Thoughts
During testing we encountered no major issues, although the latest version of nTune (5.00.03.06) wouldn't work fully (a known issue being fixed), with NVIDIA Monitor instead displaying an error message and closing down. The board shipped with nTune 4 on CD, and that works for monitoring, but obviously doesn't work for system adjustment due to its age.
It also seems to report the CPU temperatures too high and they don't fluctuate much, leading us to believe that with nTune 4 installed, NVMonitor isn't accurately reporting the temperatures .
Niggling layout issues aside, the Foxconn C51XEM2AA performs as expected and in some cases offers class-leading performance, in addition to providing a myriad of BIOS parameters to adjust in order to get the most out of the system.
Initial indications to HEXUS were that the Foxconn C51XEM2AA would be
offered for retail in the UK at £170.00 +VAT (just shy of a
fairly eye-watering £200 inc. VAT), which, compared to the
£136.59 inc. VAT (£116.25 +VAT) for the ASUS
M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition would’ve meant a
£65 price delta that we think would’ve put it out
of contention.
However, at the eleventh hour, Foxconn seems to have had a change of
heart and have just advised HEXUS that the C51XEM2AA will be available
for £115.00 +VAT (£135.12 inc. VAT).
Foxconn, in reconsidering and adjusting the price of its flagship
mainboard for AMD’s new socket AM2 processors, to around a
quid (£1) below that of ASUSTeK’s own offering,
rather reveals its intentions we think…
Foxconn, a significantly larger beast than ASUS, has - in the retail,
PC enthusiast focussed market – been Taiwan’s
sleeping dragon, but, clearly now focussed on invading the lair long
dominated by ASUS, is really starting to stir from its slumber.
Said to have revenues beyond $27 billion, Foxconn is arguably the only
Taiwanese operation with the financial resources to get medieval with
ASUS, and win.
HEXUS has seen the writing on the wall in this respect for some time
now, with Foxconn recently aggressively poaching ASUS UK’s
marketing and PR manager - Michael Littler - to spearhead
Foxconn’s European marketing operation (and who promptly took
with him one of ASUS UK’s other marketing executives,
Lawrence Felice).
It seems obvious to us that, in the UK at least, many Taiwanese
mainboard manufacturers have badly suffered, for not appointing into
their company’s most senior positions, personnel who are
either indigenous to the territories in which they wish to challenge,
or those who at least have a genuine understanding of the local market
and the nuances of the local language.
But, at some point, Foxconn obviously decided to break with this flawed
‘tradition’, and Foxconn UK is headed up by another
Englishman, Stephen Ling.
All Foxconn needs now is some innovative thinking - and execution - at
an R&D level, and the game will be truly on.
In any event, at a price of £115.00 +VAT (£135.12
inc. VAT) we think that the Foxconn C51XEM2AA is a safe buy for those
going down the Socket AM2 route, and well justified especially if you
want to make full use of its system clock and advanced memory
parameters.
One particular reason we think the C51XEM2AA is a ‘safe
buy’, is because it was co-operatively developed with NVIDIA
as the nForce 590 SLi reference mainboard, and, with the stakes so
high, the joint R&D resources of these two operations
would’ve been very thorough indeed; additionally ongoing
feedback from both Foxconn and NVIDIA’s OEM, trade and
end-user customers is likely to mean particularly rapid BIOS
development (and, if needed, hardware revisions).
Furthermore, as NVIDIA’s reference mainboard, it also seems
logical that NVIDIA ForceWare device drivers for its nForce 500 series
chipsets will have been, and may continue to be, primarily developed,
and presumably thoroughly tested, on the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, which means
that compatibility issues may well be less than on other
manufacturer’s products.
It’s clear to HEXUS that NVIDIA’s target with
Foxconn’s project ‘Tritium’, which
spawned the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, was to showcase a product to beat down
ATi Technologies’ RADEON XPRESS 3200 (RD580) core logic based
‘Manta’ and ‘Sturgeon’
reference mainboards.
The development of these (ATi) reference mainboards primarily focussed
on capturing the minds and wallets of multi-GPU PC performance and
overclocking enthusiasts, and therefore the
‘tweakabilty’ and high performance of the Foxconn
C51XEM2AA, especially with EPP capable memory modules such as Corsair
TWIN2X2048-8500C5 EPP DDR2, and NVIDIA’s forthcoming GeForce
7950 GTX 1024MB integrated SLi accelerators, was likely to have been a
very high design criteria indeed.
We’ll reserve judgement as to whether the Foxconn C51XEM2AA
is absolutely the best nForce 590 SLi mainboard, or indeed the best
extreme mainboard for AMD AM2 processors once we’ve completed
testing of other products in the HEXUS Labs.
But if you’re currently in the market for an AMD Athlon 64
FX-62 and you want to run NVIDIA SLi, then, for now, Foxconn C51XEM2AA
is the best nForce 590 SLi mainboard HEXUS has yet written about, and
you won’t go far wrong.
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please know that this article on the FOXCONN C51XEM2AA (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5709), and other forthcoming HEXUS.snapshots are essentially a ‘first look’, not a full HEXUS review.
expect to see HEXUS.snapshots when we’ve been put in a *very* time-limited position (predominantly by hardware manufacturers and technology providers (oh, and please don't assume that FOXCONN was primarily or exclusively the culprit in this particular case, it was in fact AMD)).
the introduction of HEXUS.snapshots will enable us to more efficiently deal with situations like this - HEXUS.reviews :: ATI RADEON Xpress 3200 Shootout: ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe -v- Sapphire PURE Crossfire PC-A9RD580 (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5383) - arising.
in the case of that article, for all the reasons explained here (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5383&page=13), and here (http://forums.hexus.net/showpost.php?p=771154&postcount=18), i feel that some HEXUS readers may have been disadvantaged by our not posting information earlier, and before issues that HEXUS identified were resolved.
HEXUS.snapshots will go some way towards keeping the HEXUS readership even better informed than ever.
so, expect some AMD Athlon FX-62 and FOXCONN C51XEM2AA overclocking in a future article, but if it’s useful to you in any way, what i can say for now is that this hardware combination, coupled with Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 EPP DDR2 RAM in the SCAN 3XS Athlon 64 FX-62 AM2 system (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5693), went straight to 3.2GHz right out of the box, however we’re not yet convinced that is the stable limit.
hope this all helps.
cheers,
PDQuote
Well, now we know where the Tritium "leakage" was probably coming from! :)
if you're thinking it was FOXCONN, i *really* don't think so. (read: i'm more than confident... :) )
i do however suspect that, one way or another, it may have originated from another Taiwanese company, perhaps one with a wee axe to grind over _not_ being engaged to produce NVIDIA's 590SLi reference mainboard?... perhaps... :mrgreen:
...tho I understand they can be uncomfortable for others. . . ;)
indeed...
cheers,
PDQuote
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