The card of the second-echelon manufacturer is well equipped. Accessories:
- Package of a standard design;
- Documentation: user manual,
installation manual for IDE RAID - in English;
- Cables:
2 ATA66/100/133, 1 Serial ATA and FDD;
- Bracket with 2 IEEE 1394
ports;
- Bracket with 2 USB ports;
- Bracket with a
Center/Bass connector;
- CD containing:
- drivers;
-
user manual in PDF;
- DirectX 8.1;
- Adobe Acrobat Reader.
The layout has several typical drawbacks: audio-ins are in front of the PCI
slots and IDE RAID connectors are behind them, and when a video card is installed
it's difficult to handle the memory modules. But it's not difficult to reach the
jumpers when the board is already installed. Their functions are shown on the
textolite. The 3-channel switching voltage regulator incorporates 6 capacitors
of 3300 uF and 3 of 1500 uF. The following controllers are integrated:
- audio controller based on the chipset's capabilities and Avance Logic
ALC650 AC'97 codec supporting 5.1 audio systems;
- IDE RAID
controller based on the HighPoint HPT372 chip, supporting RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 via
the ATA133 and SerialATA protocols (with the Marvell 80i8030-TBC chip);
-
IEEE 1394 bus controller based on the Realtek RTL8801 chip.
There
are power and reset buttons onboard. Non-unsoldered connectors: none.
The system monitoring is supported by the ITE IT8705F chip. What is controlled:
- processor voltage, +3.3, +-5 and +-12 V and VBAT;
- speed
of 2 fans;
- temperatures of the processor (a built-in sensor) and
the board (a built-in sensor).
There are 3 connectors for adjustable
connection of fans. Brief characteristics of the board: memory
slots - 3 DDR SDRAM; expansion slots - AGP/ 5 PCI; I/O ports - 2 COM/ LPT/ 2 PS/2/
3 IEEE 1394/ 6 USB 2.0; dimensions - 305x245 mm. Adjustment can
be carried out with:
| jumpers and switches | Jumper
to clear up the CMOS | | | Jumper to enable/disable
IDE RAID | | | BIOS based on the AwardBIOS
6.00PG from Phoenix | Setup of memory timings | + | CAS
Latency, System Performance, Addr/Cmd Rate | | Setup of memory frequency | + | DDR200,
DDR266, DDR333, DDR400 | | Setup of AGP bus | + | |
| Setup of PCI bus | - | | | Changeable
scaler of AGP and PCI buses | - | | | Manual
assignment of interrupts | - | | | Changeable
FSB frequency | + | 100-165 MHz in 1MHz steps |
| Changeable CPU multiplier | + | x8-x50 |
| Changeable core voltage | + | 1.1-2.4 V |
| Changeable memory voltage | + | 2.55, 2.6, 2.65,
2.7, 2.75 V | | Changeable chipset voltage | - | |
| Changeable AGP bus voltage | - | | We
used the latest available version of the BIOS - BIOS S904. This is a
good board with a nice pack of components and a relatively low price. Test
results:
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