Review: EQS A72K9-CF

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 20 October 2005, 08:41

Tags: EQS

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qadtu

Add to My Vault: x

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.