Best S370 board but it will cost you
Written: Dec 31 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: good specs, good cpu speeds, plenty of upgrade options
Cons: price, onboard graphics
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| CyrixDes's Full Review: Asus CUSL2 |
I have just reviewed what in my opinion is the best available Socket A Duron/Athlon board in the ABIT KT7, so I thought it was only right for me to look at what in my opinion is one of the best S370 boards, for those wanting to go through the Intel route.
This is a very impressive board both in specification and in performance. It is based around Intels slightly maligned but recently renewed 815e Solano 2 chipset. As you would expect for a new motherboard, this is in normal ATX format and supports all of the latest processors upto a certain extent which I will talk about in just a moment. It has a socket 370 format for your processor allowing you to choose any of Intel's PII/PIII/Celeron based on Coppermine technology although you should note that although this board is S370, I cannot comment whether it will be able to take the new Cyrix III chip as I have never tested it in this board, however it should work so long as you flash the bios.
It in some ways is a shame about the processor support on this motherboard and in other ways a very nice choice. It will support all FC-PGA Coppermine PII/PIII/Celeron processors. It will take Celeron processors from 333 upto 566 MHz +. The reason that this is disappointing is because what that little + sign means is that the board will probably take a higher chip but it hasn't yet been tested with it and so you are taking a slight gamble. It is the same thing with the PII/PIII support in that it supports them from 450 MHz upto 933 MHz + so it's difficult to say whether it would handle a 1 GHz PIII or not. However they still offer great upgradability in that it will goto 933 and will more than likely go a lot higher.
As for specifications, it looks rather impressive, supporting PC100/133 with a FSB potential upto 133 MHz for the latest PIII processors. Also is the support for AGP 4x which is a major coup for Intel because VIA remain the only Athlon supporting chipset company who can provide 4x AGP for Socket A based machines. Also included is the lightning fast UDMA 100 for the latest hard drives from the companies that produce UDMA 100 drives yet. The only problem with UDMA 100 drives is that you pay top price for them. There is good overclocking potential with this board because it has jumper free technology allowing you to crank up the bus speed if your nerves can take it!!!
There is plenty of scope for upgrade also with this board containing 1 AGP slot and 6 PCI slots with 2 CNR slots. This board comes with onboard graphics which are disappointing on the whole and dont compare with VIA's onboard Savage 4 graphics, but at least you have the AGP slot if you want to upgrade your graphics to something a lot heftier.
Overall here we have one of the best S370 motherboard on the market at the moment with a hefty price tag but you pay for quality and ASUS are a quality brand and the spec of this board says top quality apart from the onboard graphics. Go and buy one if your going the S370 route although I would get my own seperate graphics card if I was to go this route and was planning on playing some 3D inensive games.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 140
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Epinions.com ID:
CyrixDes
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Member: Dale Warren
Reviews written: 56
Trusted by: 5 members
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