 The mobo turned out to be working great! The Intel C2Q Q6600 worked perfectly on 3.4 GHz with a voltage of 1.41 V. This is a fantastic result considering the cooling system and CPU limits.
Foxconn is well-known to us, as one of the motherboard manufacturers in the leading pack. However, it never really got to amass on the market, mostly because an insufficient number of distributors. However, the situation has been improving recently, so we can rely on Foxconn's presence on our testing table in the months to come.
Foxconn Mars, as the model is titled, is the first representative of the Quantum Force motherboard line targeting enthusiasts, i.e. demanding users. The mobo arrives in a rich packaging which requires a moment or two to describe.
| Foxconn MARS | | | Memory | 4 x DDR2 (max 8GB) | | Chipset | Intel P35 Express | | Audio | Realtek ALC888 7.1channel HD Audio | | SATA | 6x SATA2, 1x eSATA, 1x PATA | | LAN | Realtek RTL8111B | | RAID | Intel Matrix Storage RAID 0, 1, 0+1.5,10 | | Connectors | 2x PCI Express 16x,3x PCI Express1x,2x PCI,12x USB, 2xFirewire |
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This is because there are a few interesting things in addition to the regular stuff: six SATA, one FDD and one IDE cable. Foxconn put a pair of Quantum Force stickers inside the box as well, but the best thing was the pair of military plates with the Quantum Force logo.
Inside the box itself we also found a USB bracket, driver disc, but also a small fan, mountable on the cylinder-like part of the cooling body. The heatpipe system covers the hottest parts of the board, including the Southbridge and the voltage section.
Since the vast majority of enclosures has a back opening for a fan, you can maximize cooling performance by proper mounting of the aforementioned fan. Cooling proved to be fantastic, keeping the mobo warm, but not hot, even at extreme O/C values. The audio chip on Mars is Realtek's ALC888 audio codec, which is thought to be the best in the integrated solution market. The layout is great.
The PCI-E 16x, PCI-E 1x and the regular PCI slots are put together perfectly. In case of using two separate dual-slot graphics cards, two PCI slots are fully usable, three if the cards are single-slot. We also fancied the fact that, alongside the regular “power” and “reset” microswitches, there is a BIOS clearing one.
The only possible flaw might be the height of the Northbridge cooler, which we touched all the time while testing the CoolerMaster Sphere CPU cooler. However, we noticed that two side panels on that cooler are removable, which provides the necessary 2-3 mm. But this is basically a non-existent problem, since there are very few similarly designed CPU coolers such as the Sphere on the market at the moment.
The BIOS of this motherboard is truly something special. Yes, we saw more voltage values and memory timings, but that's not the point. The BIOS was made by Award. Beside the basic options that all modern motherboards have, there is an additional one entitled “Gladiator BIOS”. The gladiator offers us loads of OC settings. For example, you can decrease voltage for the CPU as well as increase it. For example, if your CPU can work on a voltage setting lower than the nominal one, feel free to set it that way. This will decrease both the consumption and the temperature of the CPU.
The minimal settable voltage is 0.825 V, and the maximum one is 1.6 V, but there is also a voltage multiplier, so if you set the voltage to 1.45 V and the multiplier to 1.2, you will have an effective voltage of 1.74 V. This makes the maximum achievable voltage value 2.0736 V. Memory can be set in between 1.665 and 3.365 V, while the Northbridge can be set to 1.156-2.395 V. The CPU VTT also has a great range of values – 1.2-1.725 V.
The mobo turned out to be working great! The Intel C2Q Q6600 worked perfectly on 3.4 GHz with a voltage of 1.41 V. This is a fantastic result considering the cooling system and CPU limits. All in all, the 6-phase voltage unit proved more than adequate even for a quad-core processor. The board does exactly what you tell her to, not what she decides to, which is a rare case nowadays. Good work, Foxconn!
| | Foxconn MARS | | 1280x1024 | | | Cinebench 10 | 5,831 | | Nucelarus 2 ALU / FPU / Multi | 5.727 / 6.808 / 12.471 | | Photoshop CS3 | 35,1 s | | DivX 6.7 | 178,5 fps | | WinRAR 3.7 | 1.144 KB/s | | Everest | | | Memory Read | 7.017 MB/s | | Memory Write | 7.305 MB/s | | Memory Copy | 6.586 MB/s | | Memory Latency | 74,4 ns | | 3DMark06 SM2 / SM3 / CPU | 5.047 / 5.338 / 3.867 | | COH (HighQ) | 61,3 fps | | Pray (HighQ) | 64,2 fps | | Craysis (MediumQ) | 26,6 fps |
Testbed: Intel C2Quad Q6600@ 2.4 GHz, 2x1GB TwinMOS Twister
DDR2 800 5-5-5-15, 8800GTS, Windows XP Pro SP2 |
To sum up, on a scale from 1 to 10, this mobo gets a stable 9. That certainly makes her “approved”. Foxconn did a great job with the Quantum Force newborn, and more are yet to come, as we were informed. As always, you will be promptly notified!
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