Digital Home Thoughts: The Dynamic Duo: Intel's Core 2 Duo E6700 CPU & D975XBX2 Motherboard

Motherboard Specifications (or "What's Under The Hood")
The Intel D975XBX2 motheboard is a standard ATX board measuring 12 inches by 9.6 inches in size. The board isn't much to look at - if you want to have a case window showing off a flashy design, this isn't your motherboard - the D975XBX2 is all business. The board supports a staggering array of processors - everything from a lowly Intel Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz up to the jaw-dropping Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - basically any LGA775 processor. As good as Intel is at making their boards backwards-compatible, I wish they'd design their boards to be more future-compatible. I've had more than one PC that hit the upgrade wall when Intel announced a new socket type and I was unable to upgrade. One can only hope that since the D975XBX2 can support the Quad processors, it will have some long-term compatibility with the entire generation of quad-core CPUs and hopefully even the eight-core processors.


Figure 1: The D975XBX2 motherboard mounted and stocked with parts - minus the video card. Click here for a larger view of the motherboard.


Figure 2: The RAM slots are just a bit too close to the PCI Express slot where the video card goes.

In terms of motherboard specifications, it supports almost everything you'd expect: four RAM slots with support for up to 8 GB of DDR2 800, DDR2 667, or DDR2 533 MHz DIMMs. I tested it with two sticks of 1 GB DDR2 667mhz RAM, and that's all I had for testing so I was unable to see if the motherboard supported 4 GB properly. Windows Vista 32-bit supports the full 4 GB of RAM, but many motherboards top out at 3.5 or even 3 GB. One problem I noticed, as shown in Figure 2, is that the RAM slots are right next to the top PCI Express slot where I installed the ATI video card. This isn't a show-stopper, but it's always a pain to have to uninstall one component in order to install another. I can accept that in a tiny Shuttle XPC, but not in a full-sized system.

The motherboard uses the 975X Express Chipset, which brings with it several specific benefits: Intei Viiv support, 800mhz or system 1066mhz bus (depending on CPU), Intel Memory Pipeline Technology, Intel High Definition Audio (up to eight channels at 192 kHz/32-bit quality), Intel Matrix Storage Technology (allowing for several RAID configurations), 3Gbps SATA, and something I hadn't heard of before called Intel Flex Memory Technology - it allows the use of different memory sizes while still remaining in dual-channel mode.


Figure 3: The back of the system showing the ports. A parallel port? That's so 2002 (at best).

Other specifications for the motherboard include:

• ATI CrossFire technology support;
  
• Legacy I/O controller for diskette drive, serial, parallel, and PS/2* ports;
  
• Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem using the Intel® 82573E/82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller;
  
• Eight USB 2.0 ports;
  
• Four Serial ATA interfaces with RAID support (four additional interfaces available with optional discrete RAID controller);
  
• One parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA 33, ATA-66/100 support;
  
• Two PCI slots;
  
• One six-pin Firewire 400 port;
  
• Fanless: all the chips are cooled via passive heatsinks, which helps keep the computer quiet;
  
• Two PCI Express slots.

What's missing? An eSATA port, that's what! External SATA (eSATA) is the fastest way to access external storage, and more external hard drives are starting to support eSATA. Since there's no Firewire 800 port, it's strange that Intel wouldn't have included an eSATA port.