In the budget corner, we have Foxconn's P9657AA-8KS2H, a board whose $100 price tag makes it one of the cheapest P965 offerings on the market. The P9657AA-8KS2H has everything you'll need, including Gigabit Ethernet, High Definition Audio, and a decent array of overclocking and fan speed control options, making it a potential bargain.

For twice the cost of the Foxconn board, you could also have Gigabyte's GA-965P-DQ6. In addition to everything you'll need, the GA-965P-DQ6 has a few things you might want, like a second PCI Express x16 slot, Core 2 multiplier control, fancy heatpipe cooling, and a handful of extra goodies.

The obvious question, of course, is whether all those extras are worth the $100 premium. Can a budget board really keep up with a high-end offering? Read on for the surprising answer.

Board specs
Although they're based on the same Intel P965 chipset family, there are numerous differences between the specifications of these two mobos.

The most critical difference between these boards is their choice of south bridge chips. The Foxconn uses a low-end ICH8, while the Gigabyte employs the ICH8R. The R, in this case, buys the GA-965P-DQ6 two extra Serial ATA ports and support for both AHCI and RAID at the south bridge. RAID support covers multiple array levels, including the tantalizing Matrix RAID, which allows users to combine RAID 0 and 1 arrays using just two drives. AHCI support is also necessary for Native Command Queuing (NCQ); NCQ isn't supported on the vanilla ICH8.

Since both flavors of the ICH8 lack an IDE channel, Foxconn and Gigabyte have to outsource their boards' ATA support. Foxconn opts for JMicron's JMB361 controller, which also offers a Serial ATA interface for the board's eSATA port. The Gigabyte board carries a "Gigabyte SATA2" chip that supplies two additional Serial ATA ports alongside a single IDE channel. This chip is actually manufactured for Gigabyte by JMicron, and it appears to be based on the JMB363.

In addition to tapping JMicron for ATA support, Foxconn and Gigabyte both dine on crab when it comes to High Definition Audio. As one might expect from a budget board, the Foxconn uses Realtek's "value" ALC883 codec chip. Gigabyte, on the other hand, springs for Realtek's ALC888 codec, which claims to have superior signal-to-noise ratios for its analog inputs and outputs. The ALC888 also meets Microsoft's fidelity requirements for Windows Vista Logo Program (WLP) 3.0 Premium certification, while the ALC883 only measures up to the WLP 2.0 spec. We'll test analog audio quality a little later in the review.

Despite a $100 difference in street price, both boards feature PCI Express-based Marvell Gigabit Ethernet controllers. Curiously, though, the GA-965P-DQ6 has only one GigE option; high-end boards usually sport dual GigE chips or a secondary networking option in the form of a Wi-Fi controller.