|
THE NB76-EA's BIOS:
The DFI NB-76EA came with
an AWARD BIOS that covers the basics well, and doesn?t
overwhelm the user with a myriad of undocumented
options. The Advance BIOS features are pretty standard
fare, and the Advanced Chipset features are minimal at
best. The user can opt for three choices for the
dubiously titled ?System Performance?, with these
being ?Normal?, ?Turbo?, and ?Ultra?. According to a
note I received from DFI, these are adjustments for
the DRAM timing, corresponding to DDR200, DDR266, and
DDR333, respectively. As much as I would like to have
gone ?Ultra?, DDR200 and DDR266 are the only two officially
supported memory designations for the i845G, so I
opted instead for the ?Turbo? setting, even though my
stick of Corsair PC3000 DDR could have done the job.
My other concern here was that using the ?Ultra?
option would heavily favor the benchmarks towards this
board, and I preferred to keep the playing field
level for the sake of comparison.
On Integrated Peripherals
screen, you will notice that mixed
in with the usual components is the ?Onboard SuperIO
device?. Sounds cool, doesn?t it? In here we found the
setting for the various I/O ports, including the
aforementioned Smart Card, Memory Stick, and Secure
Digital Memory Card interfaces. The first time I ran
through the setup, I enabled these without checking
for any conflicts, and sure enough after everything
was installed I noticed a problem in Windows
concerning the Memory Stick drive. Back in the BIOS, I
quickly realized that Serial Port I and the Memory
Stick drive were both set to share IRQ4, so I disabled the
Serial port (I couldn?t think of anything I had that
still used serial ports anyway.) While these smart
media drives were a nice addition to the system, and
are ahead of the curve as far as innovation goes, I
feel that most users may want to disable these items to
prevent any resource conflicts unless they actually intend on
using them. Unfortunately for me, I had no such cards
or memory sticks to use to test these components.
On the PC Health status screen, we were shown the system and CPU temperatures, all three fan
speeds (here only the CPU fan was actually attached)
and the line voltages. At the bottom is part of DFI?s
Bitguard technology used to safeguard the CPU and
board. It is an automatic shutdown temperature gauge,
which is unalterable. Should the CPU reach this level,
let?s say from a non-working HSF, the system will
immediately shutdown in order to prevent any damage to
the CPU and /or onboard components. In the Frequency Voltage control
section,
the clock ratio was locked for this CPU, but we giddily
upped the bus to 116MHz, as seen in the screenshot.
|
|
Layout and Quality |
|
Plain Jane... |
|
|
|
|
|
| THE LAYOUT:
This
motherboard has a ton of connections and headers on it. Unfortunately, a number of these are
placed immediately around PCI slots 1 and 2, which could
be a hassle if adding additional cards. Located at the
slot edge of the board, we have the audio connectors, and
onboard audio and Ethernet LAN ICs. I am not a big fan of
placing jacks or connectors between the slots, since when
installed in the chassis, it makes it harder to plug in
and remove cables when add-in cards are used. Even when simply connecting the
extra serial and game ports, I had to run the cables
directly over the added GeForce4 Ti 4600 card, one of
which had very little slack to spare.
As we moved towards the other
corner of the board, we found it to be clean and
uncluttered save for the 12V ATX connector. This brings us
to the Socket 478, fenced in by a number of capacitors,
which should regulate the power nicely. The Northbridge (GMCH)
came with a passive heatsink mounted to it, held down by four
retention clips. This should normally be adequate for the
job.
In the next corner we have the two DIMM slots, which is
more of a limitation of the i845G than anything else,
since population of three slots with double sided DIMMs,
could lead to stability issues. We also see the Floppy
drive, IDE, and the main ATX power connections. I agree
with the placement of the FDD and IDE controllers as it
always made sense to me to place them right where the end
of the drives would normally be. Nothing irks me more than
to run a FDD cable from the back of the drive to a
connection hidden between two PCI slots. The ATX
connection, however, was a little hard to get to once
everything else was connected and it would behoove the PC
builder to connect this first.
In the last corner, we have the last of the ATX
connections, which keeps the cables spread out instead of
bunching up at the power supply unit, thereby increasing
airflow. Here also was the Southbridge and the usual
switch and LED connections. You will also see three
connectors which may not look too familiar. These are the
connections used for each of the included smart media
drives: Smart Card, Memory Stick, and Secure Digital
Memory Cards.
One last item to mention was the AGP slot. As seen in the
picture, a warning label comes placed over the slot,
warning the user that only 1.5V AGP cards are supported,
and 3.3V cards cannot be used. If such a card is even
installed and the system turned on, a warning light will
turn on alerting the user that there is a problem. There
are also two other LEDs on the board, one up by the DIMM
slots and the other between PCI slots 1 and 2 that come on
during power-on, soft-off, and suspend states. Their
purpose is to serve as a reminder that the system is still
powered and should be completely shut down before
installing or removing and memory modules or add-in cards.
The AGP slots also has a retention clip of its own,
locking in the card to prevent it from ?creeping? and
causing any incidental damage should it come loose. My
only complaint was the placement of two capacitors behind
the AGP slot. When I added a GeForce 4 Ti 4600, the card
almost directly touched the two capacitors. It also
prevented me from unlocking the clips on the DIMM slots
since they were so close together. This means that to add
or remove RAM, you would need to remove the video card
first. Not a major hassle, but a hassle nonetheless.
|
|
Let's Get Down to Business
|
| |
