|
BIOS
No jumper free design on the Albatron I'm afraid, your CPU frequency range has to be set via one of the fiddly little blighters. Everything else is in the BIOS however, and it's a clean AWARD layout that we all know and love. No shocker of an ASUS here, that cheers me up a little.
DDR333 or DDR400 operation looks like it's only available when using a 333MHz bus processor, but since I didn't test anything less than 333MHz bus, I can't confirm. It's no big deal, running memory asynchronous to the processor bus is a general no-no on KT400A anyway.
Voltage adjustment wise, we have +5%, +10% and +15% over the stock detected processor voltage. That means a smidge under 1.9V maximum on a 1.65V processor, as most are these days. DDR voltage is 2.5V to 2.8V in 0.1V steps, plenty for most competent DDR modules and we even have a very generous 1.5V to 1.8V AGP voltage range. Not sure why, but there you go.
As far as I can tell too, without upgrading the BIOS or needing glasses, CPU ratio adjust wasn't present in the BIOS and I couldn't spot a jumper or DIP block for changing it on the PCB. I'm sure a different BIOS would cure that, but since I'm not testing overclocking on this review, I can't really comment further.
Bundle
Bundle wise, in the attractive if a little bland, blue box, we get let down just a little bit more. Only one 80-pin IDE cable and a single floppy cable I'm afraid, but the 4 USB2.0 ports on a single backplate manages to raise a half smile. Apart from those 3 pieces of kit, we have the manual which we'll have a quick chat about shortly, plus the CD and a non-English quick start guide.
Manual
Not much to be said. It's easily readable and easy to find the information you need. Nothing exciting, it's no Michael Crichton page turner. Then again, what motherboard manual is?
Midway Conclusion
Hmm. No decent added features, no Ethernet, poor layout, poor bundle, not jumper free. Not good so far, infact, rather poor.
|
