I just recently rebuilt someone's machine with the following mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813186029
This is, obviously, a Micro-ATX SiS741GX chipset based Socket A motherboard that happens to only be $44 at NewEgg. The person's system I rebuilt had an idiot builder the first time around. The original builder used a VIA KT133 (not even A) chipset motherboard with a AthlonXP 1800+ Palomino core procesor. As most of you know, the VIA KT133 does not support a 133Mhz (266Mhz DDR) FSB--it only goes to 100Mhz, although it can run the RAM asynch at 133Mhz. This hobbled his processor to 1.1Ghz instead of the proper 1.533 Ghz, not to mention that the KT133 would not have taken advantage of the deeper Translation Look-Aside buffers on the Palomino core. The machine also had Windows ME on it and the guy was wondering why he was having constant crashing issues. Jesus.
Ok, so I went ahead and installed the following into his existing Micro-ATX case:
1. Antec SL350S 350W PSU borrowed from a Antec SLK3700BQE.
2. The new Foxconn mobo and AthlonXP 1800+ processor.
3. 1 Stick of 512MB PC3200 TwinMOS RAM with 2.5-3-3-7 timings. His older stick of PC-2100 was failing MemTest86 in the old and new system just to add a new dimension to things!
4. A old and dusty eVGA GeForce2 MX400 with 32 megs RAM (he was originally using a Radeon 7000).
5. The original Western Digital ATA100 20Gig 7200rpm drive was re-used.
6. Original floppy drive was re-used.
7. A nice new(er) NEC3520A DVD burner replaced his old CD reader-only drive
The RAM was set to run synch with the CPU--even though it is PC3200 RAM, this particular AthlonXP will run best when then RAM is at PC2100 speed (133Mhz). Timings were able to be tightened up to CAS 2.0 and the "Performance" setting selected in BIOS for RAM. What the "Peformance" setting does, I would assume, is lower the rest of the timings besides CAS latency down a further notch. I was able to get the MemTest86 bandwidth for the RAM to 605 MB/s which is pretty good for a single channel board, considering the best a KT133 will do is about 305 MB/s.
The motherboard recognized the Palomino core processor right off the bat and ran it at the correct speed of 1.533GHz. The on-board video was not tested. Drivers used were the latest SiS AGP 1.21 and IDE 2.04a plus for on-board ethernet I used the SiS 1.18 driver instead of relying on XP's default driver.
Motherboard observations:
The goods:
1. Board came with the latest BIOS of 3/9/05 installed. No flash necessary.
2. Board is VERY stable. I had no issues during the stress testing phase to prove it out.
3. Board layout is quite good, and build quality is high. Caps are Taiwanese.
4. Board has pretty decent SiS900 chipset integrated ethernet MAC using a Realtek PHY. It is 10/100 and more than adequate.
5. Board has four USB 2.0 ports on the back panel. Another header is provided for two more front USB ports.
6. BIOS is setup well and makes sense. The setup was pretty quick and painless--of course there are no options AT ALL to overclock. DIMM voltage and CPU voltage are auto-selected and not modifiable in any way.
7. After getting XP loaded and checking the IRQ distribution, it appears that each device is using it's own IRQ--nothing is sharing anything. This is a good thing.
The could be betters:
1. Board bundle is a little bit skimpy with only 1 FDD and 1 HDD ribbon cable provided in addition to the ATX I/O shield. At $44, though, who can complain loudly?
2. It would have been nice to see some DIMM voltage adjustments in BIOS at the least, because a lot of DIMMs out there do not run well at the default of 2.5V.
3. On-board codec used is the Realtek ALC650. Not exactly a great codec. On the other hand, it has more to do with the choice of the SiS 963L southbridge--it only supports rev. 2.2 (not 2.3) AC97 sound. The on board sound was used, and it is only barely adequate, although not terrible. Fortunately his speakers were generic POS's at about 3 watts each, so who could tell which sucked more? 😀
4. The mobo manual SUCKS. It is 4 black and white pages long. No, I am not confusing it with a Quick Install guide. This is the actual manual we are talking about. A noob might have trouble with this board if there were questions on hardware setup.
Conclusion:
All in all, this is a stable and reasonably priced motherboard from Foxconn. It has good reviews on NewEgg and I liked the layout as compared to the ASRock version. For those looking to do a value-extreme Socket A build/re-build, I would recommend this board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813186029
This is, obviously, a Micro-ATX SiS741GX chipset based Socket A motherboard that happens to only be $44 at NewEgg. The person's system I rebuilt had an idiot builder the first time around. The original builder used a VIA KT133 (not even A) chipset motherboard with a AthlonXP 1800+ Palomino core procesor. As most of you know, the VIA KT133 does not support a 133Mhz (266Mhz DDR) FSB--it only goes to 100Mhz, although it can run the RAM asynch at 133Mhz. This hobbled his processor to 1.1Ghz instead of the proper 1.533 Ghz, not to mention that the KT133 would not have taken advantage of the deeper Translation Look-Aside buffers on the Palomino core. The machine also had Windows ME on it and the guy was wondering why he was having constant crashing issues. Jesus.
Ok, so I went ahead and installed the following into his existing Micro-ATX case:
1. Antec SL350S 350W PSU borrowed from a Antec SLK3700BQE.
2. The new Foxconn mobo and AthlonXP 1800+ processor.
3. 1 Stick of 512MB PC3200 TwinMOS RAM with 2.5-3-3-7 timings. His older stick of PC-2100 was failing MemTest86 in the old and new system just to add a new dimension to things!
4. A old and dusty eVGA GeForce2 MX400 with 32 megs RAM (he was originally using a Radeon 7000).
5. The original Western Digital ATA100 20Gig 7200rpm drive was re-used.
6. Original floppy drive was re-used.
7. A nice new(er) NEC3520A DVD burner replaced his old CD reader-only drive
The RAM was set to run synch with the CPU--even though it is PC3200 RAM, this particular AthlonXP will run best when then RAM is at PC2100 speed (133Mhz). Timings were able to be tightened up to CAS 2.0 and the "Performance" setting selected in BIOS for RAM. What the "Peformance" setting does, I would assume, is lower the rest of the timings besides CAS latency down a further notch. I was able to get the MemTest86 bandwidth for the RAM to 605 MB/s which is pretty good for a single channel board, considering the best a KT133 will do is about 305 MB/s.
The motherboard recognized the Palomino core processor right off the bat and ran it at the correct speed of 1.533GHz. The on-board video was not tested. Drivers used were the latest SiS AGP 1.21 and IDE 2.04a plus for on-board ethernet I used the SiS 1.18 driver instead of relying on XP's default driver.
Motherboard observations:
The goods:
1. Board came with the latest BIOS of 3/9/05 installed. No flash necessary.
2. Board is VERY stable. I had no issues during the stress testing phase to prove it out.
3. Board layout is quite good, and build quality is high. Caps are Taiwanese.
4. Board has pretty decent SiS900 chipset integrated ethernet MAC using a Realtek PHY. It is 10/100 and more than adequate.
5. Board has four USB 2.0 ports on the back panel. Another header is provided for two more front USB ports.
6. BIOS is setup well and makes sense. The setup was pretty quick and painless--of course there are no options AT ALL to overclock. DIMM voltage and CPU voltage are auto-selected and not modifiable in any way.
7. After getting XP loaded and checking the IRQ distribution, it appears that each device is using it's own IRQ--nothing is sharing anything. This is a good thing.
The could be betters:
1. Board bundle is a little bit skimpy with only 1 FDD and 1 HDD ribbon cable provided in addition to the ATX I/O shield. At $44, though, who can complain loudly?
2. It would have been nice to see some DIMM voltage adjustments in BIOS at the least, because a lot of DIMMs out there do not run well at the default of 2.5V.
3. On-board codec used is the Realtek ALC650. Not exactly a great codec. On the other hand, it has more to do with the choice of the SiS 963L southbridge--it only supports rev. 2.2 (not 2.3) AC97 sound. The on board sound was used, and it is only barely adequate, although not terrible. Fortunately his speakers were generic POS's at about 3 watts each, so who could tell which sucked more? 😀
4. The mobo manual SUCKS. It is 4 black and white pages long. No, I am not confusing it with a Quick Install guide. This is the actual manual we are talking about. A noob might have trouble with this board if there were questions on hardware setup.
Conclusion:
All in all, this is a stable and reasonably priced motherboard from Foxconn. It has good reviews on NewEgg and I liked the layout as compared to the ASRock version. For those looking to do a value-extreme Socket A build/re-build, I would recommend this board.
