Intel Chipset New Force - FOXCONN MARS – The Warrior God

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

[Seer]

Very good review!

[k@in]

one question though: what nb/vtt/sb voltage did you use to get 550fsb?

[Nasgul]

Excellent review. I like the simplicity of the BIOS feature, specially with the timings and voltages, easy, very easy to understand. IMO anyway.

The P35 chipset has sure been one heck of a good chipset, pretty much every board manufacturer that couldn't have a good OC'ing board, this chipset has saved their butt.