Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard Officially Launched

Shhhh — Bad Axe 2 Made Public

As of yesterday Intel made the Bad Axe 2 motherboard public and offers driver for the board that comes out next month. The website for the Intel D975XBX2 motherboard is packed full of all the juicy details on this enthusiast motherboard, but doesn’t mention that it supports upcoming Intel Quad-Core processors. We know it does as we’ve already had the chance to benchmark a number of processors on Bad Axe 2 and have found that this board is truly an improvement over the original Bad Axe production board from last year.

Intel’s corporate website is obviously marketing this board at gamers. Take a look at this quote from their site:

If you’ve got the POWER?the SPEED?the PERFORMANCE on your team, then you’ve got the WINNING EDGE. With the Intel Desktop Board D975XBX2, supporting the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, your desktop PC will become the ultimate weapon. You will scream through the latest games, level after level. Add the world’s best gaming processor and the D975XBX2 to your game strategy – a combination so BAD that it’s GOOD.

Previous Articles on Legit Reviews That Feature Bad Axe 2:

– Intel Officially Announces Quad-Core Processors
– Intel Shows D975XBX2 BIOS and QX6700 Overclocking
– Benchmarking The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Processor

Our previous testing on Revision 303 and 304 motherboards has been nothing but a joy, but it seems that the boards we have been testing are not the latest and greatest Bad Axe 2 revisions available. In all honesty the Rev303 board that we benchmarked the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Processor on will never see the light of day when it comes to the retail market. After looking at the Intel D975XBX2 Specification Update it seems that Intel has moved past the Rev304 boards that the media has been using and is now shipping Rev503 boards to retailers around the world.

According to the above basic desktop board identification information Intel has two revisions on the market and both look to be shipping with different BIOS revisions. The latest BIOS is version 2214, which just came out on 10/23/2006. Intel will also have two configurations of the board available (BOX/BLKD975XBX2KR and LAD975XBX2LKR). From what the configuration page shows a number of differences are present. On the LAD975XBX2LKR the audio controller is different, the number of SATA ports is cut in half, the 1394a ports have been removed and the warranty has been lowered from three years down to just a single year. It’s obvious from the configuration page that the LAD975XBX2LKR will be the budget Bad Axe 2 motherboard!

Let’s take a closer look at the board revisions and what this means to our readers.