Tuesday, June 27, 2000

Introduction

It must be said that it has been quite some time since the AOpen AK72 first arrived at our door, and quite some time that we've been itching to test it out. The AK72, you see, is one of the latest generation of Athlon boards to be based on the Via KX-133 chipset. In addition to that, the AK72 benefits from a good number of design features included by the AOpen team, such as 2200mfd low-series resistance capacitors, the "Frequency Isolation Wall" that serves to reduce interference between traces, "Die-Hard" BIOS, and "Resettable Fuses" that add protection against power surges. As part of our review, you will find detailed descriptions of all these features below. That said, let's get down to the brass-tacks, and start the tests.

The features

The AK72 is expandable via its 5 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, AGP port, and AMR slot. The AK72 also possess three 168-pin DIMM slots that can accommodate upto 1.5GB of PC100, PC133, or VCM memory.

Configuration of the AK72 is accomplished within the BIOS, as there are no jumpers specifically related to that task, per see. The only jumpers present that are related to the functioning of the board are JP21 - which determines the range of FSB frequencies that will be available in the BIOS, and JP12 - which can be used to activate/deactivate the AC"97 sound-card. There is also a jumper - JP14 - which can be used to reset the BIOS itself. To adjust the FSB's operating frequency, one need only access the BIOS. A range of choices of 100MHz to 147MHz is available, including 100Mhz, 110Mhz, 115Mhz, 120Mhz, 124Mhz, 129Mhz, 133Mhz, 138Mhz, 143Mhz, and 147Mhz. An option is also available to set the memory bus frequency to a setting equal to the frequency of the PCI bus (which normally operates at 33MHz), multiplied by 3 or 4. Please note that when Overclocking, the memory bus frequency will also rise with the system bus frequency. This means that a 115MHz FSB, in conjunction with the a multiplier of 4 for the memory bus, will result in a memory bus operating at 153MHz.Thus, it is not all memory modules that will sustain such a high frequency with no problems.

Last but not least, it is also possible to adjust the processor's core voltage from within the same BIOS menu. The voltage can be set between 1.30V and 2.05V in steps of 0.5V, or between 2.10V and 3,50V in steps of 0.1V.

The particularities

Resettable Fuse

Conventional motherboards use run-of-the-mill fuses which provide mild protection from the effects of power-surges, or short-circuits such as sometimes occur, say, between the USB bus and the keyboard. These fuses are fused to the board itself, and when they are fried by one of the aforementioned affects, the entire board becomes dysfunctional. The AK72 itself, though, employs fuses that reset themselves once a surge has passed.

Battery Less operation

The AK72 also employs a design which makes use of the internal battery, only when the system is not plugged directly into a power source. When an Battery Less equipped computer is plugged in then, voltage is supplied directly from the ATX, thus extending the battery's lifespan.

Die -Hard BIOS 100% virus protection

Recently, virus such as the CIH virus have proven capable of destroying data located on the BIOS. The AK72, however, does not use a software-encoded BIOS, and is thus protected from this form of attack. A secondary BIOS is present, though, which can be used to flash the primary in such a case that the latter does become corrupted.

"Low ESR" 2200uf Capacitors

The quality of the capacitors (also known as capacitors) on a motherboard plays a primary role in determining just how stable the board will be. The large-capacity 2200uf capacitors used by the AK72 are Low ESR for even better stability. The placement of the capacitors is also crucial to a system's stability, and AOpen has placed 7 nearby the processor slot itself, and 4 others nearby the memory slots.

Frequency Isolation Wall

The very placement of a motherboard's components plays an important role in how much interference one component engenders on its neighbors. AOpen has gone to some lengths to reduce this "cross-talk" by making sure that the traces that route electronic signals, operate at frequencies within a certain range of each-other. This helps to reduce the friction caused by parasitic signals between traces.

Next: Additional features.