Friday, November 03, 2000

Introduction

Any time a motherboard with an AOpen label shows up in our labs, it qualifies as an event. This time is no different. The AX3S-Pro arrived at our door in a solid, yet stylish molded plastic case, much like the type one receives with the purchase of electrical tools. Obviously, this provides the board with a considerable amount of protection during transit, and it's definitely the type of packaging we'd like all manufacturers to adopt. The AX3S-Pro itself is an ATX board, based on the Intel 815E chipset, complete with the ICH2 Southbridge - which provides support for ATA100 drives - as well as support for PC133 memory, AGP 4X, and a whole list of other functions that we'll be glad to describe during the course of this review.

The features

The AX3S-Pro is expandable via 5 PCI slots, an AGP port, and a single CNR slot. There are also 3 168-pin DIMM slots available, which can support upto 512MB of PC100, or PC133 memory. Unfortunately, AOpen decided not to include an ISA slot in the AX3S-Pro's design, as well as only incorporating 5 PCI slots...

Configuration of the AX3S-Pro is accomplished from within the BIOS, which reflects the board's almost-totally-jumperless design. Like most motherboards, the AX3S-Pro comes with a user's manual, but goes a bit further than usual by also including a "quick-start" pamphlet that can help users get up and running in a flash. Adjustments to the Front-Side Bus, the clock multiplier, the memory bus, and even the processor's Vcore voltage can all be performed from within the "Frequency/Voltage Control" BIOS menu. The available FSB settings reflect the CPU installed, and typically range from 66MHz, to 166MHz.

Note that the function provided for adjusting the memory bus frequency is a bit different from usual. As a fact, it has been integrated with the function that controls the CPU's FSB. As a result, users will find they have a bit less latitude with their memory bus frequency than they would expect from a totally independent memory bus.

Next: Particularities, and technical details.