The
motherboard market is about to go through yet
another large transition...maybe. In the year 2000
we saw the once omni-present, dominant Intel take
a few too many punches on the chin, and they ended
up losing a ton of ground in the motherboard
chipset market. AMD's
Athlon was selling in droves, and one company
especially, VIA
Technologies, took advantage and met the
demand with a whole line of chipsets to compliment
AMD's CPU. VIA also took full advantage of the
void left in the Intel Pentium III motherboard
market when the i820 turned off power-users with
it's high price and dependency on expensive RDRAM.
VIA released the Apollo Pro line of chipsets that
were comparable to Intel solutions and offered
more features at a lower price point. At first
performance wasn't quite up to par with Intel's
products, but as the Apollo line matured
performance increased proportionately.
With the growing acceptance of VIA based
solutions, more and more manufacturers began
offering products based on VIA Chipsets. Almost a
year ago, the first review I did for H.H. was of
the Shuttle
AV61 motherboard. Well, Shuttle
is still here and today we're going to take a look
at their newest board, the AV30, based on the VIA
Apollo Pro 266 chipset. With VIA's new found
confidence (and funds) :) they've decided to head
in a new direction. No longer are they comfortable
following Intel's or AMD's lead. They
are now introducing new products that innovate
rather than imitate. The Apollo Pro 266 is their
first in what will hopefully be a string of new
products that offer cutting edge performance and
features at a reasonable price.
The major new feature that the Apollo Pro 266
brings to the table is it's ability to use newer,
"faster" DDR RAM. DDR RAM or
Double-Data-Rate RAM is capable of processing data
on both the rising and falling peaks of the sine
wave, which effectively doubles it's bandwidth
clock-for-clock. Take a look at this simple
graph...
This
is a very simple drawing of a sine wave. Standard
SDRAM is only capable of processing data on the
rising peak (represented by the blue line), DDR
RAM can execute commands at both the rising and
falling peaks (represented by the red lines). This
capability is why DDR RAM running at 100MHz can
effectively process 200MHz worth of data. Please
understand this explanation is not 100%
scientifically accurate, but bear with us, we're
just trying to explain the technology in a
simplified manor that almost anyone will
understand. :)
That's enough background info, let's get down to
the nitty-gritty!
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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ENLARGED VIEW
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Specifications
/ Features of the Shuttle AV30 |
VIA
is at it again... |
|
Chipset
- VIA
VT8633, North Bridge
- Integrated
High Performance DDR DRAM Controller
- VIA
VT8233, South Bridge
Form
Factor
Processor
- Socket 370
- Intel PPGA
Celeron 300 ~ 500+/66 MHz FSB
- Pentium
III FC-PGA 500 ~ 933+/100/133 MHz FSB
Expansion
Slot
- 1 x AGP
(4x AGP)
- 6 x PCI
- 1 x ANR
Memory
- 184-pin
DIMM x 3
- Supports
DDR or SDR SDRAM module
Sound
|
On
board IDE Controller
- Support
PIO Mode 4 and DMA Mode 2
- Support
Ultra 33/66/100 Synchronous DMA mode
- Transfer
rate up to 100 MBytes/sec
LAN
- Onboard
10/100Mb Fast Ethernet card
Winbond
83697HF Super I/O Controller
- 1 x Floppy
port
- 2 x Serial
port (16550 fast UART compatible)
- 1 x
Parallel port (SPP, EPP, ECP port)
- 4 x USB
port
- 1 x Game
port
- Li/Lo/Mic
- IrDA
Header
Flash
EEPROM
- Award PCI
BIOS with PnP, Green and DMI Features
Other
features
- Wake-On-Ring
& Alarm
- KB/Mouse
wake up
- Support 4X
AGP
- Support
PC133 SDRAM
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![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
We
grabbed this image directly from VIA's DDR-Zone
site for our more techno-savvy readers....
| The
Shuttle AV30's bundle is standard fare. We
did have a pre-release board, so the bundle in the
full retail product may be a little different...
Included
in the box was a CD containing all of the
necessary drivers to get our AV30 up and running
properly, a large user's manual and a package
holding a floppy and an 80-Pin IDE cable.
We've seen quite a few new motherboards that ship
with an extra connector to add 2 or more USB
ports, as well as some sort of software
bundle. We would have liked to see these
items included with our AV30, let's hope that
Shuttle includes these items in the full retail
product.
The
RAM, Setup, Installation and Quality
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