In the mainstream and high end motherboard markets, there seems to be an "arms race" between the various manufacturers; each stuffing as many integrated peripherals and features into its products as possible. Consumers are definitely benefitting, motherboards these days come with almost every features you can think of, and ample expansion space on top of that.
While most of the attention has been spent on physical attributes, a few manufacturers like Foxconn are moving beyond the hardware and into software features. Overclocking is big business now and a strong software overclocking/tweaking utility can help win over users. After all, who wouldn't love the ability to tweak their computer settings while from the comfort of the Windows desktop?
Foxconn has made a pretty big splash in the retail market with its motherboards and videocards, and the company is considered a top tier manufacturer (in terms of quality) with the likes of Asus, MSI and Gigabyte. The Foxconn MARS motherboard certainly looks like a great enthusiast friendly motherboard, particularly because it's based on Intel's hot P35 Express and ICH9R chipsets.
With a retail price of $187 CDN ($190 US, £92 GBP), Foxconn is targeting high end users with the MARS motherboard. In terms of integrated goodies, the motherboard has a Gigabit network card, two IEEE 1394a ports, onboard 7.1 channel high definition Azalia audio codec, six Serial ATA II ports (with RAID 0,1,5,10) along with an eSATA jack and twelve USB 2.0 (six on the rear I/O, six headers).
In terms of expansion the Foxconn MARS motherboard offers up two PCI Express x16 slots for videocards, two PCI Express x1 and three 32 bit PCI slots. This Intel P35 Express based motherboard will support all current Intel Pentium 4/D/XE and Core 2 Duo/Quad processors running on an 800/1066/1333 MHz FSB. The four DDR2 memory slots will accommodate a maximum of 8GB of DDR2-667/800/1066 memory. The Mars platform supports Windows Vista and the next-generation 45nm Intel multi-core processor.
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