bit-tech News: Foxconn's DigitaLife A79A-S motherboard

[news 28]

Hi all,

 

We have just published a review of *Foxconn's DigitaLife A79A-S

motherboard*. If you could post a link on your site that would be very

much appreciated.

 

*Link:*

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/09/15/foxconn-digitalife-a79a-s/1

 

 

*Picture:*

http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2008/09/foxconn-digitalife-a79a-s/fp_img.jpg

 

 

*Quote:

*/Foxconn's DigitaLife A79A-S is a very average board: the unimpressive

feature list, the adequate performance and the overwhelming level of

mediocrity that engulfs the package will set you back an amount that

warrants so much more to justify. Given the size of the company and

talent within it, there could be so much more impressive motherboards

being cranked out - it boggles the mind as to why there has either been

very little effort and thought put into this product or the engineers

have shot so far off the mark they're stuck in orbit.

 

However while it does not particularly innovate it does does offer a

broad range of general features, it overclocks pretty well, it has

oodles of PCI-Express to play with for either CrossFire or servers and

the onboard buttons and two digit LED POST readout are useful, but I'm

struggling to find more to complement about it.

 

There are so many little things left out that just aren't checked - the

blue PCI-Express x16 slots are too far apart for normal CrossFire

connectors and Foxconn doesn't include its own ones. In the end, we had

to use specially long //Asus ones and we doubt that many end users have

the spare resources that we do in the office. Continuing, there is the

SATA port incompatibility, the MOSFET heatsinks getting just too hot

under extended, high power load and the continually bad audio

implementation.

 

It has to be said that Foxconn's team in the UK were extremely helpful

and supportive with our problems and even sent us another board to check

our results, just in case the one we had wasn't working //quite right.

However, the intermodular distortion and clipping that were continual

'features' of the onboard audio and the waveform just isn't like what

we're used to seeing. We tried reinstalling the drivers, reformatting

and starting again and the new board but nothing could cure the issue.

On paper the Realtek chipset has some fantastic features, it's just not

working right on the A79A-S./ *

 

*Cheers guys!

 

Tim Smalley

www.bit-tech.net