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Foxconn 875A02-6EKRS Foxconn 875A02-6EKRS: A new entry into the crowded motherboard market, does Foxconn have what it takes?
Date: May 7, 2004
Manufacturer:
Written By:
Price:
 

With the Intel 875P chipset taking a stronghold in the Pentium 4 arena, and the release of the Prescott CPU to allow you to get to that next level, we look at a new vendor (in North America anyway) and what they have to offer. Today I am going to be reviewing the 875 series from Foxconn, specifically the .

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the parent corporation for Foxconn, has been manufacturing products since 1974, primarily plastics and connectors. Since this time, they have branched out into many OEM products, these products not only include connectors, but Motherboards for the likes of which includes Dell and Gateway. Mass-market appeal and high-end enthusiast products are very different realms of existence; can Foxconn make the turn into the Enthusiast market place and compete with the likes of ABIT, ASUS and MSI (just to name a few)?

The 875A02 supports the Intel Pentium 4 Processor (Willamette/Northwood/Northwood HT/Prescott/EE) at FSB ratings of 400MHz/533MHz/800MHz. Let's look over all of the specifications.

Specifications

875A02-6EKRS

Processor

Intel® Pentium® 4, 478-pin, 533/800MHz FSB
Fully supports Intel "Prescott" processors
Intel Hyper-Threading Technology supported

X

Chipset

Intel® 875P + ICH5R

X

Memory

Dual channel, unbuffered, 2.5V DDR333/400 w/ or w/o ECC; (4) 184-pin DIMM sockets, max 4GB
Supports Intel Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT)

X

Graphics

Discrete (non-integrated) - use expansion slot

X

Expansion Slots

1 x AGP 8X, 5 x PCI

X

IDE

2 x ATA/100 + 4 x SATA/150 (up to 2 x 2-drive RAID 0, 1 arrays)

X

Audio

Integrated, 5.1 channel AC97, including front audio and S/PDIF headers (Realtek)

X

LAN

Integrated Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) controller (Realtek)

X

IEEE-1394

Integrated (VIA), 1 x rear + 1 x front I/O header

X

Rear Panel

1 x PS/2 keyboard
1 x PS/2 mouse
1 x RJ45 (LAN)
4 x USB 2.0
1 x line-in/line-out/mic (audio)
1 x parallel (SPP/ECP/EPP)
2 x COM (16550-compatible UART)
1 x IEEE-1394

X

Internal

1 x floppy disk drive
2 x USB 2.0 headers (supports 4 ports)
1 x IEEE-1394 header
Front audio header

X

BIOS

4Mb flash EEPROM w/ LAN boot, PnP, ACPI, WfM, DMI 2.0,

X

Features

Wake-on-LAN (WOL), suspend-to-RAM (STR), suspend-to-disk (STD), SuperUtilities - SuperBoot, SuperBIOS-Protect, SuperRecovery, SuperSpeed, SuperStep, SuperLogo, and SuperUpdate

X

Accessories

Support CD, user manual, 1 x floppy drive cable, 1 x ATA/100 cable, 2 x SATA data cables, 1 x SATA power cable (supports 2 drives), rear I/O shield, RAID driver floppy disk

X

Form Factor

ATX, 12.0" x 9.6" or less - see User Manual

X

Although I am new to Foxconn products you can tell by the feel (especially the weight, this is quite heavy) this is a quality built product. Initial review of the motherboard showcased a well thought out design.

The ATX Power Connector is positioned for easy access, this without being in the way of the other connectors or components (Especially CPU/HS/Fan combination). The color-coding of the boards connectors also abbreviates searching for where to plug in your devices. Some other interesting notes upon opening the package:

• The 875P is passively cooled, no fan (I know there will be some fans of this, no pun intended)
• No S/PDIF in/out on the I/O panel (Not a standard as yet, but gaining popularity)
• DDR Dual memory slots are color coordinated
• Interesting retaining mechanism for the AGP slot

The packaging contains your normal fare of manual, cables, I/O Plate and even the Quick Reference guide ala Gigabyte style.

The Users Manual is well laid out and easy to follow, giving even novice installers the ability to do well without the need of assistance. The included Quick Reference guide only aides the beginner in that ability. My initial perusal of the manual brought a few things to light, which initially made me nervous for what I had to test with. There is an included qualified DIMMs list. OCZ (among many other mainstream memory modules) is not on this list, and also missing was modules with ratings beyond PC3200. Luckily this was not an issue, as we'll be using ram not listed, but be aware your mileage may vary.

The Motherboard Installation CD included drivers for all of the board's components as well as copies of Adobe Acrobat, Norton Internet Security 2004, DirectX 9.0b and Foxconn's own SuperUtility.

Taking a look at Foxconn's SuperUtility, you see it is separated into three distinct packages. SuperStep is a simple, yet effective utility that displays critical component information. This gave you the ability to monitor and set limits for fan speeds and voltages, and also provides a page where you can increase your FSB on the fly.

Limitations to this are that it is not able to show you this information while minimized, ala MBM 5.x, and the FSB can only be raised to 233MHz on a P4C CPU (166MHz for a P4B and 133MHz for a P4A). I was only able to obtain a 230MHz FSB without SuperStep retreating back to 230.

Every time I selected higher and then clicked apply, it would revert to 230. SuperLogo allows an easy way to change the standard boot image to a BMP or JPG of your choice, letting users personalize their system a bit.

Lastly, SuperUpdate allows you to download and apply the latest BIOS available for the motherboard.

All in all a decent set of utilities, I would say that it is comparable to uGuru, albeit, not quite up to par with it as yet.

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