Specification and Features
| EQS A72K9-CF Specification | |
| Board Feature | Implementation |
| Northbridge | ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Crossfire Edition ATI RS482 |
| Southbridge | ATI SB450 |
| Processor Support | All AMD Socket 939 microprocessors including 90nm revisions inc. Venice and San Diego dual-core Athlon X2 Socket 939 Opteron 1xx |
| Memory Support | DDR DDR-400 Maximum 4GiB total, 4 slots |
| Graphics Support | PCI Express 2 PEG16X slots ATI Crossfire |
| PCI Express | 2 x PCIe 1X slots |
| PCI Conventional | 3 x PCI 2.3 slots |
| Networking | Marvell 88E8053 on PCIe; Gigabit Ethernet Realtek RTL8100C on PCI; Fast Ethernet |
| Firewire | VIA VT6307 on PCI; 2 FW400 ports |
| Audio | Realtek ALC880; HD Audio, 8-channel |
| Disks | ATI SB450; 4 SATA150, 2 ATA133 IDE, RAID0,1 |
Feature Discussion
There's not much the snappily titled A72K9-CF misses out with perhaps the exception of some more SATA ports via another chip. You've got a pair of network ports (one GigE on the PCI Express bus), FireWire and lots of USB, 8-channel 'HD' Audio and plenty of PCI Conventional expansion (I yearn for a third slot in my personal PC right now). And while dual-slot graphics boards will render the PCI Express 1x slots a little redundant, it pays to remember that the PCI Express configuration lets you use the PEG16X slots usually reserved by graphics with anything else that'll fit in the slot.Got a 1x RAID controller? It'll go in either PEG16X slot. 4x SCSI monster? Same thing. ATI - perhaps because they concede that Crossfire is a little lacklustre - themselves are keen to push the use of the extra slot in that fashion.
It's your standard 'good' Socket 939 fare and that's no bad thing. Nothing really missing and while not on the level of nForce4 in terms of extra features enabled by the disk controller or extra software (I'm thinking their RAID array options and firewall here), it's competent.