Intel 850 Motherboard Roundup: September 2001

The Winner and Conclusion

After hours of testing, we’ve succeeded in proving the maturity of the i850 chipset as evidenced by the narrow performance range and high levels of stability that we found, even among the engineering samples. Clearly, these two factors cannot be relied upon to distinguish these products. 

When it came time to look for these distinguishing features, we found it interesting that we had so many boards that didn’t support overclocking at all, a situation very different from most of our recent roundups.  In some cases, it’s a matter of the manufacturers we’ve included this time around, while in others it may be because many of these boards were the first attempt at an i850.

The ASUS P4T came very close to winning this roundup, but the ABIT TH7 was able to edge it out as the best overall i850 motherboard thanks to its onboard IDE RAID controller. Of course, the TH7 was also the best overclocker as well and ran rock solid in all of our tests. It doesn’t hurt that it also comes with excellent features that will help you diagnose any problems you might have. For all this, we bestow the ABIT TH7 with an AnandTech Editor’s Choice Gold Award.

At the same time, the ECS P4ITA is the clear value choice with its excellent performance and aggressive pricing.  We also did not encounter any problems with this board even though it’s a mere engineering sample.