Intel D975XBX Desktop Motherboard - 975 Express Chipset - Socket T LGA-775 - 1 x Retail Pack

Excellent Board - Lives up to its nickname.

Strengths: 3 PCI Express slots. Support for excellent CPUs and fast RAM....

Weakness: Limited number of regular PCI slots. I would like a couple more, as I'd like to run a sound card, TV capture , and a couple of Video cards. (The seccond video card crowds the first PCI slot....

Make sure you do your BIOS updates. They release them frequently, and they're easy to do. I have been researching this board for a month before I made my purchase. I read several reviews online and in publications. Great Buy. Highly Suggest if you are builind a Conroe .. this is the board you need.

By mauhor - Sep 7, 2006

so is this rev 304?

Strengths: thats the question

Revision 304 and higher will support the upcoming Conroe chips out of the box (and also correctly auto-detect 667 Mhz. memory is this revision 304?

By jacs; - Jun 17, 2006

Intel D975XBX motherboard review

Strengths: This motherboard comes with a superb set of accessories and documentation. It is stable and fast and has the right level of BIOS configuration flexibility for my needs.

Weakness: No wake on PS/2 Keyboard or mouse. Power LED pins are non-standard for the many cases I use (2 adjacent pins on motherboard) but there is an alternate front panel LED 3-wide set of pins as well.

This is a superb high-end motherboard and may well be the first of many Intel motherboards I purchase as I build new systems. I have historically relied on ASUS for all my needs but have had several problems recently with new ASUS motherboards and RMA'd items. This motherboard has a full set of configuration options in BIOS which give me all the variables I need. For example, I am finally able to...
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This is a superb high-end motherboard and may well be the first of many Intel motherboards I purchase as I build new systems. I have historically relied on ASUS for all my needs but have had several problems recently with new ASUS motherboards and RMA'd items. This motherboard has a full set of configuration options in BIOS which give me all the variables I need. For example, I am finally able to use my 800 MHz memory at 800 MHz. All of the memory and timing functions are on one BIOS setup page. BIOS lacks indication of HDD 32-bit I/O support and manual contains no BIOS definitions or information worth reading. Good job on this motherboard Intel...it is very much worth the slightly higher price.

By dadposner - Feb 20, 2006

Excellent Motherboard for Pentium D and Conroe

Strengths: Overall design, crystal clear integrated audio, no fans to fail, well-designed BIOS, support for future processors (with revision 304 or higher)

Weakness: Documentation

Intel has a winner with this motherboard. I have a Pentium D 950 in mine with 2GB of OCZ 667MHz. RAM in it and it flies. I had no configuration issues as the BIOS correctly auto-detected everything (including memory speed and timings). The board features eight SATA connectors (all of which can be configured for RAID [the blue connectors are on the Silicon Image RAID chip while the black...
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Intel has a winner with this motherboard. I have a Pentium D 950 in mine with 2GB of OCZ 667MHz. RAM in it and it flies. I had no configuration issues as the BIOS correctly auto-detected everything (including memory speed and timings). The board features eight SATA connectors (all of which can be configured for RAID [the blue connectors are on the Silicon Image RAID chip while the black connectors are on the Intel RAID chip]). Contrary to what another reviewer said, the black SATA connectors are SATAII AND support RAID (I have a RAID 0 array running off of them).

Revision 304 and higher will support the upcoming Conroe chips out of the box (and also correctly auto-detect 667 Mhz. memory).

The board is also surprisingly resilient I had a faulty Pentium D 950 originally (that would idle at nearly 70 degrees Celsius, yet after replacing the CPU my idle temps dropped to 45 degrees Celsius with stock cooling and the board still worked fine.

Be aware that the documentation is not perfect. On the board I received, the installation of the stock HSF for the Pentium D is incorrectly shown in the photographs. Keep this in mind and follow the directions that came with the CPU's heatsink for installation. Information about BIOS settings is also lacking and is scattered throughout the manual.

Otherwise this is an excellent mainboard that will last for years.

By Jason986 - Jun 15, 2006

Intel DX975XBX motherboard and E6600 Core 2 Duo

Strengths: Support for Core 2 Duo Processors and ECC memory.

Weakness: Two HSF setpoints that control stock HSF are set too High. My E6600 idled at 56C! Use Intel desktop control center software to change these. IDCC only runs on XP.

Buying decision: I wanted a MB with a chipset that supported Core 2 Duo and ECC. Shame 975X doesn't officially support 800MHz DDR2. But the stability of ECC is more important to me than the bump in speed offered by the 965 chipsets. Documentation was important to me too. The brokee-ingleesh so often offered by other vendors doesn't hide their abysmal lack of detail. Intel offers the best...
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Buying decision: I wanted a MB with a chipset that supported Core 2 Duo and ECC.
Shame 975X doesn't officially support 800MHz DDR2. But the stability of ECC is
more important to me than the bump in speed offered by the 965 chipsets.
Documentation was important to me too. The brokee-ingleesh so often offered
by other vendors doesn't hide their abysmal lack of detail.
Intel offers the best documentation, and rock solid boards. So I chose the D975XBX.

Ordering MB: The D975XBX MB supports the Core 2 Duo, with revisions D27094-304 and up;
Or D29532-303 and up. So take care!!! You don't want an old MB revision,
with a Core 2 processor. It simply won't work, and you will have to return
one or the other.

MWave couldn't tell me the revision number for their in stock boards,
So I just had to take a chance. No restocking fee for non-opened merchandise.
The Intel board AA-revision numbers are printed on the package label, so inspect
this before opening. The AA-revision numbers are printed on a white label,
placed on the component side of the board as well.

Arrival: The MB label states that my board is ######-305
Processor arrives. Spec Sl9S8

Issue 1:
The label on the processor box says that the E6600 is for Platform compatibility guide 06.
The printing on the Motherboard box says PCG 04A, 04B, 05A and 05B. No mention of 06.
Searched web unfruitfully for the specs for PCG 06.

Issue 2: The stock HSF has its Thermal insulation material preapplied.
I was surprised to find that there wasn't full coverage!
It was applied in a circular fashion, to an area about the size of a quarter.
Imagine two 1/16 inch wide strips through that circle where there is no grease at all.
Called Intel, who assured me that this was normal.

Issue 3: The Hardware revision of the board (305) supports Core 2 Duo, but
the Bios did not. I flashed BX97510J.86A.1351.2006.0821.1744 over the old
BX97510J.86A.1304.2006.0620.1451

Issue 4: Could not boot from a bootable CD!
Neither my Windows 2000 Pro CD nor my XP installation CD would boot!
Went into the BIOS and made sure the CD was first in the boot order, and that
the board would support booting from optical and removable drives.
Still the board (D975XBX) would boot from the Hard drive. No Luck.

Tried 3 different optical drives, with no luck.

THE SYSTEM WAS FAILING (to this day) TO PROVIDE THE "Hit any key to boot from CD."
MESSAGE THAT NORMALLY APPEARS WHEN ONE HAS A BOOTABLE CD IN THE DRIVE.

Circumvention: To boot from the CD, I hit Enter a few times during POST.
The CD booted, and I was able to install W2K Pro as well as XP Pro.

Issue 5: The Processor was idling at 56 degrees Celsius, ambient 23 C!!!
This was only 4 degrees away from the Throttle temp of 60.1

Reassembled the HSF, cleaning and reapplying Artic Silver each time.
No luck.

The Heatsink and fan attaches and detaches MUCH nicer than the old P4 clamp style.

Downloaded the Intel Desktop Control Center software (IDCC).
This software was not on the included CD's, but is offered free from a link on
Intel's D975XBX motherboard homepage. It only runs on XP, not W2K.

Ran IDCC, and went into the cooling and then processor panels.
There I found two set points for my CPU fan. The 1st determined the temp
where the CPU fan starts revving up beyond its slowest state. The 2nd set point
determines the temp where the CPU fan revs to its full capacity.

These were set way too HIGH!! They were set to 50 and 60 degrees Celsius
respectively. I set these points down 10 degrees and the fan revved up earlier to its
maximum speed. Processor's idle temp fell 10 degrees to a more livable 45 C.

The software changes settings within {I believe} an otherwise inaccessible BIOS
variable. Since the software currently only runs on XP, I know of no way of
modifying fan speeds in W2K. I hope the User community persuades
Intel, into either retrofitting the software to run on W2K, or making the variables
accessible through BIOS.

Issue 6 : Have experienced many freezes, but only while in BIOS, never in windows.
Freezes occurred early on, when system used to idle at 56 C

Speed: Didn't notice how fast it was until I rendered and burnt an hour and a half
of video within 20 minutes. This used to take 2+ hours on my AMD 3500+

Curently I give the D975XBX a good review, confident in knowing that Intel
has ironed out glitches like this in the past.

Overall I would give the E6600 3.25 stars out of five only because of the high idle
temp, the processor seems to handle load well.

By Someone; - Sep 5, 2006