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Shuttle's
HOT-649A
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Heavy
Duty Hardware - Dual CPU and SCSI 2 Injected!
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| When
the good folks at Shuttle contacted me about reviewing a couple of
their motherboards, I was all too happy to oblige. Shuttle is well
known as a "Cadillac" motherboard company with top shelf
quality. What arrived on my doorstep a few days later was a
wonderful surprise! The Shuttle HOT-649A is a very different kind of
motherboard from a number of aspects which we will delve into. We at
Hot Hardware, are always looking for something unique in our product
reviews and Shuttle has provided just the vehicle. |
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| I
told you it was "heavy duty" ! Although this board is
larger than most because of its dual setup and on board SCSI, it is
not a prohibitive factor with respect to most Mid Tower cases. The
dimensions are 305mm x 244mm (that's 12" X 9.6"). If you
have a Full Tower, you'll have more than enough room. Here are the
rest of the specs. |
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- ATX Form
Factor Layout 305mm X 240mm
- Slot 1 for
233/66~450/100 MHz Pentium II Processor
- Built-In
Voltage Regulator
- yboard
and Mouse wake up
- USB
(Universal Serial Bus) Connectors
- 168-pin
DIMM x 4
- Supports
100MHz SDRAM (PC100)
- Total
memory up to 1024MB
- Intel
440BX AGPset
- FW82443BX
PCI/A.G.P. & Memory Controller
- FW82371EB
PCI ISA IDE Accelerator (PIIX4E)
- Primary
and Secondary PCI IDE Ports
- Supports
PIO and Bus Master IDE Mode 4 Timing
- Supports
*Ultra 33* Synchronous DMA mode
- Transfer
rates up to 33 MBytes/sec
- Supports
CD-ROM, LS-120 and ZIP Boot-Up
- Supports
Intel "Wake On Lan"
- On Board
I/O Controller
- 1 Floppy
Port
- 2 Serial
Ports (16550 Fast UART Compatible)
- 1 Parallel
Port (SPP,EPP,ECP Port)
- IrDA TX/RX
Header (option)
- Adaptec
7890 Ultra II SCSI Controller and 3860 LVD SCSI transceiver
- A.G.P.
Slot x 1
- Supports
AGP 66MHz/133MHz (Sideband) Devices
- 32-bit PCI
Bus Slot x 4
- 16-bit ISA
Bus Slot x 3
- System
Health Monitor
- Flash
EEPROM
- AWARD PCI
BIOS with PnP
- Green and
DMI Features
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| This
time Shuttle through in everything but the kitchen sink! What a
great list of features this board has, including the on board
Adaptec Ultra II LVD SCSI ! Since our pals at TJT
hooked us up with an IBM LVD SCSI Drive, we'll be zipping along at
THE fastest data rate in Hard Drive technology at 80Mb/Second! The
features of the HOT-649A don't stop there. This board is by far the
most configurable board we have ever tested here at Hot Hardware.
There are a series of jumpers for Hard Configuration of bus speeds
and multipliers. In addition, Shuttle has a Soft Configure CPU setup
in their BIOS for all the settings of the CPU except voltage. CPU
Voltage tweaking IS available via a jumper bank and you can set it
up with voltages up to 10% over the default CPU voltage! This is a
feature up until now that was only available through Abit boards.
Shuttle now offers this solution with a host of other features. You
can set this board up with bus speeds at multipliers up to 5X. But
wait kids, there's more! This
board comes packed with Front Side Bus Speed settings including 66,
75, 83, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124, 133, 140 and 150 Mhz.
!
This board is an overclocker's dream. |
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Our
Test System
Full
Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Pentium 2 -333 Overclocked to 525,
Shuttle HOT-649A Dual Processor Motherboard, 128 MB of PC100 CAS2
RAM, IBM Deskstar 10GXP 10GB 7200 RPM EIDE UDMA Hard Drive, IBM
4.5GB DDRS34560D 7200 RPM Ultra SCSI 2 Drive, STB Velocity 4400 TNT
w/ 16 MB AGP Video Card, Metabyte Wicked 3D 12MB Voodoo 2 PCI Card,
Monster Sound MX300 PCI Audio Card, Toshiba SDM1202 3rd. Gen. 4.8X
DVD/32X CDROM, TNT Detonator Drivers.
Dual
P2-333 CPUs not available at time of testing. A follow up report
with this configuration is forthcoming
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Overclocking
At this
juncture, I feel this board is my personal favorite in this
department. Although I would have liked to have been able to tweak
the voltage a little higher than just 10% over default, Shuttle
really only has made me more cautious about protecting my investment
in a Hand Selected Overclockable CPU. Throwing too much voltage at
an overclocking stability issue usually doesn't help much and will
definitely put you at risk.
On the other
hand, because of the endless selection of front side bus speeds, the
test results for this review were prepared at the 105X5 speed
setting for a zippy 525 Mhz.! This is a speed we have not been able
to get our P2-333 SL2TV Irish CPU to run at before. This board
allowed us to squeeze just a few more clock cycles out of the P2
with total stability. The Shuttle HOT-649A really kicks!
Here are some
numbers...
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Benchmarks
WinTune
98
Offline
Test Results
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CPU
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(1)
Intel Pentium II with MMX@510 MHz
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Video
Board
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NVidia
RIVA TNT
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Video
Mode
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1152x864@16bits/pixel
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RAM
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128
MB
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OS
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Windows
98 4.10.1998
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Area
Tested
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Value
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CPU
Integer
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1517.18
MIPS
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CPU
Floating Point
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608.7032
MFLOPS
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Video(2D)
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107.19717
MPixels/s
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Direct3D
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121.8165
MPixels/s
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OpenGL
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72.10445
MPixels/s
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Memory
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888.4966
MB/s
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Cached
Disk
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96.55611
MB/s
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Uncached
Disk
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3.383601
MB/s
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| Dig
those MFLOPS and MIPS! This is the fastest set up we have ever had
running at the Davo-Lab! The same CPU at 515 on an Abit board ran at
1494 MIPS and 599 MFLOPS. Again, the 649A shines! Sorry folks, we
didn't have a dual set up for our tests. Also the lack of mainstream
apps and games on NT or another multithreaded OS, really proves to
be a waste of the extra horsepower of the second processor. However,
Quake 3 Arena is coming soon! It is touted to be multithreaded. I
also feel it won't be long before we are in a parallel processing PC
market! Stay tuned for a follow up Dual CPU Feature with this board. |
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| Here
are some Hard Disk scores with the IBM 7200 RPM Ultra 2 LVD SCSI
Drive we will be reviewing shortly. Look at these numbers. The
HOT-649A's on board Adaptec SCSI controller has serious throughput! |
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Shuttle649A
with IBM SCSI Drive
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| WinBench
99/Business Disk WinMark 99 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
3500 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/Bus:Overall (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
3500 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:AVS/Express 3.4 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
7130 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:FrontPage 98 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
40900 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:MicroStation SE (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
13300 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Overall (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
9390 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Photoshop 4.0 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
4950 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Premiere 4.2 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
8480 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Sound Forge 4.0 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
11400 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Visual C++ 5.0 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
10300 |
| WinBench
99/High-End Disk WinMark 99 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
9390 |
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| To
put this in perspective, the next best Business Disk Winmark we have
seen was 2530 from the 7200 RPM EIDE IBM Drive on an Abit board.
Also the next best High End Disk Mark was 8580 for that same drive.
Shuttle and LVD Ultra SCSI 2 ! A perfect match! |
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Overall
Impression
Throughout every
test and configuration we tried with the 649A, it exhibited the
utmost stability. We had EIDE and SCSI 2 peacefully co-existing as
well as a heavily overclocked bus. I am also very impressed with the
general construction of this board. Shuttle uses 105 degree C
capacitors for heat stability and long life. They also have a well
laid out design with the 649A. Yes, the ATX Power connector is in
the front of the board away from the CPU Slot. I liked this board so
much that it is staying in my personal system until something better
comes along! My guess is that Shuttle will be delivering that
product some day too, if they keep up the good work!
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The HOT-649A!
Gets a Hot Hardware Temp-O-Meter Rating of....
90 !
That's why they call it the "HOT-649A"!
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| -Davo |
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