When Intel introduced Socket 775 platform and ICH6 Southbridge, she did something radical, it withdrew a parallel channel FDI. Intel reasoned that the IDE standard had reached its maximum capacity and that would quickly replace Serial ATA IDE, due to its great technological advance.

Hard disk manufacturers quickly adopted the new standard however, it still had the public in a few years to pass. Optical drive makers, on the other hand, (in addition to Plextor) have not moved to Serial ATA architecture and the dismay of other manufacturers and consumers, continue to release mainly IDE devices.

Whether you want to or not, Intel is forcing the hands of all to adopt the Serial ATA architecture completely by dropping your IDE ICH8 Southbridge. Other chipset manufacturers are also starting to lose the support of FDI, with the latest nVIDIA nForce 500 series chipsets the latest example.

In this review, PCSTATS is testing the Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe motherboard. This board is based on Intel's Northbridge P965 and ICH8 Southbridge chipsets. With Intel phasing out FDI, motherboard manufacturers have been scrambling trying to fill the vacuum since Serial ATA optical drives are difficult to find. Biostar address the lack of native IDE channels, integrating another IDE controller for the Tforce P965 mother as a VIA VT6410. Other goodies on this integrated full size ATX board include Gigabit LAN, 7.1 channel high-definition Intel Azalia audio, a wave of USB2.0 jacks, and expansion slots.

Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe motherboard

User Manual, CD Driver, rounded Ultra/133 IDE cable, four Serial ATA cables, four Molex Power converters for Serial ATA, diskettes, audio cable bracket, I / O Shield, microphone headset, USB cable Multiport September

There are several options for expansion in Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe, a PCI Express x1, x4, x16 slot, and three 32 bit PCI slots. There are six Serial ATA II (3.0Gbps) channels and six USB 2.0 slots on the rear I / O. For the tweakers out there Biostar also equip this advice with power and reset buttons on the right hand PCB!

The Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe motherboard is hot off the presses and has not yet reached the retail market Still, we do not have a MSRP to quote you. Judging by the features, which seems to be an entry level / workstation style motherboard, which means they must be very aggressively priced.

The Intel Core 2 Duo processor is the hottest thing in the computer industry today. Since it uses the same socket 775 formfactor we are using from the Pentium 4 / D line, which run the Core 2 Duo allows a transition relatively easy, if you can not afford to go all the way, get First a compatible motherboard and buy a processor when it is ready. In any case PCSTATS will show you both Pentium D and Core 2 Duo performance, so you get an idea of what to expect when running a motherboard based on Intel P965 Express.

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Intel P965 and ICH8

The chipset Intel P965 is the latest mainstream Intel chipset and works with all Socket 775 in the market for Intel Pentium processors 4/D/XE Celeron D, and right up to the Core 2 Duo Along with the new Northbridge, Intel also launched the ICH8 to replace the ICH7 Southbridge. The version found in Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe is the ICH8R model, which includes RAID.

Intel has increased its support for DDR2 memory with 800 MHz chipset P965, putting Intel's latest and greatest, at par with AMD's Socket AM2 Athlon64's. Intel calls the new memory controller AAM or "Fast Access Memory" and gives the system a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 12.8GB / s. Intel P965 is a mainstream chipset, and thus is compatible only with a single graphics card PCI Express x16.

A dedicated 2GB / s I / O bus connects the Intel P965 Northbridge and Southbridge ICH8R together, which can be a bit tight if you have many devices for broadband installed, but should be just fine for the average user.

The Biostar P965 Deluxe motherboard comes installed with the ICH8R Southbridge which includes a ton of goodies. Intel has increased the number of Serial ATA II (3.0Gbps) to six channels, and with the technology Intel's Matrix Storage modes supports RAID 0, 1, 0 +1 and 5. This last is optional and is not supported by the vanilla version of ICH8 Southbridge.

Intel ICH8R Southbridge also supports a 7.1 channel Intel Azalia high-definition audio, 10 USB 2.0 slots (any or all of which can be disabled, which is an important feature for companies), six PCI Express x1 tracks and an integrated Intel Gigabit MAC, which Cross the PCI Express bus.

Visivelmente lack is parallel IDE support. This is forcing many manufacturers motherboard in a standalone IDE controller for your mother (like the VIA VT6410 on this Biostar TForce P965). Rumor that he had brought the Intel ICH8 return to the drawing board to add a single IDE controller, but that obviously did not happen.

Fortunately parallel IDE technology is not too expensive to add to a motherboard. I understand that Intel is the leader in computing, but moving with IDE seems a little premature at the moment, especially with the lack of Serial ATA optical drives.