nForce2 Ultra 400 with a good feature set
Written: Feb 09 '04 (Updated Apr 20 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent compatibility and reliability, plenty of room for upgrades, great value, excellent embedded networking
Cons: Audio chip could be better
The Bottom Line: The Shuttle "AN35N Ultra" is a very good product with plenty of room for expansion and upgrades. It yields a very high performance to price ratio.
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| towwang's Full Review: Shuttle AN35N-Ultra Motherboard |
This review covers: features, specifications, functionality, chipset information, accesories. I will first discuss the nVidia "nForce2 Ultra 400" chipset that this motherboard is based on, and its features and characteristics, then delve into my experiences with the Shuttle motherboard in particular. Hopefully this review will serve as a reference point for comparing various motherboards based on the same nForce2 chipset.
The time: November of 2003. The place: my home-based PC factory. The mission: to build a fast-yet-budget-friendly new PC for my relatives overseas. The hot and humid Caribbean weather had eaten into the metal pins of an old computer, and data errors were occurring with more and more frequency. It was a matter of time until the old machine gave up the ghost.
I had some brand new spare parts ready for action: memory, hard disk, video card, modem. All that I needed was a motherboard and CPU to complete the new system, so off I went to find the most bang for my buck. The CPU was mainly decided by a rule-of-thumb I developed after building my two previous PCs: $100 should give a great performance-to-price ratio on the AMD processor line. At this point in time, the Athlon XP 2600+ fit the bill at $104 for a retail kit including heat sink and cooling fan.
[Contender chipsets]
As for the motherboard, I once again did some research into the major chipset makers: VIA and NVidia. The 2600+ processor ran at a front-side bus speed of 166 MHz and transferred data at the 333 double data rate (DDR), so I wanted the best-performing chipset to handle this speed, and at the same time provide room to upgrade to faster CPUs that will potentially run at 400 DDR. Two contenders were considered:
1) VIA KT400A
2) nVidia nForce2 Ultra 400
(They both support 400 DDR.)
After reading a few reviews of motherboards using either of these chipsets, I came to the conclusion that they (the chipsets) were both very good. The decisive piece of information that prompted me to choose the nVidia chipset was this article:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030417/index.html
The conclusion of this review basically says that with two dual in-line memory modules (DIMM's), the nForce2 slightly outperforms the KT400A because the former has dual memory channels for faster memory access. I happened to have two DDR memory modules, so the decision was a no-brainer. If instead I had an odd number (1 or 3) of DIMMs, the VIA would have been my choice. In any case, this article showed that the difference in performance between the two chipsets was minuscule (1-2%), so you can't go too wrong either way.
[Choosing the motherboard]
If you will be choosing a motherboard based on the nForce2 chipset, be aware that you have a few choices for the "north bridge" and "south bridge" chips. First of all, be sure to pick the right one of two similarly-named chipsets:
- nForce2 Ultra 400 -> dual memory channels
- nForce2 400 -> single memory channel
North bridge can be:
- IGP -> built-in graphics processor, either GeForce2 MX or GeForce4 MX
- SPP -> no built-in graphics, add your own video card
South bridge can be:
- MCP-T -> NVidia audio processing unit, IEEE-1394 FireWire, (up to) two EtherNet ports built-in
- MCP -> other audio chip (varies), no FireWire, (at most) one EtherNet port built-in
The NVidia web pages about this chipset are not well organized, so I will refer readers to this URL for further information:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20020716/index.html
I had very little time to shop around, so I was very fortunate to find a good motherboard on sale at NewEgg.com: the Shuttle "AN35N Ultra" for $65 minus a $15 manufacturer's rebate, which Shuttle honored just 1 month after I requested it. It fit my choices of:
- SPP (I did not want to pay extra for a slow built-in video chip), and
- MCP (I did not need the APU; any 5.1 channel codec would do)
(In Shuttle Group's product line, the "AN35N Ultra" motherboard has dual memory channels, whereas the "AN35N 400" has a single memory channel.)
[Package contents and note-worthy features]
The Shuttle "AN35N Ultra" retail box came with the following items:
- AN35N Ultra motherboard
- ATA-133 cable for hard disks (80 conductor)
- Floppy disk drive cable (connectors for two 3.5 inch drives)
- Case bracket with two USB 2.0 ports
- Case rear-panel for ATX connectors
- Manual
- CD with device drivers and utilities
The major features of the product are:
- Fastest processor supported: Athlon XP 3000+
- AGP 8x slot
- 5 PCI slots
- 3 DIMM slots, 185 pins each; up to 3 GB of memory (400 DDR) supported
- 100 base-T EtherNet and 6-channel audio
The set of included accessories is very basic. I would have preferred a bracket with four USB ports, because that would let the user gain access to all USB ports provided by the motherboard. Other than that, I had everything I needed to install this motherboard.
The following components are worth mentioning:
- The built-in 100 Base-T EtherNet port is based on a Realtek 8201BL chip. This is not necessarily present in all motherboards based on the nForce2 Ultra 400.
- There are connectors for two case fans, one towards the back of the case, one towards the front. The BIOS can monitor the status/speed of all these fans, as well as that of the CPU fan.
- Audio capabilities are provided by a Realtek ALC650 codec, with 6 channel outputs.
Shuttle has additional information about this motherboard at:
http://us.shuttle.com/specs.asp?pro_id=280
[Installation]
The only hard part about installing this motherboard is securing properly the CPU heat sink/fan onto the Athlon XP processor. This is the same problem for all socket A motherboards: you have to align the heat sink properly on top of the CPU, and make sure the thermal interface material on the heat sink properly covers the CPU core. Furthermore, you have to use a good screwdriver or nutdriver, and VERY CAREFULLY apply the correct amount of force to fasten the bracket on the heat sink to the base of the CPU socket. Shuttle did a good job in orienting the CPU socket so that the edge where you will apply force is towards the edge of the motherboard, away from other components that you might damage, if your tool were to slip and stab the board.
Other than this, installation is pretty standard. You set up some mounting points on your computer case (make sure they align with the mounting holes of this motherboard), place the motherboard in the case, secure it with screws (not included), and start adding your PCI and AGP cards. The only jumper present on the motherboard is the one to erase and reset BIOS settings. Everything else is nicely taken care of by the BIOS setup menus.
At the time I initially tested this motherboard, I had not yet purchased a case and power supply to house it. I took a risky step in powering on this motherboard with an old 150 Watt ATX power supply, just to make sure the motherboard and CPU were both good. This old power supply did not have the 4-pin 12V connector that the manual describes as required for proper operation. The motherboard powered on nonetheless, with just the current flowing through the ATX power connector, and I successfully installed NT 5.0 (Windows 2000) on this new machine. (And the 150W PS survived, phew!)
Upon booting NT 5.0 for the first time, I proceeded to install the latest drivers that I downloaded from www.NVidia.com. I did not use the CD that came in the box, because those drivers were outdated. A potential problem occurred during driver installation: I had installed an nVidia graphics card, and first loaded its drivers. When I proceeded next to install the "unified drivers" for the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, the setup program overwrote the display drivers, believing that my graphics card was the video chip embedded in the IGP north bridge. Although the new graphics driver still worked properly, I really think it should have done a better job detecting whether my system had an IGP chip or not.
[Usage experiences]
After I installed the OS and all necessary applications, I found that this newly built system responded very well and was perfectly stable. I installed and tested on this motherboard:
- 2 Kingston DIMMs with 256 MB each
- Maxtor 6Y080P0 80 GB hard disk, ATA-133
- Sterling S20 modem (reviewed at http://www.epinions.com/content_121230888580)
- Mitsumi CR-480ATE (reviewed at http://www.epinions.com/content_108208623236)
- Samsung SW-248F CDRW recorder
Everything worked flawlessly; I am thoroughly satisfied in this regard.
I was very impressed by the signal handling of the built-in EtherNet controller. I was running a 100-foot EtherNet cable between this motherboard and a router; no other NIC (3Com, Adaptec, Intel) in my repertoire could support a 100 Mb/s speed through this cable length. The EtherNet port on the AN35N Ultra however allowed a 100 Mb/s link in full-duplex mode without any hiccups.
One piece of bad news: the output of the ALC650 audio chip was noisy at first. It kept emitting a static-like hum when inactive; this noise was masked out as soon as I started playing audio through the chip. Once I replaced the power supply from the old 150 Watt daredevil to a 450 Watt model, the noise became very faint, and audio remained very clear. This issue is a little bit of a mystery.
[Comparing similar features]
Here I will compare my usage experiences with the AN35N Ultra motherboard against the previous motherboard I reviewed, the Albatron "KX400+ Pro", whose review I posted at:
http://www.epinions.com/content_126147137156
The two motherboards are very different in terms of chipsets and were released a year apart, but I will comment on a few features they have in common.
1) Overheat protection: both motherboards let you set in the BIOS a maximum operating temperature for your CPU; upon reaching it, the system will shut down to prevent overheating the CPU. This temperature can be up to 70 Celsius in both products. Additionally, the Shuttle product will just shut down the system and turn on a LED upon reaching 85 Celsius, even if you disabled the temperature setting in the BIOS.
2) Audio: both motherboards have the same audio chip, Realtek ALC650, embedded. Noise floor on the Shuttle implementation is a tiny bit higher, a barely-audible whisper, whereas noise is inaudible in the Albatron motherboard. The two motherboards suffer the exact same problem: insufficient connector jacks. Line-in and microphone inputs have to switch over to being surrout and bass outputs in order to enjoy 6-channel sound, unless you buy additional gear.
3) USB ports: the Albatron-supplied bracket has 4 USB ports, so you can access all 6 ports supported by the motherboard. The Shuttle bracket only has 2 ports (in addition to 2 ports on the ATX back panel); to use the other two ports you must buy either an extra bracket or a case with USB ports.
[Conclusion]
The Shuttle "AN35N Ultra" is a very good product with plenty of room for expansion and upgrades. It comes in a value-oriented retail package that does not include fancy accessories, but yields a very high performance to price ratio. The audio codec is not the best for multimedia applications, but overall I highly recommend this motherboard for business and computation-intensive applications.
[Revision history]
2004 Feb. 09 Written by Tow Wang.
2004 Apr. 20 Rebate honored, fix typos
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
towwang
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Member: Tow Wang
Location: California; U.S.A.
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
Rabidly passionate about computers and electronics!
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