Aopen AK73 Pro AMD Athlon VIA KT133

Thursday, January 18, 2001


Additional features

Additional features of the AOpen AK73 motherboard include: Wake on LAN, Wake On Modem ring, PS2 ports, 4 USB ports - two of which are located on the rear panel, an integrated AC'97 sound-card, Power Failure Recovery, Suspend To Disk, Suspend To Ram, RX/TX connectors for infrared, and start-up from the keyboard/mouse, or at a pre-set time. Hardware monitoring of fan speed, CPU temperature, and of voltages is also included with this PC99-compliant motherboard. Dr Voice, and Dr Led functions, as well as an AGP Pro slot, are also offered as options.

Below, a photo of the AK73.


Click here for a larger image

Note: Click here for detailed specifications.


Installation

Installation of the AK73 is simple, due in no small part to its jumperless design. In short, just pop it in a case, plug it in, boot-up, and jump into the BIOS to make any alterations.



The software bundle

The installation CD the VIA 4-in-1 service pack, a utility for monitoring the hardware, a program for flashing the BIOS, Adobe Acrobat Reader, a digital version of the user's manual, Norton AntiVirus, Norton CrashGuard, and a very interesting utility called "Product Quality Assurance" which essentially performs a series of small benchmarks on the system in order to determine whether its functioning correctly.



The hardware bundle

The AK73 also comes with: one 80-pin ATA66/100 cable, one 40-pin ATA33 cable, a floppy drive cable, and a connector for connecting two additional USB ports to the rear panel.

Next: The Tests
AK73 Pro
    • Model: AK73 Pro
    • Form Factor: ATX
    • Memory Slots: DIMM x 3
    • Chipsets: VIA Apollo KT133
    • CPU Bus Clock
      Spec: 200(EV6)
      Max: 332(EV6)
    • Notes: Dr. Voice / DIE-HARD BIOS (Upgrade optional)
      AC'97 Audio
      ATA-100/ PC133
      4X AGP
Key Features
  • Support 200MHz(EV6) System Bus for AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) & Duron Socket A CPU
  • Support PC133 SDRAM DIMM
  • Jumper-less Design
  • DIE-HARD BIOS wtih External Controller (Upgrade optional)
  • CPU clock ratio from 5.5 to 12.5
  • Support 1X / 2X / 4X AGP mode
  • AC'97 2.1 Audio support / Audio Codec onboard
  • Enlarged 24K Gold Plated Heatsink for Chipset
  • CPU Vcore Adjustment for Overclockers through BIOS Setting (1.1V ~1.85V)
  • 4 Channel USB Ports Ready
  • Hardware Monitoring
  • Support Ultra DMA/100 HDD (Additional UDMA/100 Cable included)
  • AGP Pro(optional)
  • 3.3V Main Power adjustable
  • Dr. LED(Upgrade optional)
  • Dr. Voice
  • Wake On LAN
  • Wake On RTC Timer
  • PCI Rev 2.2 Compliant
  • Resetable Fuse Providing Short Circuit Protection for Keyboard and USB Device
  • Microsoft PC99 Logo
  • ACPI S3 (Suspend to RAM) and S4 (Suspend to Disk)
  • Year 2000 Compliant
  • AOpen Bonus Pack CD (Norton Anti-Virus 2000 included)
Specifications
  • CPU: AMD Athlon Thunderbird (Socket A) AMD Duron (Socket A)
  • ASIC: VIA VT8363 / VT82C686B AGPset
  • Architecture: 1 AMR slot + 5 PCI slots +1 AGP slot
  • Max. Main Memory: Max. 1.5GB SDRAM ( PC-100 or PC-133 ) or VCM for 168pin DIMM*3
  • DIMM Type: 8/16/32/64/128/256/512 MB
  • On Board Sound: Analog Devices AD1885 AC'97 CODEC onboard
  • On Board I/O:
    1 Serial Ports (UART 16C550 Support)
    1 Parallel Port (SPP/EPP/ECP Support)
    2 Channel E-IDE (Mode 4 and Bus master Ultra DMA 33/66/100 Support)
    1 Floppy Drive Connector (1.2/1.44/2.88MB)
    2 Channel Universal Serial Bus Ports
    1 PS/2 Mouse Port
    1 PS/2 Keyboard Port
    Game/Midi Port ,Speaker-Out ,Line-In , Mic-In
  • Onboard Connector:
    CD-In, Modem-In , Video-Audio-in , Audio 1, IrDA , Wake-On-Lan , CPU Fan,
    Chassis Fan, Fan2 , Additional 2 Channel USB Ports (via Optional cable)
  • Battery: 3V Lithium Battery
  • Green Function: Yes
  • BIOS: Award Plug and Play 2MB Flash ROM BIOS
  • Board Size: 244mm x 305mm, ATX Form Factor