Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard

Today we have Foxconn's follow up to the X58 powered Blood Rage, the Flaming Blade; a new board for the enthusiasts to play with.

Published
Updated
Manufacturer: Foxconn
10 minutes & 48 seconds read time

Introduction


Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard



Earlier this year we were hearing quite a few rumours about Foxconn leaving the motherboard sector. While hearing denial after denial, it still doesn't quell the ever increasing chatter. However, one thing really does speak louder than words; products.

Since these rumours surfaced we have seen Foxconn put their heads down and tails up into their motherboards. We saw some impressive results out of the Blood Rage board; its performance and features were extremely impressive and would be hard to top.

Today Foxconn is going to try with their latest addition to their high-end board sector (known as Quantum Force) for enthusiasts and overclockers with this one being called the Flaming Blade. Unfortunately there is no pricing available from Newegg yet, as this board is extremely new, so let's hope its performance warrants the wait for it to arrive on the market.

Update: Foxconn has kindly got back to us regarding the MSRP of this board, which sits at 199 U.S. Dollars; a very respectable price for what looks to be a high quality enthusiast focused offering. With this information now in hand, our final score rating for this motherboard has been adjusted to suit and we feel it is deserving of our "Best Value" award.

The Box and What's Inside


Package and Contents

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Foxconn goes for some extremely dark looking boxes when they get their art department into action. The Blood Rage box was dark with blood reds. The front of the Flaming Blade box is black with an orange file theme. On the front there is the logo, company name and some cool art work that even we can't describe.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


On the back of the box Foxconn has gone with a red theme along with a full size colour picture of the board, along with some information on the boards features.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Documentation is quite extensive; there is a standard sized user manual with setup instructions for the board, BIOS, software and general specifications. There are two extra pamphlets which are quick install guides to setting up the board if you don't really want to wade through the user manual.

A single DVD is included with software and drivers for XP and Vista 32-bit and 64-bit variants.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Lastly on the list are the accessories. The Flaming Blade has a few less bells and whistles than the Blood Rage board. However, there is more than enough to get you started with four SATA data cables, one Molex to SATA power splitter, an IDE cable and a SLI bridge.

The Motherboard


The Board

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Looking at the board itself, we can see that Foxconn has decided to go with a pretty familiar layout. First off, the 24-pin ATX power connector is placed on the right hand edge of the board, right behind the three DDR3 memory slots. The 4/8 pin power connector is located behind the PS2/USB tower combo port.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


The board is limited to a maximum of 6GB memory using 3x2GB memory modules. Foxconn has gone for compatibility rather than capacity on this board, which is especially good when overclocking as it's easier to overclock three modules rather than six.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Moving down the right hand side of the board we find the storage expansion possibilities. Using the ICH10R Southbridge the board comes equipped with six SATA ports which are right below the memory slots, but these may potentially get in the way of large graphics cards such as the GTX series. The single IDE port is controlled by the Jmicron PCIe SATA/PATA controller chip since the ICH10R does not include any IDE channels. Below the IDE port is a POST 80 code reader, so if your board refuses to boot at least you will have in some alien language a reason why.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Now it's time to see just what kind of cooling solutions will fit to this board. Foxconn has done extremely well at keeping things away from the CPU area. In fact, it will allow for some of the largest LGA1366 coolers. The CPU gets its power from a solid state 6 phase voltage regulation. A heatpipe assembly is used to keep the Mosfets, X58 Northbridge and ICH10R Southbridge happy.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Moving to the rear I/O ports we see that Foxconn has done away with one of the PS/2 ports, so you can either have a keyboard or mouse on the PS/2 port, but not both if you still have two PS/2 devices. Apart from that, all is pretty standard; the eSATA ports on the rear are controlled by the same Jmicron chip that gives the board its IDE port. The audio system is a simple HD Audio system using the ICH10R's Azalia audio standard.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Lastly we have the expansion slots. First off, being based on X58 this board is capable of twin x16 slots and this is how Foxconn has gone; two PCI x16 slots coloured red allow for SLI or Crossfire setups. A universal x4 slot is placed between the two x16 slots along with two PCI legacy slots. A single x1 slot is also available above the first x16 slot.

BIOS and Overclocking


BIOS

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Foxconn has gone with the traditional Award Modular v6 BIOS that we all know and love; though with EFI now being demonstrated for motherboards, why are we still dealing with a setup that was around during the first PC?

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


The Advanced Chipset feature menu allows you to tweak some of the PCI Express options, but the bulk of them are found under the Quantum Force menu.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


To tweak up the system Quantum Force has quite a bit of tweaking options available under a few of the dedicated sub menus; group bus tweaking, voltages and ratios all in their own separate sections.


Overclocking

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


While having quite a few options in BIOS overclocking, the board only managed to hit a max FSB of 150MHz and anything above this would cause the board to simply hang at POST. We did manage to do quite a bit of tweaking, but with not as much time as a hardcore overclocker. However, if you can't really push above 150MHz starting off, it's going to be a harder board to tweak.


Important Editor Note: Our maximum overclocking result is the best result we managed in our limited time of testing the motherboard. Due to time constraints we weren't able to tweak the motherboard to the absolute maximum and find the highest possible FSB, as this could take days to find properly. We do however spend at least a few hours overclocking every motherboard to try and find the highest possible overclock in that time frame. You may or may not be able to overclock higher if you spend more time tweaking, or as new BIOS updates are released. "Burn-in" time might also come into play if you believe in that.

Test System Setup and Memory Performance


Test System

Processor: Intel Core 17 965 @ 3.2GHz (24x 133MHz)
Memory: 3x 2GB DDR3-1600 Corsair Dominator (Supplied by Corsair)
Hard Disk: Intel X25-M 80GB SSD (Supplied by Intel)
Graphics Card: GIGABYTE 9800GX2 1GB (Supplied by GIGABYTE)
Cooling: Stock Intel cooling
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista X64 SP1
Drivers: Intel INF 9.0.0.1008, Forceware 180.24


Testing time and today we are pitting the Flaming Blade against the already tested Blood Rage and the ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition board which is our test bed setup.

Our suite of tests have not changed, nor our testing methods. All are done at stock settings using the default CPU multiplier and BLCK. We then did OC tests which are the highest BLCK/CPU/RAM frequencies we managed to get from each board.


EVEREST Ultimate Edition

Version and / or Patch Used: 2006
Developer Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com
Product Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com
Buy It Here




EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


EVEREST is first on our list. Looking at the stock results we see that the three platforms perform near identically. When we get to overclocking, despite the higher CPU clock speed of the Flaming Blade over the Blood Rage, this is more to do with memory and the 175MHz BLCK/RAM setup of the Blood Rage beats out the 150MHz BLCK/RAM setup of the Flaming Blade.

Benchmarks - Sisoft Sandra


SiSoft Sandra

Version and / or Patch Used: 2009
Developer Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.co.uk
Product Homepage: http://sisoftware.jaggedonline.com/index.php?location=home&a=TTA&lang=en
Buy It Here




SiSoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a synthetic Windows benchmark that features different tests used to evaluate different PC subsystems.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Again in Sandra we see that the memory performance of the Flaming Blade isn't as far clocked as the Blood Rage and the P6T.

Benchmarks - PCMark Vantage


PCMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: Unpatched
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/pcmark-vantage//
Buy It Here




PCMark Vantage is the first objective hardware performance benchmark for PCs running 32 and 64 bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista. PCMark Vantage is perfectly suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista PC from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Regardless of whether the benchmarker is an artist or an IT Professional, PCMark Vantage shows the user where their system soars or falls flat, and how to get the most performance possible out of their hardware. PCMark Vantage is easy enough for even the most casual enthusiast to use yet supports in-depth, professional industry grade testing.


Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Now we start to get into a few more overall benchmarks. At stock settings we see the three platforms are again pretty much equal. Now, despite the lower BCLK/RAM setup of the Flaming Blade, the increased clock speed from 3.5GHz to 3.6GHz gives it a bit more boost allowing it to keep up with the Blood Rage.

Benchmarks - SYSmark 2007 Preview


SYSmark 2007

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.04
Developer Homepage: http://www.bapco.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.bapco.com/products/sysmark2007preview/>




SYSmark 2007 Preview is the latest version of the premier performance metric that measures and compares PC performance based on real world applications.

SYSmark 2007 Preview extends the SYSmark family, which has been widely accepted by IT Managers, PC OEMs, press and analysts worldwide to support Windows Vista™.

SYSmark 2007 Preview allows users to directly compare platforms based on Windows Vista™ to those based on Windows XP Professional and Home.
The new release also incorporates numerous new features and enhancements such as an improved GUI allowing streamlined start-up and run along with a heads-up-display (HUD) and automated error reporting.

SYSmark 2007 Preview is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of Video creation, E-learning, 3D Modeling and Office Productivity. This new release includes a robust and refreshed set of applications.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


In the real world system tests the Flaming Blade at OC manages to just come in front of the Blood Rage.

Benchmarks - Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0


Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0

Version and / or Patch Used: 4.0
Developer Homepage: http://www.adobe.com
Product Homepage: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/
Buy It Here




Our test with Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 is performed with a raw two hour AVI file. It is then compressed into DivX format using the latest version codec. We measure the time it takes to encode and then record CPU usage.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Premiere Elements really likes high clocks and memory; this is where we start to see which is better. The increased memory bandwidth of the Blood Rage is the winner at OC levels here between the two Foxconn boards.

Benchmarks - 3DMark Vantage


3DMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.01
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmarkvantage/
Buy It Here




3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.


Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Synthetic gaming results puts the two Foxconn boards dead even at OC and stock speeds.

Benchmarks - Crysis


Crysis

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.1
Timedemo or Level Used: Custom Timedemo
Developer Homepage: http://www.crytek.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.ea.com/crysis/
Buy It Here




From the makers of Far Cry, Crysis offers FPS fans the best-looking, most highly-evolving gameplay, requiring the player to use adaptive tactics and total customization of weapons and armor to survive in dynamic, hostile environments including Zero-G.

Real time editing, bump mapping, dynamic lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features the CryENGINE™ 2 offers. The CryENGINE™ 2 comes complete with all of its internal tools and also includes the CryENGINE™ 2 Sandbox world editing system.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Real world gaming through Crysis shows that the higher CPU clock of the Flaming Blade wins out here. It seems that Crysis needs more of a boost than the Blood Rage is able to produce.

Power Usage and Heat Tests


Power Consumption

We are now able to find out what kind of power is being used by our test system and the associated graphics cards installed. Keep in mind; it tests the complete system (minus LCD monitor, which is plugged directly into an AC wall socket).

There are a few important notes to remember though; while our maximum power is taken in 3DMark06 at the same exact point, we have seen in particular tests the power being drawn as much as 10% more. We test at the exact same stage every time; therefore tests should be very consistent and accurate.

The other thing to remember is that our test system is bare minimum - only a 7,200RPM SATA-II single hard drive is used without CD-ROM or many cooling fans.

So while the system might draw 400 watts in our test system, placing it into your own PC with a number of other items, the draw is going to be higher.


Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


The two Foxconn boards use identical power management and components, so both boards are just about dead even here.


Heat Generation

As a new measure, we are now monitoring the heat generation from the key components on the motherboards, this being the Northbridge, Southbridge (if it contains one) as well as the Mosfets around the CPU. The results are recorded at idle and load during the power consumption tests.

Foxconn Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard


Both Foxconn boards use identical cooling pipes for heat management so we are not surprised to see similar results here either.

Final Thoughts




Foxconn really continues to surprise us. When we first saw their boards at TweakTown we thought of them simply as another OEM solution; nothing fancy with no bells or whistles. Today Foxconn is challenging some of the big names by producing similar boards at a fairly competitive price point.

Unfortunately due to the early nature of this board on the market, there were no definitive prices available for us to compare it to other boards in this dept. Due to this, there's also no availability for the board at this time. What is certain is this board has potential; it's got reasonable overclocking on tap and plenty of features. However, it's limited to a single triple channel bank meaning 6GB is the most memory this board can take at this time using current 2GB density modules.

Update: Foxconn has kindly got back to us regarding the MSRP of this board, which sits at 199 U.S. Dollars; a very respectable price for what looks to be a high quality enthusiast focused offering. With this information now in hand, our final score rating for this motherboard has been adjusted to suit and we feel it is deserving of our "Best Value" award.

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