About time the manufacturers started to get rid of the PS/2 ports. My MSI P35-board lacks serial and parallell-ports.
Really sad though that, just as the review stated, they didn't replace it with more USB-ports.

Its hard to justify anything more than a $90 gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mobo these days when recommending a system to someone. Very hard.

All of the weapon- and death-theme named boards make me sad :( Intel should push a more positive corporate image, I propose a 'happy flower' line of motherboards, there are lots of flower names to choose so they won't run out. Maybe a 'happy dog' line for the graphics cards when they come out..

I'd probably spend just as much on a motherboard as I would on a Video card. You should be seeking longevity in a motherboard, more so then you'd expect from a CPU or GPU. As an example, I got my current mobo (975x) before the 965's were even on the market, and with ASUS keeping up on the BIOS update front, it's supported practically every LGA-775 CPU from the P4 days up to the current 45nm chips. Long-lived service FTW.

I've have the DX38BT board and can tell you that for the 6 months I've owned it, I have been glued to the support forums and watch Intel's site daily for bios updates. It's kind of funny that every site that has reviewed these boards never happens to run across any of the many issues related to these boards.

Take a look - Intel has released 9 bios revs for this board that has been out for 6 months. One bios was so bad, they released a new one 3 days later.

That's great you say ? Intel really is on the ball ironing out the issues ? I'd say that many revs in that short of time is the sign of some major desperation on Intel's part. And they still haven't got everything sorted.

Oh yeah, this article is about the BT2, not my lowly BT. Well, the BT2 is the same board running the same bios, with cherry picked X38 chips that become X48's.

NVIDIA, bloody hell, give up your SLI to intel, I want that chipset!

Wow that was completely unspectacular. BT2 wins on peripherals but can be totally written off due to DDR3. The Rampage wins at overclocking and wisely goes with DDR2, but connectivity and peripheral performance slightly tarnish it.

I sure wish you'd have put at least one P35/DDR2 board in there. DDR3 is nowhere close to worth it.

If I was in the mood to triple the amount I usually spend on a mobo and even ignore the DDR3 issue I'd still go with the Asus. What good is an X48 mobo that won't even get close to 500 FSB? After all, eSATA brackets are only a few dollars on Newegg.

The real story here is that the BT2 is virtually official confirmation that ICH9's Gig-E is busted.

On page 3, you stated:
...Back when Intel launched its ICH9R south bridge, the chip's block diagram showed an integrated Gigabit Ethernet controller—one motherboard makers would apparently be able to tap through a simple PHY (physical interface) chip. However, nearly a year has passed, and we've yet to see a motherboard actually make use of the ICH9R's apparent networking capability. With even Intel snubbing the ICH9R's GigE MAC, we have to wonder if perhaps something wasn't quite right with the implementation. Feel free to formulate your own conspiracy theories.

Intel states that, "The Intel® 82566DM/MM and Intel® 82566DC/MC Gigabit Ethernet Controllers are compact, single-port integrated physical layer devices that connect to appropriate Intel® chipsets with an integrated Media Access Controller (MAC)."
http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/lan/controllers/82566.htm

So, unless I'm not understanding something, Intel has been making use of the integrated MAC. And has been doing so for a while because I have looked at Intel motherboards at NewEgg.com that also have either the same or similar chip to enable the GigE capabilities.

Just recently upgraded to a Gigabyte EP35-DS4R and I'm glad I did. I just haven't seen anything compelling with the post-P35 releases.

This X48 platform seems like an expensive e-peen platform more than anything else.

No Quad-core FSB overclocking yet? Is that in TR's plans as a regular part of your MB testing at some point in the future?

Who brags about their motherboard?

These intel boards are getting crazy with the pricing!

It is because, P35 provides practically everything a X38/X48 delivers. The upcoming P45 is just a revision, die-shrinkage of the P35.

PCIe 2.0 *cough*AGP 4x *cough* is pointless for the most part. It will likely never see any significant usage until Nehalem's successor comes along.