Intel D815EEA

This board managed a very good score in the high-end

category, and thus gets the Runner-up position. It has a host of good features,

including five PCI and four USB ports (two of the USB ports are built-in and

there’s a connector for the other two). It has a detailed manual on the CD

along with the drivers and Norton AntiVirus software, and comes with a separate

quick start guide. The motherboard supports AGP 4x and UltraDMA 100, taking care

of future upgrades and additions. It also comes with a DVO (Digital Video Out)

slot. It does not have an AMR slot like most other boards we tested, but has a

built-in network card instead. It lost a few points in driver installation,

since it wasn’t automated.

Coming to performance, the board was average in the

entry-level category, but stood among the toppers in the high-end category. It

scored 64.5 out of 100 in entry-level, which was average. In high-end

performance, it managed a frame rate of 43 in Indy3D, which almost equaled that

of the winner ASUS CUSL2 (43.5). It also scored the highest in High-End

Winstone99, which measures high-end application performance.

A price of Rs 7,950 makes this one a good choice in the

high-end category, given its rich features and performance; but it’s not so

lucrative at the entry level. This was the only motherboard that came with a

three-year warranty.