Intel Chipset New Force - FOXCONN MARS – The Warrior God

[windwithme]

FOXCONN, the well known brand, is always being the No. 1 in OEM motherboard business.
Since early this year, FOXCONN is trying to enter own brand business. Recently, you can see FOXCONN VGA card in the market.
Their price is always very aggressive and it is good for end users.

Of course, FOXCONN won’t be satisfied with one territory.
After VGA card, they also start to make own brand motherboard. Moreover,
they are focus on OCers and Gamers. It will challenge Asus, Gigabyte and MSI seriously.

The first model of FOXCONN MB is using Intel latest chipset – P35. They also have X38 version in the future.
They named this series MARS as Warrior God.


The package is in red and the size is quite big


Open the cover, you can see the key specification


Accessory 1
You can see plenty cables.
There are 2 vertical SATA cables as well.


Accessory 2
Manual, Installation Guide, I/O panel, Driver CD/Floppy, Fan for North Bridge, Stickers and one Necklace.


FOXCONN MARS Motherboard




Left Down Corner
2X PCI-E( Support ATO CROSSFIRE Technology, 16X+4X)
2X PCIE X1
3X PCI
Audio Chip is Realtek ALC888,7.1 channels
LAN Chip is Realtek RTL8117


Right Down Corner
South Bridge is ICH9R
SATAII X6 with RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10
3 buttons - POWER ON/RESET/CLR COMS


Right Up Corner
1X IDE/1X Floppy
4X DIMM DDRII, supports 667/800/1066


Left Up Corner
6 phase PWM and use cooper pipe as the heatsink


Plenty IO
IEEE1394.USB 2.0X6.eSATA



Cooper Heat Pipe

North Bridge


South Bridge


PWM


Final is FOXCONN MARS, the COOL PIPE
Simple design, easy to install, good quality and look




Additional FAN
Rpm is not high, very quiet



Boot Screen


BIOS Menu


OC Menu


CPU Feature


Memory parameters


Voltage Menu


CPU Voltage 1st layer


CPU Voltage 2nd layer


DDRII Voltage
1.665V~3.365V


Special OC features


PC Health Status



CPU:INTEL Core 2 Duo E6850
MB: FOXCONN MARS P35
DRAM:CORSAIR Dominator TWIN2X2048-8888C4D
VGA:BIOSTAR VR8603TS21 GeForce 8600GTS
HD:Seagate 7200.10 320G
POWER:Corsair HX620W Modular Power Supply
Cooler:Thermaltake V1


FOXCONN exclusive OS software
Voltage, Temperature and FAN rpm




Advanced Setup


Online upgrade software



At the moment, all P35 boards are good at CPU overclocking
Let’s start with CPU Frequency
550 FSB SP2004


555 FSB Super PI 32M


MARS is good at FSB
However, key factor for P35 boards is DRAM overclockability

DDRII Overclockability
500/1200 CL5 5-5-18 2.340V
Dual Super PI 32M


500/1200 CL4 4-4-9 2.459V
Dual Super PI 32M


500/1200, only DFI and ASUS P35 can reach
FOXCONN MARS also reach this quota

Higher up the DDRII clock
1259 CL5 5-5-18 2.524V
Dual Super PI 32M


Memory Bandwidth


500X8=>4000Mhz
DDRII 1200 CL4 4-4-9
Super PI 32M


Dual Super PI 32M


Memory Bandwidth


Super PI and Memory bandwidth are both good
That’s you can see MARS is good at OC and tighten all parameters.
8600GTS 675/2000

3DMARK2003


3DMARK2005



Quad Core CPU
400X9=>3600Mhz
DDRII 1200 CL4 4-4-9
四Super PI 32M




Conclusion

Advantages
1.Well Package, Plenty Accessories, and unified Boot Screen, Package Desgin and Software interface.
2.Simple COOL-PIPE design and also with quiet FAN
3.100% solid capacitors and Power/Reset/Clear CMOS buttos
4.6 phase PWM, Dual PCIE support CrossFire.1394 and eSATA
5.Wide range in BIOS FSB and Voltage. Easy to OC.
6.CPU FSB is high standard and DRAM OC is the top level.

Weakness
1.Later than the others several months
2.Providing lower CPU Voltage
3.Better to use Japanese Capacitors

FOXCONN MARS P35 is selling at around 190USD.
This is the first own brand MB for FOXCONN
However, you can see the high standard in package, components, spec. and performance.
Hope FOXCONN challenge the others more and bring more benefits to end users.

[rob[GL]]

Thanks for the in-depth review!

Foxconn had a booth setup at Fragapalooza this year with a prototype of this board. Unfortunately it was not stable enough to try any overclock.

[LagunaX]

Cool. Hopefully vdroop won't be too bad. Might be my next board unless the x38 is markedly better...

[major_john]

Superb review,I love it!
Thanx,windwithme!
I see a nice-featured BIOS,also the boot screen is a battle scene...|o|

[LuckyNV]

looks great, colour scheme not bad, NB cooler looks a bit odd, great pics

[SeLecT]

Thx for this test, windwithme

This is a nice motherboard, maybe my next

[lol]

Anybody know what the price will be when released?

[icon57]

better late than never...not bad at all

[mouawad]

after seeing the build quality on the 680i reference boards it's unlikely i would ever part cash for a foxconn motherboard.

[Desert Igel]

3.3 V VDIMM are insane

[mXpS]

a guy just hit 6ghz with this board and yorkfield under ln2. looks like a solid mobo. very impressive overclock.

link to thread

[Desert Igel]

thats not just a guy. It was shamino

[mXpS]

thats not just a guy. It was shamino

Ha thanks. Either way it was veryyyyy impressive

[crishan]

Never having had a Foxconn-built motherboard, I can't assess their build quality,
but:

FINALLY a board manufacturer that recognizes a decent layout!
In fact, this board features the same layout a the Asus P5W DH.

Now it's up to Foxconn to deliver upon Bios-fixing etc. How is their reputation regarding that?

[situman]

Lets hope this won't turn into another Sapphire. Poor bios support.

[SeLecT]

Anybody know what the price will be when released?

Here are the prices in germany:

http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a286616.html

[MrToad]

Well, Foxconn has been making everything you find inside a computer, and more, for a long time.

Open a Dell laptop and you see their brand all over it. And you can trace back to them all the 8800 cards sold under random hardly-ever-heard-of brand names. That's just to mention a couple of examples.

I think I see the name Foxconn no less that 100 times a day.

AFAIC they're to the computer OEM market what AMP is to electronics.

Very curious about their incursion on the retail market, which is a whole different beast altoghether...

[Kunaak]

that does look like one solid board indeed.
foxconns been upping thier game in the board market, since the 975 boards.
this ones alittle late, but seeing as how little need there is to move from a P35 board to a X38 (since there appears to be little to no benifit, unless you want to run crossfire) this is just as good a board now, as any X38 is, if you run a single videocard.

[Spawne32]

Where are these on sale at?

[Spawne32]

ah i found one, zipzoomfly has this available for pre order.

[GameGuru]

I read a couple of reviews on this board the other day, thought I'd share.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3107

This is a follow up to the first review.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3116

[jammin]

the board is nice i love it time to buy new rams!

[Prelector]

Having run a Foxconn G965 MB for ~6months now, I can offer a few comments on build/support quality. Using their G9657ma board in an HTPC in a low-profile case.

Build has been great on the board. Excellent cooling across the components even in my challenging case.

OC support is ok... nothing stellar on this board, though this is likely due to the g965 chipset, and not Foxconn itself.

BIOS support on the other hand, has been TERRIBLE. Foxconn has been slow as hell to support new CPUs in bios. To this day, my board still won't support an e4500 CPU and a standard ADD2 card for video output. I can run either on their own, but not both together. I put in support after support call and request regarding the e4500 CPU shortly after it was released, and the only response I could ever get from them (via email or phone) was "This CPU isn't supported on that board" or "Our support staff is constantly reviewing and testing new CPUs and releasing updated bios". After 4 months, a bios upgrade was finally released that allowed the e4500 to be used (prior to this release, I couldn't get reliable boot into Vista with the e4500) but still can't use the ADD2 card for HDMI output of the IGP.

If you want good build quality, and all your hardware is supported, I'd definately give them a try... but they are NOT for the Cutting edge builder (or Xtreme builder) imho. I'd use them again for an appliance build (HTPC, server, etc), but would never use them for a benching platform, or gaming build.

[ea6gka]

looks like a high quality mobo , wonder who sells them in europe

[tvdang7]

First gigabyte now foxconn? whats next ECS?