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The
VIA KT133A has long been the darling of the
Athlon overclocking community. With excellent
performance, compatibility and stability, at a
great price point, is there any question why?
With the recent reduction in DDR RAM prices and
wide availability of motherboards based on DDR chipsets
from VIA,
ALi,
AMD
and
SiS, many
people are dismissing the KT133A when considering
an upgrade. For the most part, we'd
agree with these people. The price
difference between DDR RAM and standard PC133
SDRAM is marginal, and most DDR capable
motherboards are only slightly more expensive than
similarly equipped non-DDR boards. So why
should you consider any KT133A based boards? Well,
we'll tell you why...
The KT133A has had
a few months to mature. The chipset Itself has been
through a few revisions, there have been a slew of
reference BIOS updates, and VIA's 4-in-1 drivers have also
evolved quite a bit, and are now far better
performing and more stable than earlier versions.
On top of these incremental improvements to the
KT133A "platform", many companies have introduced
high performing SDRAM modules capable of running
at low CAS latencies with Front Side Bus speeds in
excess of 150MHz. A few sticks of this
high-performance RAM, coupled with a quality
KT133A based motherboard should result in an
incredibly fast, stable, inexpensive system, that isn't
plagued by the bugs and glitches usually
associated with a newly introduced platform.
Today, we'll be taking
a look at a KT133A based board from
Shuttle, the
AK11. Shuttle has been producing quality
boards targeted squarely at the OEM sector for years.
Because some of these older products lacked
features that many do-it-yourselfers craved,
Shuttle never gained a strong foothold in the
enthusiast market. Shuttle has broken with
tradition with the AK11 though...let's put it
through the wringer and see what we can find
out...
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Specifications / Features of the
Shuttle AK11 |
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Last of
a Dying breed? |
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Click any Image
for an Enlarged view...
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VIA KT133A Chipset
Processor:
- Socket A
- Supports
AMD Athlon CPU up to 1.4G+
- Supports
AMD Duron CPU up to 900MHz+
Chipset:
- VIA VT8363
North Bridge
- VIA
VTC82C686B South Bridge
- 200/266MHz
DDR host interface
Expansion Slot:
- 1 x AGP
(4x AGP)
- 6 x PCI
- 1 x CNR
Memory:
- 3 x DIMM
- Supports
up to 1.5GB of PC100/PC133
On board IDE
Controller:
- Supports
PIO Mode 4 and DMA Mode
- Supports
Ultra ATA 33/66/100 UDMA
- Transfer
rate up to 100 MBytes/sec
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On board I/O
Controller:
- 1 x Floppy
port
- 2 x Serial
port (16550 fast UART compatible)
- 1 x
Multi-mode Parallel port (SPP, EPP, ECP
port)
- 2 x USB
port
H/W Monitor:
- 5 positive
voltage
- 3
temperature
- 2 fan
speed monitoring
Other features:
- Onboard
Audio
- APM 1.2
- ACPI 1.0
- 2 Front
Panel USB Connector Header(Optional)
- 2 Fan
Power Connector
- CPU
Voltage Auto Detection (CPU PnP)
- Suspend to
Ram
- Supports
PC99 Requirements
- Supports
AC Power Fail Resume
- Supports
H/W monitor function
-
Wake-On-Ring
-
Wake-On-Alarm
Form Factor:
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THE BUNDLE:
Within the AK11's
box, you'll
fine a standard compliment of accessories.
A CD-ROM containing all of the necessary
drivers needed to get your board up and
running (VIA 4-in-1s and On-Board Audio
drivers), a complete user's manual, an
80-Wire ATA/100 IDE cable and a standard floppy cable are
all included. One thing missing that
we felt should have been included was a set
of secondary USB connectors.
INSTALLATION:
The Shuttle AK11
installed without incident. The board
complies to the standard ATX form factor, so
it mounted perfectly into our mid-tower
case. There are a few jumpers on board
that need to be set in order to configure
your processor's multiplier and FSB (Front
Side Bus) range, but other than that
installation was painless. Looking at
the picture below, it is obvious Shuttle put
much thought in to the AK11's layout...
This probably
isn't the cleanest case you've ever seen,
but it demonstrates something we feel is
very important. When a motherboard's
connectors and components are well laid out,
spending a few extra minutes routing and
bundling cables will yield a very clean,
uncluttered case. An uncluttered case
in turn allows for maximum airflow, which
results in lower overall operating
temperatures...and we all know how desirable
lower temperatures are, especially when overclocking...
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The BIOS, Layout and
Quality
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