Conclusion
Albatron has taken Intel's excellent chipset and forged it into an excellent board. My experience with this board had been quite frustrating, but all in all very satisfying. The bios was easy to use and all the overclocking features were readily available. Although quite good, the bios needed improvement--major improvements. With Vcore only up to 1.6v and AGP/PCI/SCR busses not locking when they're set to, it creates a lot of problems overclockers have no patience for. With all the bads, there certainly are goods. It gave me perfect stability at high FSB even with its low Vcore. It is packed full with features and extra options. Look no further because this board has it all--8 channel sound and gigabit lan, what more could you ask for? I believe this board has excellent potential and will be able to hit its claimed 1.2ghz FSB once a new and improved bios is released. This board is going into my Coolermaster Pink case and ready to run with 1GB of ram.
Pros/Cons
Pros:
Active Northbridge cooling with copper heatsink with blue LED
Promise IDE Raid (still more popular over SATA Raid)
Blue PCB
8 channel sound
Gigabit LAN
Bios Mirror
Voice Genie
Cons:
Highest Vcore of 1.6v
AGP/PCI/SCR bus problems
Bad placement of floppy connector
No memory enhancements in bios
Ratings: 8/10
All in all this has been a decent board. The bios problems could easily be fixed with a bios update since it's not the board itself. All Albatron has to do is get their engineers to work overtime to get that bios update out ASAP! With a price of $199, this board is hard to beat.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
