Gigabyte 8KNXP Ultra: The 875P in Retail Action

Having taken an in depth look at our first 875P motherboard, we can confidently say that we are, for the most part, impressed with what we see. The major issue with this motherboard will be its price tag. Gigabyte expects their 8KNXP Ultra to find its way into the U.S. retail channel by the end of April or beginning of May for $430. While this might seem unbelievably high to some users, you've got to remember where Gigabyte is targeting this product; the workstation/server market. This price will fall in the coming months, but won't ever be cheap by desktop user standards; the onboard Adaptec SCSI Ultra 320 controller (this accounts for most of the board's price premium), an expensive 875P chipset (approximately $53 depending on motherboard vendor), DPS 2 add-in VRM (10.0 spec), IDE RAID controller, and Gigabit LAN among other things are just some of the features that will keep the price of this motherboard high in comparison to desktop motherboards.

But don't panic, Gigabyte intends on releasing a non-Ultra 8KNXP targeted at the workstation/performance market for $255 (though that price should fall relatively quickly after release) as well as an 8IK1100 motherboard targeted at the mainstream/performance market for around $175 planned to be released during the month of May. The 8KNXP has exactly the same specifications as the 8KNXP Ultra minus the SCSI Ultra 320 controller. In fact, the 8KNXP actually adds two features; onboard TI TSB43AB23 FireWire and two additional Serial ATA connectors via an onboard Silicon Image 3112A Serial ATA controller (meaning the 8KNXP's two additional Serial ATA connectors are strapped to the PCI bus). The low-cost 8IK1100 carries exactly the same feature set as the 8KNXP except for three features; a regular 10/100 Kinnereth LAN controller (Gigabit/CSA technology is not leveraged in other words), no DPS 2 capability, and no IDE RAID support (which would have come via the ITE GigaRAID 8212F controller found on the 8KNXP Ultra and 8KNXP). 4/23/2003 Update Apparently we posted the wrong prices for Gigabyte's 875P series of motherboards. The prices represented above are Gigabyte's actual prices.

The performance of this 875P motherboard is leading edge. As can clearly been seen in the previous pages of this review, our 875P chipset review and our 3.0C review, 875P motherboards are a good deal faster than 845PE motherboards when using an 800MHz FSB processor. However, the 875P's performance edge over the 845PE-based ABIT BH7 isn't anything spectacular, and is even less when using a 533MHz FSB processor. So if you plan on purchasing an 875P motherboard, we suggest you only do so if you are going to be using an 800MHz FSB processor or plan on using an 800MHz FSB processor in the future. However for some, features like CSA, integrated Serial ATA, RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring), and a dual channel DDR memory architecture are enough to justify an 875P motherboard's added cost compared to an 845PE-based motherboard. Of course, E7205, 850E, SiS 655 and R658 motherboards are totally out of the question if you plan on using an 800MHz FSB processor down the road, but at least we've helped you narrow it down to motherboards based on either 875P or 845PE chipsets.

We hope you enjoyed our coverage of Gigabyte's 875P motherboard. Stay tuned for lots more 875P coverage this week...