Page One - A Northwood Introduction

Manufacturer: AlbatronProduct: PX865PE ProII
MSRP: 200 USD

Hurray it's Springdale time. Some of you will say 'huh, what is the mad man talking about'. Recently Intel released two new mainboard chipsets under the codenames Canterwood and Springdale. Since a few weeks the first mainboards have rolled of the production line and you will recognise the codenames now under the Intel 865 and 875 series. After testing some of these mainboards I can only say that these are the fastest performing products to date. You see, the trick is to get the optimal combination of hardware and since the 865/875 chipsets support Pentium 4's with 800 MHz FSB and Dual Channel DDR with an extremely fast memory bandwidth the combo is mighty and powerful.

The mainboard based on Springdale 865P chipset we are reviewing today comes from Albatron. The mainboard is called the PX865PE ProII and is a friggin swiss-knife under the mainboards as is has so many options and features. I bet that the engineers who designed this little puppy had a big smile on their faces during the entire development process.

Not only is this a sub two hundred dollar high-end mainboard equipped with with the Springdale chipset, it also has additional features like RAID through a very capable Promise RAID controller, Dolby Digital 8 channel surround sound with the help of an integrated soundcard based on VIA's Envy VT1720 (including SPDIF in and out), 1000/100/10 Gigabit LAN, Two Serial ATA connectors, 6 USB 2.0  ports, two FireWire ports and of course capability of an 800 MHz FSB with Dual Channel DDR memory supported at 400 MHz. Next to that we can see smart features like Dual BIOS, the really awesome Voice Genie.

Let's have a look at some technical details followed by a photo-shoot with comments, a run of benchmarks and finally the conclusion.