Issues and Conclusion

Performance

Since we have only this single Pentium M-based motherboard to review, let’s assume that it is the fastest option for the Pentium M on the desktop.  That being said, what about the processor in general?

To say that I was surprised by the results would be a lie — a little birdie at DFI tipped me off. 😉  But I was still amazed when I saw it happen on my test bench first hand.  The performance of the Pentium 755 processor at the default 2.0 GHz is nothing to sneeze at, but when we easily bumped the processor to 2.4 GHz with a single modification in the BIOS, the CPU flat-out ran!  In our gaming tests we saw the processor out pace the entire suite of Pentium 4 and Extreme Edition processors, and compete very well with the highest end Atlon 64 and FX processors. 

Intel Pentium M 755 and DFI's 855GME-MGF Review - Processors 82

Your future desktop system?

Our other benchmarks showed the real-world benchmarking to be just as impressive on our Winstone and WorldBench results where the overclocked Pentium M took away any crowns from the Intel P4 camp had and placed them crookedly on its own head.  The AMD camp had better be a bit scared by these results as well. 

And all this with a “crippled” single channel memory controller and AGP graphics bus?  This is why the future of Intel processors lies with this bad boy.

Features

The DFI 855GME-MGF motherboard doesn’t have a lot of features to offer, but not for a lack of trying.  The fact is that the chipsets were designed by Intel and are intended for mATX boards, thus the amount of area the DFI team had to work with was cut down substantially.  Still, DFI went with the 6300ESB south bridge instead of the ICH4, which added PCI-X (again, NOT PCI Express) and SATA to the mix to put the board into the current year of technology.  Firewire and USB 2.0 really round out all the board can boast.

Oh, but don’t forget the Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (though you might try to) as it will allow you to use dual monitors if you have an AGP card installed at the same time.  That can at least make it worth while to have, right?

Heat and Noise

Without a doubt this is the biggest selling point next to performance.  When using the integrated video on this board, my lab was as close to silent as it has ever been.  Adding on an X800 XT video card killed that off, but if you were to use the board for a SFF box or something then it would barely be audible.  The idea of this in my living room as a gaming PC sounds like a good idea to me, and probably to many of you as well. 

Low heat = slower fans = less noise = happy users. 

Price

Maybe this is that proverbial ‘humble pie’?  The current lowest price on the DFI 855GME-MGF motherboard is $210 from our friends at Newegg.  That is much more than the majority of motherboards for the Intel and AMD platforms currently, and a lot more than you would expect to find a micro-ATX motherboard for in this day and age.  The problem, we are told from DFI, is because the supply of chipsets is so low, production volume of this board is so low, and hence raises the prices somewhat dramatically. 

To add to the problem, the Pentium M 755 processor I used in this review is priced at $435 or so at the time of writing this article.  With the Athlon 64 3500+ currently running at around $275 and the 4000+ at about $535, that places the Pentium M 755 right between them.  If you are going to overclock the 755, then the performance you get out of it will be worth more than the $435 price tag, but we didn’t overclock our Athlon 64 processors here to see which one held up better.  Of course, if you are going to overclock, and want to try starting lower, you can go as low as $212 on a 1.6 GHz processor and go up from there.

Issues

So other than the price, what issues did we have against the motherboard and the platform in general?  I’d like to have seen more overclocking options in the BIOS to allow for some better control.  Maybe a higher voltage increase to the CPU and northbridge for those users that really want to push the Pentium M to its limits. 

I’d also like to see some standard on the heatsink attachments, so that users can use water cooling or even typical after-market heatsinks on the board if they want to.  This would all add up to one hell of an enthusiast board.

Finally, and maybe more importantly, the motherboard’s feature set is outdated, and this could cause a problem for those of you looking to hold onto this setup as your main system.  Without PCI Express support, the “resiliency” of the DFI 855GME is seriously in doubt.  If you are using this as a secondary system (like an HTPC or a portable gaming rig), or don’t mind the older features, then the DFI motherboard and Pentium M processor is surely going to impress.

Forward Looking Statements

“Some of this article contains forward looking statements…” or something like that.  There are two important points this review reveals for the future of Intel platforms.

First, this motherboard uses the older version of the Intel Centrino technology.  Had this board been based around the “Alviso” revision that was recently announced from Intel, it would have added PCI Express graphics, dual channel DDR2 memory, native SATA and improved RAID as well as a few other items to the mix.  Though DDR2 doesn’t really mean that much to me right now, I think having had a dual channel memory controller and PCI Express graphics would improve this as a desktop option very dramatically.  Perhaps DFI or another board manufacturer has one in the works?  *wink*

Even more importantly, this motherboard and processor article gives a good look at what we can expect from Intel in the coming months and years as they make their own transistion from NetBurst architecture to a more “P-M like” architecture in their desktop parts.  Also expect to see dual-core and 64-bit Pentium M parts from Intel by 2006 as well, which will really shake up both the mobile and desktop markets (hopefully!). 

Final Thoughts

The DFI 855GME-MGF motherboard offers a new platform for the enthusiast in the form of the Pentium M architecture.  The platform performance is very impressive and puts the Extreme Edition marketing to shame.  Though it may still be a tad to expensive to become widely accepted in its current state, there is little doubt that as the market for these processors and parts develop, support will grow tremendously from vendors attempting to cater to this new developing genre. 

Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best prices on the DFI 855GME-MGF, and anything else you may want to buy!

Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best prices on the Pentium M 755, or any other Pentium M processor!

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