Foxconn Renaissance

Performance analysis

At stock speeds the board was not bad in some tests, and then in others it decided to dish out large portions of fail cake from its patisserie-esq hardware.

We'd fire up the Lavalys Everest memory performance test and it would produce the second fastest copy speed we'd seen since the Blood Rage and respectable scores in both read and and write. Then we'd hit the real world apps and it would lag behind worse than the smokers in a high-school cross-country run.

The Foxconn inconsistently bounced from failing in a rather epic fashion in the GIMP image editing test, and gaming was much the same as both Crysis and Far Cry 2 ran appreciably slower than we're used to seeing from an armed X58. Then the Renaissance would turn around and complete the multi-tasking run in one of the fastest times we've seen.

Then there was the overclocking performance where some appreciation was gained. With the limited BIOS options we were surprised at being able to squeeze a decent 4GHz overclock from our Core i7-920 CPU, the Renaissance managed to be consistently competitive in the performance stakes.

Because Core i7 boards are dropping in price we compared the overclocking speeds to the two cheaper models we'd seen, the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R and MSI's X58 Pro. Although the performance was more consistent with the board overclocked it was only faster than these cheaper models in some tests so if it's cost to performance you're after then you'd be as well to save yourself a several quid and opt for the Gigabyte.

We ran the stability test with 3DMark06 and Prime95 looping for 24 hours and to Foxconn's credit it did pass - so at least the inherent engineering at BIOS defaults is perfectly fine, even if it's not pushed particularly hard.

Conclusions

Armed with its cupcake and volume knob heatsinks, the Renaissance is a quirky little number. It provides warehouse loads of connectivity options for external storage, graphics cards and scuzzy SAS drives, which might appeal to some but to others the SAS controller will be a gimmicky marketing tick-box and the four PCI-Express slots are too close together making something like the MSI Eclipse SLI more useful.

The daughter board with its Dolby DTS support might be an upside for some but again, most audiophiles looking for 7.1 HD surround-powering hardware will likely invest in a vastly superior sound card, opting for at least the very reasonably priced Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer or Asus Xonar series. So if the feature list isn't enough to whet your appetite then it's likely that the mixed bag performance numbers won't be either.

The board overclocks surprisingly well, but the hobbled BIOS means the experience is not an enjoyable one for an enthusiast - it's several years behind the competition from Gigabyte, DFI, MSI, Asus, EVGA and probably even Biostar in terms of core features.

At around £220 there is very little reason to buy the Renaissance when the fantastic Asus P6T Deluxe retails for about the same price. The vanilla P6T costs less, as does the Rampage II Gene microATX, excellent Gigabyte EX58-UD4P and even a few DFIs if you can find the right BIOS (that's another story entirely though). Basically, the Foxconn is outshined at almost every turn by cheaper, equally or more capable boards.

If you're in the market for something Core i7 then there's tonnes of choice out there and plenty of reasons to ignore the Foxconn Renaissance. It's certainly not all bad - there are some nuggets of joy in there, but it isn't the best use of your hardearned cash.

• Features
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• 7/10

• Performance
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• 7/10

• Value
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• 6/10

• Overall
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• 6/10

Score Guide