Albatron KX400-8XV Pro KT400 Motherboard Review
It wouldn't be much of an understatement to say that everyone's
attention is firmly focused on nVidia's Nforce 2 chipset - and the boards that
support it. Can a chipset really come before the motherboard, or even CPU in order of importance? Some of you are
right now nodding your heads and saying "yes" to that question, but is this just isolated to the nForce2
chipset?
These days it seems all the hype in the AMD world
surrounds nVIDIA, but lest you forget there are other chipsets to choose from.
Remember a tiny little company by the name of VIA? Well, their KT400 chipset
powers the Albatron KX400-8XV Pro, and as you are soon to see, the results are
interesting to say the least...
VIA has
been a partner with AMD since day one. Remember who broke in
DDR, and how well the KX133 chipset worked for the Slot A
Athlon? One could easily argue that AMD's success with
the Athlon, and later AthlonXP has come on a large part thanks to VIA and
their chipsets.
Unfortunately history seems to show
us that like the even-numbered Star Trek movies, VIA usually needs
two tries to get things right. The KT133 and
KT133A, KT266 and KT266A chipsets stand as prime examples of what we mean. Even
VIA's KT333 chipset had some issues just before it was released and had to be tweaked
a little.
The VIA
KT400 chipset follows this trend too. As of CeBit 2003, VIA made it known that
another chipset would be hitting the markets later this year called the
KT400A which would
address many of the performance
issues some say the KT400 is facing. Ironically, the KT400A doesn't support 400 MHz FSB or AGP/PCI
locking either;
" The VIA Apollo KT400A takes
the AMD Athlon XP processor to the summit of system performance with a
FastStream64 memory controller technology, 333MHz Front Side
Bus, DDR400 memory, AGP 8X Graphics,
6-Channel Audio, Serial ATA, ATA-133, USB 2.0 and 8X V-Link chip
interconnect."
With Albatron's history of delivering some pretty fine
motherboards in mind, there was a lot of anticipation in the lab as we set out
with a fresh pair of Corsair XMS3500 DDR in hand to see how the KX400-8XV Pro would
perform. The board itself is compact in size, and features on board 3Com 10/100
LAN, six USB2.0 ports and 5.1 audio but for $115 CDN ($75 US). That price makes
the KX400-8XV Pro one of the most aggressively priced motherboards on the market
with a KT400 chipset under the hood. If you need to expand a bit more, there are
five PCI slots and a 8x AGP slot. The three 184-pin DIMM's support up to a
maximum of 3GB of double-sided PC1600/2100/2700/3200 DDR, and the motherboard
can be used with any current 200/266/333 MHz based AthlonXP processor.
albatron
kx400-8xv pro motherboard |
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Ships with the following:
- IDE ATA66/100 Cable
- FDD Cable
- Driver CD
- User Manual
- DIY Installation guide
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Brackets: |
USB 2.0 Bracket |
The
KX400-8XV Pro is a small motherboard so you shouldn't have any problems installing
it into the smaller ATX cases out there. The IDE connectors are in a good
location to the right of the DIMM slots. Even though the KT400 northbridge does
not create as much heatas nVIDIA's nForce2, we were happy to see Albatron had
applied active cooling. [For those who aren't familiar with the lingo,
active cooling describes a heatsink with a fan attached. Passive cooling
means that the heatsink does not come with a fan, and is hence passively cooled
by convection or air currents within the computer case itself.]
Albatron opted to locate
all the USB connectors down at the bottom of the motherboard which helps to keep
the cables out of the way of the other devices. It's nice to see
Albatron can still include quality parts on their "budget" motherboards too
- where most other manufacturers would typically use the Realtek 8100B NIC on their motherboards, the
KX400-8XV Pro has a 3Com chipset.
Because of it's relatively
compact size, installing memory on this board will require you to remove the videocard
first. I would have liked
to seen the four mounting holes around the Socket 462, but that isn't
the case. If you'd hoped to bolt on a large heatsink you are 100% out of
luck, and this trend is seems to steam rolling as few and fewer boards come
equipped with AMD mounting holes around the CPU socket.
My only
legitimate qualms with
the layout of the board is the location of the floppy drive
connector. Situated at the very base of the board it is highly likely that users of some
cases which place the floppy at the very top of the case may have a
harder time connecting up their floppy drive.
Up next, we see how far we can
overclock the KT400-based KX400-8XV Pro motherboard.
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