As far as looks go, the HI09-Z motherboard from Jetway is pretty good looking and carries with it some nice features in the form of the built in power button, LED debug reader and mini PCI-E port. The problem seems to be once we get up and running. Our 2600k which has been flawless on every other motherboard we tried, just wasn't playing nice on this one.
When we go through and look at numbers like heat as well, we know it's not related to that, as in that department we again see the board doing very well. Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that at stock we couldn't get our RAM to run as strong as it normally would on other boards, nor could we get our CPU running past a 43x multiplier.
We emailed Jetway and didn't hear back from them and
we looked at their website and confirmed we're using the most up to date BIOS. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the board itself because once we bumped those voltages up a little, it ran perfect at stock. The issue is no one should have to go into the BIOS to get their machine running stable at stock.
On the topic of the BIOS, it's not nice. We can get past the lack of the graphical interface, we've seen GIGABYTE choose not to use it and that's not a problem. The biggest issue with the BIOS is not only the lack of options, but with the options we do have, the range is an issue.
There's some potential here as the board looks great and once up and running, performance is exactly as it should be. There's no doubt some issues at the moment and with no price and the board not being listed on Newegg yet, we feel it's almost pointless giving it any kind of score at this time.
For the time being, though, it's not one we'd recommend and considering it's hard to find at the moment anyway, the chances are that's not going to be an issue for you. If anything changes soon with the board, we'll make an effort to update this review, but until then we have to move on to the next product.