This is one more board from the Purple Ray series - a budget solution with
a respective orientation.
Accessories:
- Package of a standard
design;
- Documentation: user manual, brief installation manual,
description of the software supplied - in English;
- Cables: 1 ATA66/100/133
and FDD;
- Diskette with drivers for IDE RAID;
- 2 CDs
containing:
- drivers;
- several system monitoring utilities;
-
Boostek;
- Adobe Acrobat Reader;
- PC-Cillin 2002;
-
Virtual Drive 7;
- RestoreIT! 3 Lite;
- Partition Magic
6 SE;
- DriveImage 4.
As the board is quite narrow, its layout is not very convenient: audio-ins,
connectors of IDE, FDD, USB, smart card reader and power supply are tightly placed
around the PCI slots and other places which are hard to reach, and when a video
card is installed it's difficult to handle the memory modules. It can be difficult
as well to reach some jumpers when the board is already installed. Their functions
are shown on the textolite.
The 2-channel switching voltage regulator
incorporates 10 capacitors of 2200 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.
Thanks
to the ITE IT8705F I/O controller the board supports (and has a connector) a smart
card reader.
The board incorporates the following technologies:
- ABS II (protects processor from overheating).
+2.5 V
supplied to the memory modules is indicated with the red LED.
Non-unsoldered
connectors: network controller (and its connector).
The system monitoring
is supported by the ITE IT8705F chip. What is controlled:
- processor
voltage, +2.5, +3.3, +5 and +-12 V, VBAT and +5 V SB;
- speed of 2
fans;
- temperatures of the processor (a built-in sensor) and the
board (a built-in sensor).
There are 2 connectors for adjustable
and 3 for unadjustable 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/ 6 USB 2.0; dimensions - 305x225 mm.
Adjustment
can be carried out with:
| jumpers and switches | Jumper
to clear up the CMOS | |
| Jumpers for setting
a FSB frequency | 100, 133 è 166 MHz |
| Jumper
for starting up computer from a PS/2 keyboard | |
| |
Athlon XP, Duron
Morgan / Other |
| BIOS based on the AMI 3.31a | Setup
of memory timings | + | CAS Latency, Bank Interleave,
Command Rate, Fast Command, Burst Length. |
| Setup of memory frequency | + | Auto,
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 | + | 100-200 MHz in 1MHz steps |
| Changeable CPU multiplier | + | x5-x18 |
| Changeable core voltage | + | 1,1-1,85 V in 0.025V
steps |
| Changeable memory voltage | + | 2,5,
2,6, 2,7 B |
| Changeable chipset voltage | - | |
| Changeable AGP bus voltage | + | 1,5, 1,6, 1,7
B |
We used the latest available version of the BIOS - AN1.
The strongest point of the board is its overclocking potential, but the performance
at the default settings is not shining, which doesn't let me recommend this board
for those who strive for speed.
Test results:
