Well, AOpen makes enough PC components for you to build an entire PC made by AOpen, save for the hard drive. Go to AOpen's website and you'll see what I mean. Today, I have the AK77 Pro socket A motherboard featuring the Via KT266 chipset. This means DDR lovin' folks. <b>Specifications</b> -Via KT266 chipset with V-Link -3 DDR DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100 DDR -Socket A CPU's supporting Athlon XP (with latest BIOS) -5 PCI -1 AGP -1 CNR -AC'97 audio -Supports up to 6 USB ports -Optional Die-Hard BIOS <src img> </src> Physically, the board is subtle eye-candy. It has a black printed circuit board (PCB) and a silver-colored heatsink/fan atop the KT266 northbridge. The layout is pretty standard fare nowadays. Unfortunately, the almost worthless CNR slot is on this board. I wouldn't mind it so much if there were easy to find CNR cards out there, but when you do find them, they tend to not be cheaper than their PCI counterparts--which usually do a much better job. AOpen also fails to include any USB brackets with the board. My final complaint with the board itself is the socket area. It's large enough to accomodate a nice sized heatsink, but the high-rise capacitors and other components make the installation more difficult than necessary. I don't have very large hands, but it was a major chore to install my already annoying GlobalWIN FOP 32. One thing I'd like to commend AOpen on is the optional Die-Hard BIOS. You have two BIOS chips, one normal and one backup. If you're original BIOS gets hosed somehow (virus, bad flash, etc.) you're not left hanging. My board did not come with the extra BIOS, but it does have the socket for the extra BIOS. The only other company I've seen use this type of feature is Gigabyte, by the name of Dual-BIOS. It's a shame companies like Asus, Abit, MSI, and EPoX are implementing this sort of stuff. Speaking of BIOS's, I did a BIOS flash to the latest BIOS (1.06 as of this publication). This is the easiest BIOS flash I've done. Simply go into dos mode like normal for flashing, but you just have to punch in the .exe file and say yes to the flashing. The downside to this is that you have no option to save your old BIOS. The flash went great, but I did have some issues in the reboot afterwords that made me think I had hosed my BIOS. I did not, and I hope my experience was a freak accident. I will keep you informed if any issues pop up from this. On to the benchmarks Okay, I'm just gonna overclock now and benchmark it. The highest I could remain stable was at 1074MHz (113x9.5) and the voltage at 1.850 volts. Pretty good for an 800MHz CPU. <b>Test Setup</b> -AOpen AK77 Pro (1.06 BIOS) -AMD Duron 800MHz @ 1074MHz (113x9.5) -256MB Samsung PC2100 -Maxtor 40GB 5400RPM ATA100 -Toshiba 12x DVD-ROM -Samsung 48x CD-ROM -PNY Verto GeForce 2 Titainium (core: 250/ram: 462) Nvidia Detonator Driver 23.11 -SoundBlaster Audigy Gamer (CD drivers) -D-Link DFE 538TX -300Watt Deer power supply -Windows XP Professional <b>SiSoft Sandra 2001te</b> CPU Benchmark ALU: 3005 MIPS FPU: 1471 MFLOPS CPU Multimedia Integer: 5886 it/s Floating-Point: 6691 it/s Memory Benchmark ALU/RAM: 466 MB/s FPU/RAM: 578 MB/s Sandra isn't the most accurate benchmark, nor always correct, but it's a gives a generally good idea of what to expect. Scores seem to be good. <b>Quake 3</b> Demo 1.11 Timedemo 1 Demo 001 Resolution: 16-bit/32-bit in FPS 640x480---114.6/114.5 800x600---114.2/113.3 1024x768--111.8/107.4 1280x1024-104.5/ 85.2 As you can see at lower resolutions, it's really quick in 16- and 32-bit color. We don't see below 100fps until 1280x1024 in 32-bit. This is where the video card starts to be hit instead of the CPU. I think it's fast enough, don't you? <b>3DMark 2000</b> Resolutions: 16-bit/32-bit 640x480---6625/6574 800x600---6601/6468 1024x768--6527/5993 1280x1024-6076/4583 Like in Quake 3, we don't see much of a performance hit until 1280x1024 in 32-bit color. Again, I'd say this is fast enough. <b>Final Words</b> AOpen's manual is good for a novice to intermediate user, but isn't that terrible. It could be more detailed, like Abit, Asus, and Tyan, but it is a decent manual. Overclocking: I did overclock before benchmarking, and I'll touch on it now. AOpen fell short of having overclocking options in BIOS. The bus speed adjustments and core voltages are all from within BIOS, but the multiplier is controlled by a block of 4 dipswitches by the CPU socket. It's not the end of the world, but it would've been nice to see AOpen go the whole nine yards. I found this board to be very stable with no issues to complain about performance wise. Granted the KT266 is another Via biff in the chipset ring and has been remedied with the KT266A, but it's still a good chipset. Not great, but more than enough for an average joe. Same for the overclocking: good for the causual overclocker, like myself, but those of us pampered by Abit's SoftMenu III will be rather disappointed with the BIOS options. Overall, this is a solid board for those who are not overclocking maniacs. You have your Athlon XP support with the latest BIOS and support for up to 3GB of RAM (why you'd have that much for a home machine is beyond me), decent overclocking options, stability, and a slick motherboard. <b>Good</b> -Great looking -Die-Hard BIOS option -Up to 6 USB ports -Athlon XP support -Stable <b>Bad</b> -Overclocking options not totally in BIOS -CNR slot -Difficult to install heatsinks on CPU -AC'97 audio Rating : 4.3 out of 5
