Foxconn MARS: God of War Performance?
by Gary Key on September 21, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Quick Thoughts
We are quite surprised with the performance of the Foxconn MARS board. That comment cuts both ways as the press hype, marketing materials, and packaging led us to believe the board would be a consistent front runner in the sub-$200 enthusiast market. In some ways it is; in some ways it is not. Maybe our expectations were set too high from the beginning after seeing the 575FSB pictures along with whispers of top tier performance for a budget price.
What we have at this point is a board that is competitive with the likes of the abit IP35-Pro, ASUS P5K Deluxe, Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6, and the MSI P35 Platinum. The MARS board offers basically the same feature set and support of of these other boards and in that context, it will find the current landscape to be very competitive. The natural competitor for the MARS board is the excellent abit IP35-Pro and looking at the two boards, we feel like Foxconn is going to need to drop their price (estimated MSRP is $199.99) below that of the abit board to garner buyer interest.
What we do not know is if Foxconn is willing to do this in order to gain entrance into a market where they are essentially a newcomer. Without a history in the Intel performance sector and a reputation of mass producing budget offerings with limited feature sets, it will be difficult at first to sway buyers accustomed to other brands. What we do know is that Foxconn is serious about the performance user and has put forth an excellent first effort with their MARS board. When looking at the board from this perspective, we are impressed with what Foxconn has put together and they are on the right track.
With that said, the board offers average overall performance in the P35 group but has a very strong showing in CPU intensive benchmarks and offers excellent memory latencies, provided you have memory capable of running CAS4 timings around DDR2-1066. Quad-core overclocking is excellent and is only surpassed by the latest X38 DDR3 boards at this time, although we still have a couple of enthusiast level P35 boards left to test that promise the same capability. After spending the last couple of weeks with the board we found it generally behaved better with the quad cores than the dual cores, especially when overclocking. Not that we had any issues with the dual cores; it's just the first board we have tested that generated that "feeling" of being designed with quad-core performance as the primary concern.
After some experimentation, we found the board was very easy to overclock, though it requires higher memory voltages than our other P35 boards. Without the ability to set the strap speeds, the result is a hunt and peck affair with the memory ratios/FSB speeds to find the right strap setting and then adjust the memory timings appropriately for stability or performance. While the brute force approach works at times with raising the voltages and lowering room temperatures, we were hoping for a little less effort being required to set up the board. It's not that we're unable to put in the effort, but this is not a DFI level BIOS yet, but it seems to require almost that level of tweaking in order to reach more moderate results.
The BIOS still needs a little polishing when it comes to auto settings; it generally chooses the right settings, but at times the memory timings are a little too aggressive or even too loose when manually setting the basic four timings. We are confident Foxconn will find the right balance before the board ships early next month, and stability is excellent once the board is dialed in. Hopefully, they will add the ability to manually change strap settings along with reducing the memory voltages required for high memory clocks when compared to competing boards in this category. Also, the Aegis panel needs to be updated quickly to include the promised overclocking features, something abit already provides with the IP35-Pro.
We are waiting on the final BIOS release before making a recommendation and providing additional overclocking and memory performance results with a wide range of components. Until then, we honestly have to say that Foxconn surprised us; the performance potential is definitely there, the layout is right on, and the feature set is competitive in this class. It appears that the board really is capable of living up to its namesake. It just needs that final coat of polish and a price adjustment to truly go to war; ,otherwise it could be left protecting the cattle.
We are quite surprised with the performance of the Foxconn MARS board. That comment cuts both ways as the press hype, marketing materials, and packaging led us to believe the board would be a consistent front runner in the sub-$200 enthusiast market. In some ways it is; in some ways it is not. Maybe our expectations were set too high from the beginning after seeing the 575FSB pictures along with whispers of top tier performance for a budget price.
What we have at this point is a board that is competitive with the likes of the abit IP35-Pro, ASUS P5K Deluxe, Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6, and the MSI P35 Platinum. The MARS board offers basically the same feature set and support of of these other boards and in that context, it will find the current landscape to be very competitive. The natural competitor for the MARS board is the excellent abit IP35-Pro and looking at the two boards, we feel like Foxconn is going to need to drop their price (estimated MSRP is $199.99) below that of the abit board to garner buyer interest.
What we do not know is if Foxconn is willing to do this in order to gain entrance into a market where they are essentially a newcomer. Without a history in the Intel performance sector and a reputation of mass producing budget offerings with limited feature sets, it will be difficult at first to sway buyers accustomed to other brands. What we do know is that Foxconn is serious about the performance user and has put forth an excellent first effort with their MARS board. When looking at the board from this perspective, we are impressed with what Foxconn has put together and they are on the right track.
With that said, the board offers average overall performance in the P35 group but has a very strong showing in CPU intensive benchmarks and offers excellent memory latencies, provided you have memory capable of running CAS4 timings around DDR2-1066. Quad-core overclocking is excellent and is only surpassed by the latest X38 DDR3 boards at this time, although we still have a couple of enthusiast level P35 boards left to test that promise the same capability. After spending the last couple of weeks with the board we found it generally behaved better with the quad cores than the dual cores, especially when overclocking. Not that we had any issues with the dual cores; it's just the first board we have tested that generated that "feeling" of being designed with quad-core performance as the primary concern.
After some experimentation, we found the board was very easy to overclock, though it requires higher memory voltages than our other P35 boards. Without the ability to set the strap speeds, the result is a hunt and peck affair with the memory ratios/FSB speeds to find the right strap setting and then adjust the memory timings appropriately for stability or performance. While the brute force approach works at times with raising the voltages and lowering room temperatures, we were hoping for a little less effort being required to set up the board. It's not that we're unable to put in the effort, but this is not a DFI level BIOS yet, but it seems to require almost that level of tweaking in order to reach more moderate results.
The BIOS still needs a little polishing when it comes to auto settings; it generally chooses the right settings, but at times the memory timings are a little too aggressive or even too loose when manually setting the basic four timings. We are confident Foxconn will find the right balance before the board ships early next month, and stability is excellent once the board is dialed in. Hopefully, they will add the ability to manually change strap settings along with reducing the memory voltages required for high memory clocks when compared to competing boards in this category. Also, the Aegis panel needs to be updated quickly to include the promised overclocking features, something abit already provides with the IP35-Pro.
We are waiting on the final BIOS release before making a recommendation and providing additional overclocking and memory performance results with a wide range of components. Until then, we honestly have to say that Foxconn surprised us; the performance potential is definitely there, the layout is right on, and the feature set is competitive in this class. It appears that the board really is capable of living up to its namesake. It just needs that final coat of polish and a price adjustment to truly go to war; ,otherwise it could be left protecting the cattle.
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Tujan - Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - link
You used a 1000Watt PSU on this review. Do you think that it would be possible to post the load,and non-loaded power stats for these boards.?My thinking is that a person could get by with 600 watts w/o a overclocker profile. Yet I do not know. The PSU suppliers are making larger,and larger power supplies. Yet (at least for me) I do not see that my peripheral count is actually going to be larger. And w/o overclocking the CPUs actually do not require higher wattage values.As a specification at retail.
[ ]Could a person get by on the set with this review on only changing the PSU to 600,or 750 Max PSU ?
And what is the boards load values ? Wich boards are better.Seems that with the several layer curcuit boards the power requirement would be less,not more .[though I know the video cards are really eating the power up-they have their limit'].
Thanks good article.Nice board Foxcon.
mostlyprudent - Monday, September 24, 2007 - link
I always enjoy motherboard reviews, BUT did I miss the long awaited P35 roundup? If it's still in the works, why the single board review?Etern205 - Sunday, September 23, 2007 - link
In your test setup it says you guys used 2x2048 Corsair rammodules which equals to 4GB, but in those cpu-z screen shots
it only show 2GB instead of 4. Is that right? Shouldn't it show
4GB instead of 2?
And the images do now work when users try to enlarge them.
All I get is a server error.
Thank you.
wwswimming - Sunday, September 23, 2007 - link
Foxconn has a boatload of experience manufacturingmotherboards. up till now i've thought of them
partially in terms of their "cheap specials at
Fry's", kind of like ECS, where they sell the
board-CPU combo for the price of the CPU.
BUT i learned something new, 8 x 435 was it, 3.2
+ .24 + .040, (is my math right ?), 3.48 GHz for
the Q6600.
that plus the clean layout ... i like the
North Bridge South Bridge heat sink design.
plain old aluminum heat sinks work real well
if you get enough inlet air to them, which is
not hard to do. one heat pipe. not over-designed.
Lord Evermore - Sunday, September 23, 2007 - link
No mainboard costing 200 dollars can be called "budget". Under 75 is budget level. I hate having to even go to 125 to get a full-featured board instead of the exact same board costing 30 less but which is missing one crucial feature. Over 150, I want ALL the trimmings, and none of that "disables the x1 slots if you use Crossfire" crap. WTF is that?Mainboards are too damned expensive these days.
emilyek - Saturday, September 22, 2007 - link
Before this review, I had a pretty good idea where this board would fall in terms of performance. I've seen FOXCONN products here and elsewhere before.It made me want to ask: "Why are some motherboards better performers than others?" I mean, they use the same chipsets, right?
What, specifically, is the reason that one company consistently falls a few paces behind others? It is board layout? Type of components used?
Someone enlighten me.
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 22, 2007 - link
Board layout can impact things a bit, but mostly it's the BIOS and tuning - or lack thereof.lopri - Saturday, September 22, 2007 - link
I noticed for this review that 2GB DIMMs were employed for total 4GB system memory, and there was no mention of overclocking/stability when all 4 DIMM slots were filled. I do not know whether the compared boards from other vendors were also equipped with 2x2GB DIMMs, but it does raise a few questions.1. From my experience (which means it may not be generalized), when memory capacity isn't a factor, 2GB sticks tend to show better performance than 1GB sticks if same number of slots are occupied. (all others being equal) I don't have an exact understanding on this but if this is indeed a case and other boards were tested with 4x1GB configuration, the performance results (especially synthetic ones) could be kinda skewed?
2. Was the board able to maintain the same overclock/stability when all 4 slots were occupied? Again, from my experience Intel desktop MCHs (or maybe it's the boards/BIOSes) left quite a bit to be desired. I would like a little more detailed comments on this front.
Excellent review as always. Thanks.
lopri - Saturday, September 22, 2007 - link
Oh and also there is the factor of interleaving when comparing 2 slots vs 4 slots. I do not know how much but I would think it matters when the performance varies by like 1% among different boards.yyrkoon - Saturday, September 22, 2007 - link
I see they also implemented the Northbridge<->PWM section cooling with heatpipes. Recipe for hot PWM with an Overclocked 4 core CPU . . . and what the hell is up with all these hokey heatsink designs these companies are comming up with ? The BIOS monitoring application looks like something you would see on a 5 year olds lunch box as well.I would be more impressed if these companies would work on something functional, and quite this 'bling bling' look that makes their products look tacky. The ethernet performance is fairly impressive, but for this cost, with the stupid looking application/hokey heatsinks, and the fact that they cannot seem to get it into their heads that putting the PWM section, and the northbridge on the same heatpipe loop is not a good thing, I would not even consider this board.
Another gripe is the JM eSATA port. IF they *need* to include an eSATA port, why not put in something that can actually fully supports FIS Port multiplier technology ?
Anyhow, aside from the GbE performance, I think this board is a loser . . .