|
My
first assignment when I initially joined the Hot
Hardware team was to review a VIA Apollo Pro 133
based board, the
AV61 from Shuttle Inc. I was very excited to
get my hands on this product, because at that time
the 440BX had already been available for quite a
while and was lacking some of the features the
Apollo 133 brought to the table. I wasn't very
familiar with Shuttle
products so I was also intrigued by the
opportunity to test hardware from another company.
The AV61 has been through a few revisions and has
evolved into the board we are looking at today,
the AV14. The basic feature set has remained the
same but the chipset has been upgraded to the
Apollo Pro 133A which adds support for
AGP4X. Its sibling, the Apollo Pro 133 only
had support for AGP2X and the Slot 1 connector
(which Intel is currently phasing out) has been
replaced with a Socket 370 connector. The VIA
chipset has also been through a few revisions
which has increased performance and
compatibility. So, the evolution of the
board along with the maturity of the chipset may
yield a very good product.
As long as the feature set, compatibility,
stability and overclocking options are all
competitive with similar products, Shuttle should
have a winner on it's hands. Lets jump right
in and find out.
 |
| Specifications
of the Shuttle AV14 |
| More
Socket 370 Fun |
|
CPU:
Socket370
Intel Celeron PPGA 300 ~ 533MHz
Intel Celeron FC-PGA 533MHz~600+MHz
Intel Pentium III FC-PGA 500 ~ 866+MHz
Chipset:
VIA Apollo Pro 133A (VT82C694X), North
bridge
Host interface
DRAM interface
PCI interface
AGP interface
VIA VT82C596B, South Bridge
PCI to ISA bridge
UDMA 33 / 66 IDE interface
USB interface
Power management meet ACPI requirement
Keyboard Controller
RTC
FSB &
Multiplier:
66/75/83/100/112/124/133MHz +
x3, x3.5, x4, x4.5, x5, x5.5, x6, x6.5,
x7.0, x7.5, x8 (Bios setting optional)
Form Factor: ATX, 30.5cm X 19cm
(below)
Memory:
DIMM X 3, Up to 768MB of 66 / 100 / 133MHz
memory
Expansion
Bus:
1 AGP, AGP 2.0 compliance
5 PCI, 32-Bit master
2 ISA, 16-Bit
I/O:
Winbond 83977EF
1 Floppy Port: Support 1.2MB, 1.44MB,
2.88MB
IrDA connector
IDE:
UltraDMA-33 / 66
PIO mode 4
Bootable from LS120, ZIP drive, CD-ROM |
Power
Management:
APM 1.2 and ACPI 1.0
BIOS:
Award PnP BIOS
DMI 2.3
2Mb flash memory
Back Panel:
2 Serial ports, 16550 Fast UART
compatible
1 Parallel port, supports SPP, ECP, and EPP
mode
2 USB ports, Rev. 1.0
1 PS/2 Keyboard
1 PS/2 Mouse
H / W Monitoring:
(Optional)
Winbond W83783
CPU Temp. monitoring, overheat warning
CPU Vio, Vcore, 3.3V, 5V, 12V
3 Fan speed detect
Other connectors
and jumpers:
Suspend switch and LED
CPU core voltage adjustment (range: +0.2V
per 0.1V)
3 x fan connectors
Wake-On-Lan connector
SB Link
Others:
CPU Voltage Auto Detecting (CPU PnP)
Support Suspend to Ram
Support AC Power Fail Resume
Supports PC 98 requirement
System health warning beep
Wake-On-Ring
Wake-On-Alarm
Accessories:
1 CD-ROM disk contains: VIA 4 in 1 Drivers
Multi-language User manual
1 User Manual
1 FDD cable
1 IDE ATA66 cable |
As
you can see, the only "leading edge"
feature missing from the Shuttle AV14's
specification list is support for UDMA / 100 hard
drive transfers. In practice, this feature does
not make a huge difference in performance over the
older UDMA /66 specification, so we won't penalize
the AV14 too badly. After all it's VIA that
makes the chipset. :-).
Also be sure to take a good look at the close up
shot of this board. There were some design
decisions made with regards to the layout that we
don't necessarily agree with. The slot
configuration (1 AGP / 5 PCI / 2 ISA) is adequate,
but we would prefer a 1 AGP, 6 PCI and 1 ISA or
AMR slot configuration. Also, connector placement
may displease a few users. We'll go more in
depth on that topic a little later.
|
