Specifications and Features
Here, as usual, is the spec list from the manufacturers website:
CPU:
Provides Socket-478.
Supports Pentium 4 processor providing the new generation power for high-end
workstations and servers.
Speed:
Running at 400/533 MHz Front Side Bus frequency.
The 33MHz 32-bit PCI 2.2 compliant.
The AGP 2.0 compliant interface supports 4x data transfer mode (Supports only
1.5v AGP electrical).
Chipset:
North Bridge - Intel 845G.
South Bridge - Intel 82801DB(ICH4).
RAID - PROMISE PDC20276.
IO – Winbond Smart IO 83637HF.
Memory Controller:
Up to 2.0 GB 200/266 DDR SDRAM.
DIMM 1/(2+3) Support up to 2-banks memory size up to 1 GB.
Supports 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, and 512MB SDRAM technology.
Supports unbuffered non-ECC DIMM only.
Supports only x8 and x16 SDRAM devices wit 4-banks.
Does not support double-sided x16DDR DIMM.
Accelerated Graphics Port interface
Supports a single, 1.5V, AGP 2.0 compliant device.
AGP interface multiplexed with 2 Intel DVO ports.
Supports ADD cards.
Shadow RAM:
Mainboard is equipped with a memory controller providing shadow RAM and support
for ROM BIOS.
I/O facilities:
One multi-mode Parallel Port capable of supporting the following specifications:
Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP).
Extended Capabilities Port (ECP).
Supports PS/2 compatible bi-directional parallel port.
Supports two serial ports, 16550 UARTs with 16-byte send/receive FIFOs.
Supports Infrared Data Transmission using IrDA.
Supports PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard.
Supports 360KB, 1.2MB, 1.44MB, and 2.88MB floppy disk drives.
MIDI compatible.
Game port compatible
Supports Smart Card and Memory Stick Reader Interface.
Layout
The Albatron's layout is very, very impressive. The ATX power connector is for once on the right side of the board, meaning you don't need to snake the main PSU lead around the CPU, interfering with airflow around the socket. Below the power connector, and well away from the PCI slots you find the main IDE channels. Why so many manufacturers find it necessary to put these at the bottom, as far away from the CD-ROM drives that use them as possible, always eludes me. There is enough room between the AGP slot and the DIMM slots to remove memory sticks without taking out the VGA card (just) which is another all-too-common failing. The RAID connectors can be found next to the PCI slots at the bottom, but their horizontal orientation means that looping the IDE cables out of the way of the PCI cards is effortless, and they are far enough away from the slots so not to interfere even with full-length PCI cards. USB port headers are unusually placed right underneath the AGP slot, which i thought might interfere with large heat-sink AGP cards like my tank-sized Leadtek Ti-4600, but this proved to be a non-issue. Considering the features this board packs in, I think Albatron's layout is pretty much the best we can expect - and top marks to them for thinking about the design so hard. Its the small things like layout that separate a good board from a truly exceptional model.
The AGP slot features a retention mechanism that stops the AGP card from becoming unseated. I have seen the clip method on boards from Epox and Abit, although this sliding mechanism is new to me. It is a lot less fiddly to use than the clips on the aforementioned boards and thus a welcome addition to the boards layout.
The Northbridge cooler is a large passive design, preferable to the usual noisy and inefficient 4mm thick active heatsink. A lot of manufacturers seem to be seeing the light and fitting boards with a high quality passive design - after all you can always add a custom solution to it at a later date.
Notice that there is not one but two BIOS chips. One is the standard flashable chip, the other is a totally unprogrammable backup, so that if you should ever muck anything up, or have a failed flash, it is impossible to kill the BIOS outright. This is a great idea, and a welcome addition to the PX845G.
Another interesting feature is the so called "Voice Genie". This is a feature that will verbally guide you through the boot procedure, speaking either English, Chinese, Japanese or German, which can be toggled using a blue dip switch. If you should encounter a problem, the Voice Genie will notify you of the problem. As Albatron say, "with the voice genie, you will no longer have to work blind". Its a great and original feature that can only serve to make troubleshooting a less painful task. To test it I unseated the AGP card by about a quarter of an inch and booted the machine. Rather than the usual confusing beep code, an American female voice informed me that "there may be a problem with the AGP card".
Integrated graphics
The 845G features an integrated graphics solution for those not wanting to do any gaming. Limited 3D support is included, with even advanced features like anisotropic filtering compatible (just don't expect too much performance from the shared system RAM!). With a 350MHz RAMDAC, the on-board graphics allow for excellent 2D graphics at high resolutions of up to 2048x1536 @ 32bit colour. Aside from giving it a 2D quality test (fine at 1600x1200@85Hz) I declined to run any benchmarks with the on-board graphics.
Integrated Sound
The PX845G features on-board 6-channel sound, although not from the C-Media chipset so popular with high-end integrated audio. Instead it uses the latest AC97 2.2 format that in addition to 6-channel support also has a very good SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of >90dB. In order to utilise 3D audio, the rear and centre channels need to be plugged into the microphone / line-in ports. A header on the motherboard allows S/PDIF connectivity, although extra S/PDIF audio module will need to be acquired. Quality proved to be acceptable, a far cry from the original AC97 specification on my Cambridge 510D Megaworks 5.1 speakers. It is however, not as good quality as the C-Media alternative. You really would not be able to tell the difference between the two with anything less than 4 channel speakers however, and teaming such a setup up with this on-board audio would be frankly criminal!
On-Board Network
The on-board LAN card is naturally an Intel, and thus one of the finest available. My tests showed it to be on a par with the fastest dedicated full-duplex 100MB/s NICs, with the added bonus that it seems to use less than 1% CPU utilisation.
USB 2.0
The new USB 2.0 standard features a maximum transfer rate of a whopping 480Mbps (Even Firewire is just 400Mbps) and backwards-compatibility with the existing USB 1.1 standard. Its a great feature to have on-board, allowing good future proofing with up-coming peripherals. As with the Abit BD7, and a host of other late-revision 845 boards, Albatron are unable to provide a driver for it at this time, so check their site or www.intel.com for an update.
RAID
An acronym for "Redundant Array of Independent Drives", RAID is a method of using multiple hard drives to either increase performance or reliability of a given system. The Highpoint chip on the Epox is based on the HighPoint 372 Lite Controller, and supports ATA133 disks in either RAID 0 (Striping) or RAID 1 (Mirroring). Disk striping provided a dramatic increase in drive speed (Around 95% better performance under sustained data transfers), whilst also utilising all the available space on the hard drives (assuming they are the same size). Mismatched hard disks can be used, although the maximum capacity is defined as the space on the smallest drive in the array multiplied by the number of drives. Mirroring offers no improvement in drive performance, but copies an exact image of the data from one drive onto the other, thus if your main drive should fail, you have a perfect back up until the sick disk in the array is replaced. The Albatron features the Promise FastTrak Lite controller, one of the better brands available along with Highpoint. It is ATA133 compatible, and features both mirroring (1) and striping (0). Setup with my dual Maxtor D740X ATA133 drives was painless enough, although the Promise controller sure does take its sweet time to detect drives and arrays, slowing down the boot process substantially. Performance was good, and on a par with the boards with Highpoint ATA133 controllers that I have tested recently.
Now that we have explored the features in depth, lets take a look at the performance of this so far very impressive board. Installation of windows XP was effortless and uneventful.
|
