August 18, 2008 -- Intel's P45 Chipset was released this summer along with the P43, G43, and G45 Chipsets as the mainstream Eaglelake alternative to Intel's current flagship X48 Chipset. Though over the older X48 motherboards, the P45 has the advantages of using Intel's newer ICH10 / ICH10R Southbridge and support for up to 16GB of DDR2/DDR3 memory, which is double that of what's supported by the X48. Today we are looking at two Intel P45 motherboards compliments of Gigabyte with their EP45-DS3L and EP45T-DS3R. The EP45-DS3L and EP45T-DS3R are just two of Gigabyte's motherboards bearing the P45 Chipset but in total they have eight different motherboards using this version of the Eaglelake Chipset.

August 08, 2008 -- Intel's latest performance desktop chipset is now the X48 Express, but there still is life left in the X38 Express, which was released late last year. The Intel X38 and X48 Chipsets share many of the same features including support for the latest dual-core and quad-core Intel processors, DDR3 system memory support, and 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 interfaces with there being very few differences to the end-user between these chipsets. In addition, benchmarks we have delivered from different motherboards have shown the X48 has little to no performance improvements over the older Bearlake chipset. ASUS's X38 motherboards are still very much in the market place and today we happen to be looking at one of their workstation motherboards based around the X38. The motherboard we are looking at is the ASUS P5E64 WS Professional, which ships with all of the usual ASUS innovations in addition to having four PCI Express x16 slots.

August 04, 2008 -- Over the past few months we have looked at a few different Intel X48 motherboards and all of these motherboards bearing Intel's latest chipset have worked quite well with Linux. Among these motherboards have been the ASUS P5E3 Premium, Super Micro C2SBX+, and Gigabyte X48T-DQ6. These X48 motherboards have been expensive, but now some of the budget manufacturers are introducing models at a lower cost. For just under $200 USD, ASRock has introduced the X48TurboTwins-WiFi. The ASRock X48TurboTwins-WiFi pairs Intel's X48 with the ICH9R Southbridge and offers a few extra features such as eSATA, integrated 802.11g WiFi, and IEEE-1394 Firewire.

July 11, 2008 -- Last October we had looked at the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe motherboard that was designed around the Intel X38 Chipset and it had arrived with its share of ASUS innovations such as ASUS AI Lifestyle, Crystal Sound, and EZ DIY. In addition, this was the first motherboard on the market to feature DeviceVM's SplashTop, or Express Gate as it's called on the ASUS motherboards. Today at Phoronix we are looking at the updated version of the P5E3 Deluxe, which is now called the P5E3 Premium. The ASUS P5E3 Premium is similar to the earlier Deluxe model but is now engineered around Intel's newer X48 Chipset.

July 07, 2008 -- Back in April we had looked at the ECS A780GM-A, which was a nice low-cost motherboard and had worked well under Linux with the newer desktop distributions. This motherboard had integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics, which we had found to perform well and equivalent to a Radeon HD 2400PRO discrete graphics card. However, for those interested in NVIDIA graphics, there is the GeForce 8200 IGP that also performs well on Linux. If you are interested in the GeForce 8200 chipset, today we are looking at two of the cost-effective motherboards deploying this chipset: the ECS GF8200A Black and ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI.

June 30, 2008 -- Super Micro, are you familiar with them? Chances are that unless your focus is on the workstation and server markets, you probably haven't heard of them. However, this company has been around since 1993 and they have been producing a variety of different motherboards, servers, computer enclosures, and other products to fit the needs of their customers. Super Micro manufacturers a variety of different Intel server motherboards -- and they are one of the few that offers quad-socket Xeon motherboards -- but they also have a growing selection of Core 2 desktop motherboards. The C2SBX+ is one of their newest motherboards and with our first Super Micro review at Phoronix we are looking at this product. This Intel X48 motherboard is designed for digital entertainment, gaming enthusiasts, and other high-end applications.

May 30, 2008 -- In April we had looked at the ECS A780GM-A v1.0 motherboard, which boasted AMD's new Radeon HD 3200 graphics. For being an integrated graphics solution, we were certainly pleased with the performance, as it had performed about the same as the discrete Radeon HD 2400PRO. With the success of the AMD 780G Chipset, we have decided to look at another one of these motherboards. This time around we are looking at the ASRock A780FullDisplayPort, which as the name implies it offers a DisplayPort connection for the integrated graphics.

May 06, 2008 -- Two months ago we had looked at the Tyan Tempest i5400XT motherboard, which was Tyan's latest product based upon Intel's newest workstation chipset and had support for dual Intel Xeon quad-core processors. We found the Tempest i5400XT to be a real winner and everything had worked terrific with Linux. Today we are looking at another Tyan workstation motherboard but the tides have turned as we look at their latest AMD dual quad-core solution, the Tyan Thunder n3600M. The Thunder n3600M motherboard supports dual AMD "Barcelona" Opteron processors, 16 sticks of DDR2 RAM, and eight SAS ports, among other stunning features.

April 14, 2008 -- Last month we had looked at the Radeon HD 3200, which is part of the AMD 780G Chipset. In that Linux-based review we had found the performance to be admirable for being an integrated graphics processor (IGP) and it was quickly supported by the proprietary fglrx driver, aside from AMD not yet introducing the CrossFire/Hybrid Graphics Linux support. To deliver those Radeon HD 3200 benchmarks we had used the ECS A780GM-A Black and today we're publishing our full run-down on this AMD 780G motherboard that's paired with the AMD SB700 Southbridge. The A780GM-A boasts support for AMD Phenom processors, DDR2-1066 memory, PCI Express 2.0, and an HDMI port in addition to one VGA output.

March 10, 2008 -- When the Intel Quad-Core "Clovertown" Xeon processors were introduced in late 2006 we had reviewed (among other motherboards) the Tyan Tempest i5000XT (S2696) motherboard. We had found this i5000X-based motherboard to work incredibly well with Linux and it ended up being awarded with our Editor's Choice Award for its impressive feature-set, Linux compatibility, and top-notch performance. It has been a while since last looking at a Tyan motherboard, but with the emergence of Intel's Wolfdale and Harpertown processors requiring new motherboards, today we are looking at the Tempest i5400XT S5396 motherboard. The Tempest i5400XT is similar to the i5000XT, but it's been upgraded to the new Intel 5400 MCH.