for multi-GPU use.
Is it easy to recommend at £99, then? The answer is probably not, and that's down to the competition. Intel's own P965-based boards, which perform identically and generally mirror the feature-set, are available for around £25 less. NVIDIA's feature-rich nForce 650i SLI offers just as much, if not more, for around £30 less. NVIDIA's also-decent nForce 680i LT SLI is available for a little more, too.
Bottom line: the Foxconn P35A is a basic, decent Intel P35 chipset-based motherboard that's hamstrung by a comparatively high price, and it doesn't have a really standout feature that makes the near-£100 outlay a no-brainer.
HEXUS.certification
The Foxconn P35 passed our stringent tests without failure. It is presented with the HEXUS Labs certification. This is not an outright recommendation to buy, however.
Foxconn P35A
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At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of Foxconn's representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.HEXUS related reading
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