 |
| Installation
and Setup |
| Quick
and painless |
|
Physical installation of this board is a snap,
as it is with just about every other ATX board
available. Depending
on what CPU type you?ll be using, there is a
jumper that needs to be shorted to set up the
board for use with a Celeron, PIII or Cyrix CPU.
There are also jumpers to manually set the
FSB but leaving them set to their default
configuration allows for FSB selection via the
BIOS. Should
you choose not to use the on-board audio, there is
also a jumper to disable it.
The
AVE3 comes with an installation CD that holds VIA?s
4-in-1 drivers, which you should install to
properly take advantage of the performance and
features of this board. However, there is a
newer version (4.22) available on VIA?s site
which I recommend using. Once the board is mounted and your cards are installed,
installing the VIA driver set is the only other
step. The software installation went without a hitch.
Drivers for the on-board audio are embedded
within Windows, so for some of you not installing
a fresh copy of Windows, your Windows CD may be
needed.
 |
| Our
Test System |
| Ready
to rock |
|
Intel
PIII 600 (at 600mhz & 744mhz), 256mb Mushkin
2-2-2 PC133 ram, 3dfx Voodoo5 5500, IBM 22GXP HD,
Plextor UltraPlex 40max, Windows 98SE, DirectX
7.0a and VIA 4-in-1 v4.22
|
| Overclocking
The AVE3 |
| What's
up with that? |
|
This
board is a strange duck when it comes to
overclocking.
Although it has the ability to adjust core
voltage by 10% and has FSBs from 66-150mhz, the
manner by which the FSBs are selected won?t
appeal to the hardcore overclocker.
Should you be using a processor that uses a
66MHz FSB by default, the AVE3 will only allow you
to select FSBs between 66 and 95MHz. If your
processor uses a 100MHz FSB, by default you can
select FSBs between 100 and 124MHz. Finally, f
your processor uses a 133MHz FSB, you?ll be able
to select FSBs between 124 and 150MHz.
With many of today?s PIII E chips,
overclocking to FSBs over 133mhz and the Celeron
IIs overclocking well past FSBs of 100MHz., the
AVE3 won?t be able to get you to that ?next
level?. Hopefully
in a future BIOS revision this quirk will be
worked out. We?ll keep you posted.
|
| Benchmarkign
The AVE3 |
| Quick
as a bunny |
|
We
did however, have some good results when
overclocking this board. The benchmarks
scores speak for themselves.
Let?s see how it did using SiSoft
Sandra 2000.
PIII
@ 600
PIII @ 744
PIII
@ 600
PIII @ 744
Memory
throughput has really improved with the later
revisions of the VIA 133a Chipset.
PIII
@ 600
PIII @ 744
The
Transcend AVE3 does not disappoint in terms of
performance, however this processor has
Overclocked higher in other motherboards.
If the AVE3 would have allowed us to select
any of its available FSBs, I?m fairly certain it
would have passed with flying colors. Memory
performance is slightly lower than some other VIA
133a based boards we've used, but only by a slight
margin.
We
also ran ZD Winbench 2000 while overclocked to
give you a general idea of the overall performance
to expect:
These
are very respectable numbers across the entire
spectrum. We
would also like to add that throughout testing we
did not experience any stability issues
whatsoever. The
Transcend AVE3 is a rock solid performer.
With
the exception of the quirky FSB selection there
really isn?t anything to hold against the
AVE3 and future BIOS revisions may even
eradicate that "problem".
It was a solid performer and didn?t skip
a beat throughout our entire barrage of testing. If
Transcend?s
service and support prove to be good in the
future, we expect to see more great things from
them later on down the line.
We'll
give the Transcend AVE3 Socket 370 Motherboard a
HotHardware Heat Meter rating of...
Get
in and air it out in the HotHardware Conference
Room!
| 
