First impressions are usually very important to me. There are many times I will look at how a motherboard is built and pass judgment on it before it's even powered up. This isn't going to be a problem with the Intel D875PBZ motherboard because you can tell the quality just by looking at this motherboard. Below I have a range of photos so you can see for yourself.

In the second photo you can see that Intel has kept the IO panel close to standard with the exception of moving the LAN to the opposed side of the parallel port and adding a few more USB ports. As you can see in most of the photos the chipset heat sink is a passive heat sink, I like this better then active coolers because it's more functional and doesn't fail or take power to run. The AGP port is not a Pro port like most motherboards have but then again I still have never even seen an AGP Pro card that wasn't in a picture. The AGP port does incorporate a locking mechanism on the rear of the port, like other Intel boards, to keep your card secured in the slot, this comes in handy on cheap cases that could allow your card to slip out.

The first photo here shows the box that this motherboard came in, if you have ever had an Intel motherboard their boxes have had very few changes over the years. The second photo shows the software and manuals that come with the motherboard, as with all other Intel desktop boards this one includes a sticker that you can stick to the inside of your case for reference when upgrading or working on your computer. The last photo shows the accessories that this motherboard comes with. Intel included an IO Back panel, single headed floppy cable, 80 conductor IDE cable, and two SATA cables. I wanted to tell Intel here that I love single headed floppy cables, I wish more motherboard manufacturers would start doing this. Lately I have seen ASUS motherboards use single headed cables but their cables are way to long.  I like the fact that Intel's cables are short and don't take up unnecessary space in your case.

On these tests we will be comparing the ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe with the Intel D875PBZ. The AMD system will be using an Athlon XP 2500+ and the Intel system will be running a P-4 2.4c 800FSB. Some of the tests will have the AMD running with a 400MHz FSB to see how much the FSB affects performance.