Foxconn Blood Rage - If Looks Could Kill (UPDATE)

First Impressions

We've only been using this board for a few days and although there are some issues, there's nothing fatally wrong that can't be fixed with some BIOS updates. In fact, this is the only BIOS we've had so far from Foxconn. That might sound bad to you, but compared to what we've seen from everyone else over the past two months it's incredible they've got the board to this point so fast on a couple of beta-grade BIOS releases. Foxconn confirmed to us they are working on a new BIOS that they are testing in-house rather than pushing it out to the users for immediate beta testing.

The big problem for enthusiast type overclockers at this point is that they may have to use the "Force Reset" option to an extent that prevents the board from being suitable for placement inside a closed PC case. If you are not experiencing this issue, please let us know. Out of the three boards we've tested in our labs, we have not found a combination of parts that gets around it.

Other than that, the AEGIS panel needs to work as advertised. We installed everything to the letter and found ourselves at a dead end for making voltage adjustments with it. We're not sure if it's a simple fix, as OS level incompatibilities seem to be too diverse and inconsistent for logic at times. Without these tools working consistently or support from third parties, this board may never realize its full benchmarking pedigree. Pushing processors way out of spec often leads to mandatory operating system level parameter adjustments, so there's no point in having the brawn without the means to use it.

In terms of peripherals, we've had no problems plugging in and using USB devices, SATA HDD/Optical drives, graphics cards, audio cards, or anything else of that nature. Further testing is ongoing and will be discussed in the full review if we find anything problematic.

We'll sum up by saying that there's no doubt the Blood Rage has some of the finest components we've ever seen used on a motherboard. The specifications for the CPU and memory power supply are so outlandish that you'd expect the board to be able to run dual processors and double the supported amount of memory with relative ease. Some spit and polish to the software side of things is what's needed to justify those component choices though. Don't get us wrong, it's far better to have an over-engineered product that needs a little work than it is to have an under-engineered product needing any kind of work at all.

While we're hopeful fixes will be forthcoming, speed is of the essence. There are competitor boards available at a similar price point with the promise of just as much overclockability for air- and water-cooling users. Not to mention that the masses want out of the box functionality over anything else. Anyone who can find additional headroom or a consistent edge in those departments while simultaneously satisfying the needs of benchmarking fanatics will be a real winner. Recent in lab tests comparing several boards have shown that the final 2-5% of Nehalem overclocking comes down to all important Uncore voltage scaling when using the i7 920 class of processors. If you're looking at teaming Intel's cheapest Nehalem offering with a 2000MHz memory kit, you'll want a board that can provide scaling at the lowest possible Uncore voltages. While there are processors out there with better IMC's than others, we've found that the boards do play a part in unleashing the full potential of a Nehalem CPU. We'll find out this month if this board will be the one to provide headroom that users will expect in this price bracket, although it appears that DFI will have something to say about it.