The 775XFire-eSATA2 is an interesting board that has been overshadowed by the 965 chipset that replaced the 945 chipset the board is based upon and the new Core 2 Extreme and Duo CPUs. The chipset does not support the new CPUs meaning this is a low-cost board with solid performance for the single core and Pentium 8xx series and below CPUs only. The board supports Crossfire, making it one of very few 945PL boards that do so. External SATA support comes at the cost of internal SATA expansion, but this is not a high-end board with 8 or more SATA ports anyway.
ASRock has released an updated version of this motherboard the ConroeXFire-eSATA2 board. This board is based upon the same 945PL chipset that the 775XFire-eSATA2 is and would be the board of choice if I was looking for a board with this feature set as it also brings support for 1066MHz FSB, DDRII 667MHz and the other features that make a modern Intel chipset to the market. That board would be a far better choice for the value-conscious consumer. Overall for the price, features and performance are just right for the budget buyer who needs something solid, but sill affordable.
