Transcends TSASL3 i815E Motherboard


Transcends TSASL3 i815E Motherboard - Page 2

Transcends TS-ASL3 - i815E Motherboard
Straight Shooting Socket 370 Performance

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla
12/5/00

 

Installation and Setup With The ASL3
Make sure you get revision 1.04 or later of this board.


The ASL3 was a very forgiving board with respect to setup and installation.  In addition, Transcend does a nice job of packing in a few extra goodies to make sure you have whatever you need to complete your system with respect to their product.

Our cable pack included both Serial and USB Port header/cable assemblies, in addition to the connectors already mounted on the board.  This is a nice touch versus many of the boards we get these days with just EIDE and Floppy cables.

During power up there were no pitfalls to report with the exception of one minor issue with an older revision of this board and it's BIOS.

CPU Setup

SDRAM Timing

CPU Voltage Adjust

Health Monitoring

The first version of the ASL3 that we received was rev. 1.03.  We had trouble setting the CPU voltage in the BIOS (bottom left) and it was not affecting this setting whatsoever.  We contacted Transcend and were quickly sent revision 1.04 of the board.  We are happy to report, that this rev. worked flawlessly with respect to any of the BIOS settings including CPU Voltage adjustments.  If you are going to purchase this board, just make sure the dealer gives you revision 1.04 or later.

The rest of the BIOS options are top notch.  For 133MHz. FSB processors, you can set front side bus speeds from 133 to 166MHz. in 1MHz. increments.

The board has a series of jumpers you can set for specific front side bus speeds supported by your processor.  For 100MHz. FSB processors you'll get options from 100 to 132MHz. in 1MHz. increments.  Although jumpers are usually not a welcomed feature, this arrangement is very convenient none the less.  Since most folks running today's "Coppermine" CPUs are already utilizing a 133MHz. FSB, the range of speed options available in the BIOS are more than adequate.  Which brings us to our next segment.

Overclocking With The ASL3
Ready for the challenge, rock solid stability

With a wide range of FSB options available to us in the BIOS, we were poised to overclock to our heart's content.  In addition, the jumper settings you noted above, adjust the "range" of the voltage adjustments in the BIOS.  There are three settings available, "low, medium and high".  The default setting is medium and with this, we were able to set the voltage up to as much as .4V over spec.  This is more than enough for anybody, at least in our book. With only .1V over spec, we took our 933MHz. Pentium III up a few notches with excellent stability.

1.03GHz.(147MHz. X 7)  is a nice boost up from 933.  With our fairly hefty Global Win Cooler from PCNut, we were able to keep things stable at this speed without the need for anything exotic or expensive cooling the CPU.  For us, the ASL3 was an impressive "over-clocker".

Benchmarks - Sandra and Business Winstone

 

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