Motherboards

ECS H57H-MUS Black Series

July 21, 2010 -- Earlier this year we reviewed an Intel H55 motherboard and found it to perform well under Linux both in terms of compatibility with the latest Linux distributions at the time as well as the overall system performance with our slew of open-source benchmarks. Intel's H57 Chipset was launched at the same time, but with the very few differences between the H55 and H57 chipsets, its Linux support and performance is about the same. Today though we are reviewing the ECS H57H-MUS motherboard to see how this Intel H57 motherboard performs on Linux, which also offers a few extra features like USB 3.0 and Serial ATA 3.0 support.

MSI 890GXM-G65

June 04, 2010 -- Earlier this year AMD rolled out the 890GX Chipset with an ATI Radeon HD 4290 integrated graphics processor, support for Serial ATA 3.0 with the SB850 Southbridge, DDR2/DDR3 memory support, and other leading features. About a month ago we reviewed the AMD Athlon II X3 425 processor when coupled with an AMD 890GX + SB850 motherboard and in this review we are taking a closer look at that motherboard under Linux. The motherboard in question is the MSI 890GXM-G65 with USB 3.0 and Serial ATA 6Gb/s support.

Jetway NC84-LF

April 20, 2010 -- While Jetway is not one of the most popular brands of motherboards among enthusiasts, they do offer a nice variety of mini ITX motherboards, such as the NC92 IPC and NC96-510-LF motherboards that we have reviewed at Phoronix. Both of these petite motherboards have been built around the Intel Atom processor, but for those looking to find a mini ITX motherboard that can harness a bit more power, there is the Jetway NC84. The Jetway NC84 is what we are testing out today under Linux, which is a mini ITX motherboard that can handle up an AMD Phenom processor, sports an ATI Radeon HD 4200 IGP, and four Serial ATA 2.0 ports capable of RAID 0/1/5/10.

Jetway NC96 NC96-510-LF

March 11, 2010 -- Late last year we reviewed the Jetway NC92 Atom IPC motherboard that was a nice Mini ITX board with an Intel Atom N230 processor. A few weeks after that, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the new Pineview processors were shown off. The Atom N400 and D510 Pineview CPUs are only a moderate upgrade from the very common Diamondville Atoms, but the newer Atoms are beginning to work their way into more nettops and netbooks. Jetway is one of the vendors that was quick to design a new IPC motherboard that bears the Intel Atom D510 dual-core processor with Intel GMA 3150 graphics and the NM10 Express Chipset.

ECS Elitegroup H55H-M

February 15, 2010 -- In conjunction with the launch of the Core i3/i5 Clarkdale processors last month, Intel introduced the H55 and H57 Chipsets. The Intel H55 Express Chipset is designed for use with these new processors and Core i7 800 series CPUs. The H55 is compatible with the HD graphics found embedded onto the new Clarkdale CPUs as well as the PCI Express 2.0 slots and dual channel DDR3 memory controller provided by the CPU itself, while the chipset itself provides support for the digital displays, HD audio, six PCI Express x1 slots, Serial ATA, Gigabit LAN, and Intel ME Firmware / BIOS support. As our first Linux review of an Intel H55 motherboard we are checking out the ECS Elitegroup H55H-M.

How To Reverse Engineer A Motherboard BIOS

February 06, 2010 -- Since being let go by Novell last year where he worked on the RadeonHD Linux graphics driver and X.Org support within SuSE Linux, Luc Verhaegen has continued work on his VIA Unichrome DDX driver as well as other X.Org code and he has also become involved with the CoreBoot project that aims to create a free software BIOS for most chipsets and motherboards on the market. Luc has worked on support for flashing the BIOS on ATI graphics cards, native VGA text mode support, and other work to help the CoreBoot project. Today at FOSDEM in Brussels, Luc Verhaegen is about to give a talk on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS.

Tyan S2915 n6650W & S2927 n3600B

February 01, 2010 -- Over the years at Phoronix there have been reviews on many Tyan motherboards for desktops, servers, and workstations. The build quality of these motherboards have always been very good; after all, Tyan has been around for two decades and their workstation/server products must be very dependable if they wish to maintain their premiere position within the industry. The Linux compatibility with the motherboards has also been generally quite good due to its dominant use on their operating systems. As our first Tyan review for 2010 we are looking at the S2915 n6650W and S2927 n3600B motherboards. Both motherboards are designed for AMD's Opteron 2000 series processors and have a similar feature set, but there are a few key differences between these two high-end workstation motherboards.

ECS Elitegroup P55H-A

November 06, 2009 -- Back in September we published a launch-day Linux preview of Intel's Lynnfield processors and provided Core i5 / Core i7 benchmarks. With that initial testing of the Lynnfield processors and the new Intel P55 Chipset we had used an Intel DP55KG "Kingsberg" motherboard, but since then many P55 motherboards from different vendors have flooded the market. One of the P55 motherboards to be introduced for the budget-conscious consumer is the P55H-A, which comes from ECS Elitegroup. This motherboard is very reasonably priced while offering support for up to DDR3-2200MHz memory (in an overclock mode), solid capacitors, dual PCI Express x16 slots, and S/PDIF audio support.

ECS A785GM-M Black

October 05, 2009 -- Back in March the open-source ATI Linux driver had gained support for an unreleased IGP known as the RS880, months before it would end up on the market and become known as the AMD 785G Chipset. The open-source support is there for this integrated graphics processor and motherboard chipset, along with the proprietary support through the Catalyst Linux driver, and there is even chipset documentation to help the CoreBoot developers. With the 785G being the latest (and likely last) ASIC in the AMD 700 series, we decided to look at the ECS A785GM-M motherboard. The A785GM-M from Elitegroup Computer Systems is affordable and offers a nice set of features for being a micro ATX motherboard.

Intel P55 Chipset Preview On Linux

September 07, 2009 -- This morning Intel has introduced their new mainstream desktop chipset, the Intel P55, and has brought forth the Core i5 processor family along with new Core i7 processors for use with this new chipset and socket. Intel sent us out a review kit of this new hardware so we are already able to comment on its Linux compatibility. In this article we are talking specifically about the Intel P55 and its Linux compatibility with regard to the Intel DP55KG motherboard while in the next article we have Ubuntu Linux benchmarks using an Intel Core i5 750 and Core i7 870.
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