Category of small cheap notebooks became very popular and there is no wonder why most of big brands want a piece of cake for themselves. But Asus got all of them off-guard. Because of that we’ve been waiting rather long for Eee’s true rival . We’ve already mentioned MSI’s agility which allowed them again to be first with new product on market. Their trump card wears name Wind and model that InsideHW had tested is MSI Wind U100.
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The long waited AMD platform for notebooks under the name PUMA is finally introduced and InsideHW had a chance to test notebook based on this platform. To all users that have been waiting cheap integrated graphics with good performances, time has come. Intel Centrino was so far “untouchable” in field of portable computers but AMD Puma, by all appearance, got a necessary quality to fight for highest position.
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USB hard disks lately become very popular. This especially goes for 2.5’’models. The reasons for that can be found in their usefulness and practicality. Yet, we are living in times when it is necessary to transfer huge amounts of data from place to place. At first, manufacturers on market fought with larger and larger capacity of these devices. Lately, when capacity stopped being key factor, manufacturers turned to HDD case design. On that field, Prestigio went step ahead of its competitors and launched Prestigio data Safe II Fashion Edition.
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At the end of June, in Spain, we were introduced to a new series of 48xx graphics cards from ATI. We saw then only RV770PRO (4850) but at this moment 4870 (RV770XT) is also available. Even though our sources from AMD didn’t unveil why 4870 wasn’t shown on launching, we assume that some problems with quantities of available GDDR5 memory occurred. Considering that 4850 uses GDDR3 memory, it is no surprise that many retailers had them on stock. ATI 4870 will be sold, in beginning, exclusively with GDDR5 memory (this is the first graphics card that uses this memory) but AMD leaves a possibility that some innovative partner might launch later version that uses GDDR3 memory.
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It’s rare occasion to have on test, on the same month, new generation products from two big rivals (nVIDIA and ATI). This is really good news because ATI had some serious delays with R600 and that is one of reasons why it was so indifferently received on market. ATI realized that now must roll up its sleeves to catch up nVIDIA, because at that point seemed that nVIDIA unreachably moved away.
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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.
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!
Reviews 
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.
