Earlier today, we covered ECS coming up with two motherboards, based on Intel P55 (LGA-1156), and AMD 785G (AM3). Coincidentally, ASRock has a similar pair which is gearing up for launch at the upcoming Computex event. The P55 Deluxe could be the company's premium LGA-1156 motherboard, while the M3A785GXH/128M a rather high-end board, especially looking at its feature-set, that expands that of the the chipset typically offers.

The P55 Deluxe supports LGA-1156 processors sans the Flexible Display Interface feature (FDI), since it looks devoid of common display connectors. It supports four DDR3 DIMMs, with the Dual-Channel DDR3 memory interface, advertising support for DDR3-2000 (probably by overclocking). The board provides three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, (x16, NC, x4) or (x8, x8, x4, when the slots are populated). Apart from ATI CrossFireX, NVIDIA 3-way SLI support is advertised.

Over to the M3A785GXH/128M, and there is an interesting feature here. Although AMD 785G isn't specified to support CrossFire, ASRock used andexternal lane switch card to support it. The first two PCI-Express x16 are eletrically (x16, NC) or (x8, x8, when both are populated). The third slot seems wired to the southbridge and is electrically x4. The board supports AM3 socket processors, with four DDR3 DIMM slots offering support for dual-channel DDR3-1600 memory. The Radeon HD 4200 IGP makes use of 128 MB of DDR3 SidePort memory. Standard display connectors such as DVI, D-Sub and HDMI apply. An external storage controller ups the number SATA channels, by providing an internal, and an eSATA port. ASRock wasn't very generous with its photography.

One thing that has always bothered many people is how long it takes to actually get to a computer to a working state after you power up the system. We live in such an instant society that it is hard for us to wait for the minute or so. We forget that not too long ago, it took several minutes to get a system up and running, and sometimes you even had to change out a floppy disk to continue! Man, times have changed! ASRock has decided to help us cope with those changes by introducing a technology called Instant Boot on their nForce 740i SLI motherboard based motherboard - N7AD-SLI. ASRock says that your system can be up and running in as little as four seconds. Though we did not experience that kind of speed, it was a nice feature to work with. We put together a short little video review to show you how it works.Understanding how Instant Boot works is really not that difficult. It really is nothing morethan an enhanced S3/S4 state that is used.The whole reboot process is necessary to make the start-up so quick. Instead of a user having to mess with the OS or BIOS to set S3/S4 up, Instant Boot uses a software interface to accomplish the task. It goes even further than just a typical S3/S4 state though, as the reboot process also sets the machine to be almost instantly useable (in fast mode). The novice computer user should have no issues using Instant Boot at all. It is safe and VERY self explanatory. I was a little surprised that there was not a single mention of Instant Boot in the owner's manual for the board. That was certainly an oversite that needs correcting!