After careful consideration I have decided to transfer all hardware review activities to a new domain. I purchased Hardwareasylum.com in 2012 and have been working hard to build a new and improved Ninjalane on that domain. If you are reading this you have reached one of the archived articles, news, projects and/or reviews that were left behind during the site migration.
Please update your bookmarks and be sure to visit the new and improved Ninjalane at Hardwareasylum.com
DFI Infinity 865PE (Springdale) Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Board Layout and Features cont.
I mentioned before that I was undecided about the location of the IDE and Floppy connectors and if it wasn't for these 4 little guys I might have been upset. The 865PE Infinity features 4 Serial ATA ports, two come with the ICH5 Southbridge while the other two being controlled by the Silicon Image RAID controller. DFI has included a separate manual for the RAID functions but it isn't any more complicated than a Promise Fastrack. The Silicon Image chip supports RAID 0 and 1. The VIA chip seen in the photo provides the onboard Firewire support with a total of 3 ports available, only one is usable out of the box.
The sound controller is a C-Media CMI9739a providing 6 channels of full-duplex sound with digital S/PDIF ports.
Realtek is providing the onboard LAN support with a RTL8110S Gigabit LAN controller. It is not every day you see GigaLan on a Springdale board, except for when Abit sneaks a couple out the door.
Realtek is providing the onboard LAN support with a RTL8110S Gigabit LAN controller. It is not every day you see GigaLan on a Springdale board, except for when Abit sneaks a couple out the door.
Ample documentation and included goodies hasn't been a problem for DFI and with the 865PE Infinity you get everything you see here. The manuals are kind of thin when compared to some that I have seen but if you are anything like me the only time you look at the manual is to find out what pin headers turn the thing on. Despite the rather light "thunk" factor everything of interest is included.
