Shuttle AV40R VIA P4X266 socket 478

Thursday, December 06, 2001


Introduction

The Shuttle AV40R is the first board we've received that's based on the VIA P4X266 chipset. As its name indicates, the P4X266 chipset was designed to allow Intel Pentium 4 chipsets to be joined together with DDR-SDRAM memory - something no current Intel chipset could do at the mopment we tested this motherboard. In fact, at that time, Intel was only offering two Pentium 4 chipsets: the i850 - which only supports Rambus RDRAM, and the i845 - which only supports SDRAM. However, since a couple of weeks now, Intel has a new rendition of the i845 that is allowing support of DDR-SDRAM but no motherboard is available right now. The AV40R is thus in a fairly unique position, by offering users a P4 platform with higher performance than SDRAM-based systems, and yet is less expensive than systems that implement DRDRAM. And, if that's not enough, the Shuttle AV40R is also furnished with its very own integrated RAID controller, which makes it well suited for duty as a low-end server platform.

So, now that we have all that out of the way, lets head on in to the review, and see what this puppy has to offer.

Characterisitics of the Shuttle AV40R
CPU
Intel Socket 478 Pentium¨ 4
Chipset
VIA P4X266
Form factor
ATX
Expansion
5 PCI - 0 ISA - 0 CNR - 1 AGP - 6 USB
Memory
3 socket 184-pins DIMM for up to 1.5GB DDR SDRAM PC1600 or PC2100
FSB
100MHz to 166MHz with 1 MHz increment
Vcore adj.
1.1v to 1.850v in 0.25 increments
Vio adj.
2.55v. 2.60v, 2.70v
Audio chipset
embeded into the chipset


Configuration

Configuration of the AV40R is accomplished through the BIOS. In fact the only significant on-board jumper is used to reset that very same chip.

Most configuration and Overclocking features can be accessed through the "Frequency/Voltage Control" menu, including:

  • Adjustment of the Vcore voltage, as indicated by the table above
  • Adjustment of the Vio voltage, memory voltage, and chipset voltage to 2.55v, 2.60v, or 2.70v
  • Adjustment of the clock multiplier to between 8X and 23X
  • Adjustment of the FSB frequency to between 100MHz and 166MHz in 1MHz increments.

    Within the "Advanced Chipset Features", users will also find the "DRAM Clock/Drive Control" menu, from which they will also have the option to tweak a variety of memory timing options, such as CAS Latency, Bank Interleave, DRAM command rate, etc, etc...

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