Tom's Hardware Visits Intel's Motherboard Team

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]djridonkulus[/nom]Newb question:Why does Intel use Prime95 and not IntelBurnTest?I was told IBT works the cpu harder and produces more heat than Prime95 does, and it even does it faster, completing a pass in under 5 minutes as opposed to P95's hours.Please enlighten me.[/citation]

Here's the answer from Intel:

“Prime95 is a pretty straightforward, mainstream application that we use to get a baseline measurement of OC stability that reflects general usage / workloads…when we conduct burn-in testing with OC settings for board stability we defer to Intel’s burn Test utility along with other internal software loading tools to tune the board for maximum performance.”

 

[The Greater Good]

I want something like Skull Trail in socket 1155 PLEASE! For the love of God and all that's holy, I WANT DUAL SOCKET WITH SLI SUPPORT!

 

[king_maliken]

[citation][nom]The Greater Good[/nom]I want something like Skull Trail in socket 1155 PLEASE! For the love of God and all that's holy, I WANT DUAL SOCKET WITH SLI SUPPORT![/citation]
Nice, thanks Chris

 

[Guest]

Chris: Intel sponsors tomshardware.com, which includes your department. You sound like a politician lying about his bribes by saying "no, that money was a campaign contribution, nothing to do with corruption".

At any rate, a supposedly independent 3rd party hardware review site to be taking any money from Intel, AMD or Nvidia is highly inappropriate, what made the whole racket so successful for so many years was the fact that sites like yours and anandtech were at least pretending to be impartial and independent.

 

[marraco]

I managed lots of motherboards. Hundreds, and that included many Intel. Except for PCCHIPS, the Intel ones were the worst motherboards I suffered.

The D865GBF model and family were the worst. They had any kind of trouble, from I/O (Sata, IDE, USB), drivers, video and memory compatibility, poor support... Intel motherboards are garbage.

 

[djridonkulus]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Here's the answer from Intel:“Prime95 is a pretty straightforward, mainstream application that we use to get a baseline measurement of OC stability that reflects general usage / workloads…when we conduct burn-in testing with OC settings for board stability we defer to Intel’s burn Test utility along with other internal software loading tools to tune the board for maximum performance.”[/citation]

So is it safe to say that IBT reflects the absolute worst-case scenario with unrealistic workloads for testing OC stability? I recently OC'd my i7 920 to a conservative 3.6GHz on air topping out at 71 degC at 1.1975V using IBT (as a first time overclocker all I wanted was an extra GHz without stressing the cpu) and I'm wondering now if going by IBT was unnecessary and if I should push harder with Prime95.

Anyways, thanks for the follow up Chris. Keep up the good work!

PS: What did you do to get so many trolls out on this article?

 

[The Halo Don]

Cool.

 

[legacy7955]

I really liked this article, very interesting to see some of the inner workings of a large first tier company like Intel.

I also liked that we actually hear specifics from actual engineering director of Intel performance boards and not some marketing stiffs POSING as Intel personnel.

 

[livebriand]

Great, except now this gives OEMs even less incentive to improve their cheapo PSUs (the Bestec ones in eMachines are notorious for killing the motherboard WHEN, not if, they die).

 

[capt_taco]

[citation][nom]greghome[/nom]Intel branded motherboards......not the best for enthusiast, but they're stable enough, never had a Intel branded board fail in 10 years[/citation]

I have ... and just try dealing with them to get a warranty return. Ho! They'll do just about anything to say it was your fault. Not to mention that they have crappy support for anything except basic parts at stock settings. Not buying another Intel mobo in my life after that crappy DP45SG, and incidentally, being that angry with them is why I've used AMD CPUs for the past few machines I built for other people too.

 

[mkrijt]

[citation][nom]harry_palms_iii[/nom]Chris: Intel sponsors tomshardware.com, which includes your department. You sound like a politician lying about his bribes by saying "no, that money was a campaign contribution, nothing to do with corruption".At any rate, a supposedly independent 3rd party hardware review site to be taking any money from Intel, AMD or Nvidia is highly inappropriate, what made the whole racket so successful for so many years was the fact that sites like yours and anandtech were at least pretending to be impartial and independent.[/citation]

Dude, stop crying. Allowing any company to advertise on your site doesn't mean they control your content. This is a logical place for any hardware company to advertise their products since we are their buyers.

o.t. Nice read

 

[ac3pt]

Intel makel the best boards anywhere. D815EEA, OR840, SE7525RP2,
D865Perll, D945PLRN, D975XBX2, DP43TF, some SuperMicro- and Tyan- (still in use!) -boards. All never failed and have been sold after 4 years boxed for a good price! To compare ten years ago i had some crappy Asus boards, and with the Intel who runned 4 years daily for 8+ hours i never had any failures or stability issues. Intel does a good job, just my 5 cents

 

[treefrog07]

Good read.

 

[Guest]

Hardware-wise, I've been pretty happy with Intel boards - I like the fact that you can find relatively bare (legacy-free) motherboards with decent components. But the software support on the other hand has always been quite a let-down.

My previous intel board was a DX48BT2 - BIOS sucked (f.e. usb keyboards behind a USB hub simply don't work in the bios and bootloader), no driver support for the IDT-based soundcard, ACPI bugs, etc. On a DG45ID I had to wait for months until they fixed a fan control issue that made it rev up and down all the time.

For our next motherboards, I'll look around for some that can support coreboot - to have a customizable but simple firmware. I'm hoping AMD's support for coreboot will make this a realistic option; but I can't be sure yet.

UEFI just seems like a lot of bells and whistles that will make things even more brittle and bloated. Plus lots of branding and marketing crap.