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Intel D975XBX2 (i975X) Bad Axe 2 Motherboard Pictures

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 3:40 pm
by Apoptosis
Nearly one year ago I posted some of the first pictures of Intel D975XBX motherboard on the internet and here I go again with Bad Axe 2. The Intel D975XBX motherboard features numerous changes and I'll show some of them here in the following pictures.

Here is a picture an Intel D975XBX Revision 305 motherboard (on the right) sitting news to an Intel D975XBX2 Revision 303 motherboard (on the left)
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Power Button (Where is the Reset Button?):
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The Intel D975XBX2 features spots for both power and reset buttons, but only the power button made it to final production.

The new Marvell SATA RAID Controller:
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New on the Bad Axe 2 is the Marvell 88SE6145 ATA/SATA Controller and gone is the old Silicon Image Controller.

One New Solid capacitor:
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Right next to the primary PCIe slot Intel has replaced a single electrolyte based capacitor with the new solid capacitor as seen above.

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In the above picture Bad Axe 2 is sitting on top and you can see that Intel added a single electrolyte based capacitor that was not used on the original Intel D975XBX motherboard.

The new Silego clock generator:
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Gone is the ICS clockgen and on the D975XBX2 is the Silego SLG505YC56DT clock generator.

As you can see the Intel D975XBX2 motherboard has many changes done to the board for it to support 1333MHz FSB processors and as you can tell has enthusiast friendly features like the power button. Hope you like this pictures and be sure to post your thoughts. These are all pre-production pictures of the Bad Axe 2 motherboard and were taken at IDF of the Revision 303 board. We saw a couple revision 304 boards at IDF also, so who knows what will be the first retail board.

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 4:38 pm
by cadaveca
Those are some great pics. I've seen some IDT clockgens out there too...

love the power switch.

Any numbers on the marvel controller?

there's more caoacitor changes in the pci-e area too..presumable for the audio, and one between pci-e1 and pci-e2.

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:11 pm
by HONkUS
Im pretty much an AMD guy so my knowledge of modern Intel Tech is very limited but with Core2Duo spanking AMD's offerings I need a refresher lol. Are those 3 PCI-e x16 slots? and if so are all 3 capable of x16 speeds? and if so why? lol Also those blue flame HS's on the MOSFETS are awesome. Still Intel needs to come up with an easier to remember name for their mobo than "Intel D975XBX Revision 305" lol

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:17 pm
by dicecca112
HONkUS wrote:Im pretty much an AMD guy so my knowledge of modern Intel Tech is very limited but with Core2Duo spanking AMD's offerings I need a refresher lol. Are those 3 PCI-e x16 slots? and if so are all 3 capable of x16 speeds? and if so why? lol Also those blue flame HS's on the MOSFETS are awesome. Still Intel needs to come up with an easier to remember name for their mobo than "Intel D975XBX Revision 305" lol
Its called Bad Axe 2 can you remember that? :)

3 PCI-E Slots well two are for SLI (unofficially) or Crossfire and the third is for another card to handle the physics. ATI was pushing 3 Slots so that two cards could be crossfired and the third would handle physics negating the need for a physics only card. They are saying that a GPU can handle it fine.

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:30 pm
by cadaveca
...and based on the FAH results, i think that they're right!

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:16 pm
by HONkUS
Are all 3 x16? also yeah R600 and G80 are supposed to have built in physics arent they? Also ATI is now AMD so why would Intel cater to AMD? So......why 3?

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:24 pm
by cadaveca
8x8x2 i think....might be 8x8x4. Would be nice....16x3!

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:32 pm
by Apoptosis
The PCIe slots are as follows

- One Primary PCI Express x16 (electrical x16 or x8 ) bus add-in card connector
- One Secondary PCI Express x16 (electrical x8 ) bus add-in card connector
- One PCI Express x16 (electrical x4 ) bus add-in card connector

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:48 pm
by cadaveca
So, INtel 965= ATI Crossfire Physics platform(ASUS P5B Deluxe).
975XBX2=ATI Crossfire Physics + Graphics platform?

Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:55 pm
by Apoptosis
right now you have to have 3 PCIe slots if you want to run CrossFire and ATI Physics and the Intel Bad Axe series are one of the only boards to support that.

Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 6:55 am
by eva2000
thanks for the info.. interesting can't wait to get my grubby hands on one hehe

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:23 am
by Apoptosis
Image

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:15 am
by cadaveca
EPP support?

I hope these are out soon.