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Shuttle AV40R P4X266


Date
: 12/16/01 – 01:52:19 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Shuttle
Price: $110

Introduction

A few months ago, the Intel Pentium 4 processor was not a popular solution for the average computer system. The reason for that was not laying with the processor itself (yes it is more expensive than the Athlon from AMD, but each CPU has it's positive and negative points on which I won't debate any longer since so many have tried already …) but with the memory that needed to be used with it. Everyone knows that RDRAM is way to expensive for the average computer enthusiast, so most people bought an AMD Athlon setup with DDR memory instead. DDR memory performs very good and more important, it is hardly more expensive than PC133 sticks …

A few weeks ago, the odds changed in favor of the Pentium 4 with the release of the VIA P4X266 chipset. This brand new chipset offers the consumer a P4 + DDR solution, opening up a new market for people with limited cash supply (like 99.9% of you, including myself). VIA managed to release a chipset that would make buying a Pentium 4 system a lot cheaper, without losing much memory performance (unlike with the Intel 845 chipset using PC133 memory).
Of course Intel was not happy about the release of the P4X266 since Intel was obligated to stick to RDRAM until the end of the year (although that has changed by now) and they were inhibited to release the 845 chipset supporting DDR memory. I think that releasing the P4X266 was good for everyone: Intel sells more Pentium 4's, VIA sells chipsets and the end users get affordable and high-end Pentium 4 systems.

Now that I have enlightened you on the P4X266 situation, let's take a look at one of the very first motherboards that was released with this new chipset: the Shuttle AV40-R. This is the first review of a Shuttle motherboard at Overclockers Online, but as the review will show, I got to like the board :). To know the end of this interesting saga, I recommend you keep on reading and enjoy the article!!

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

As usual … a copy/paste from the manufacturer's website.

Chipset

(North) VIA P4X266:
Support Pentium 4 System bus
Support DDR 200 / 266 SDRAM interface
(South) VIA VT8233
Built in high bandwidth 266MB/S

Form Factor

- ATX

Processor

- Intel Pentium 4 in the 478 pin package

Expansion Slot

- Support external AGP V2.0 compliant VGA device
- Support 1X, 2X, 4X AGP data transfer
- 5 x PCI slots

Onboard Audio

- VIA AC'97 2.1 compliant CODEC

Memory

- 3 184pin DDR DIMM Slots

On board IDE Controller

- 2 x UltraDMA/100 Bus Master IDE from ICH2
- 2 x UltraDMA/100 promise 265R to support RAID 0, RAID 1 (AV40R model only)
- 80-pin Cable Backward Compatible Legacy ATAPI Devices

Back Panel

- 2 Serial Ports
- 1 Parallel Port (SPP, EPP, ECP)
- 1 PS/2 Keyboard Port
- 1 PS/2 Mouse Port
- 2 USB Ports
- 1x Game / MIDI Port
- 1x Line in, 1x Line out, 1x Mic

Connectors

- 1 x ATX power connector
- 1 x 4 pin 12V ATX power connector
- 1 x 6 pin 5V / 3.3V ATX power connector
- 4 x Fan Power connectors (one for system chipset fan)
- 4 x UltraDMA/100 Bus Master IDE (AV40R model only)
- 1 x Floppy

BIOS

- Stored in 2 Mb flash memory
- DMI 2.3
- CPU 100 / 133MHz FSB setting
- BIOS FSB step-less setting from 100MHz to 166MHz with 1 MHz increment
- CPU core voltage setting from +0.025V ~ +0.20V
- AGP (Vddq) voltage setting from +0.05V ~ +0.20V
- I/O voltage setting from +0.1V ~0.2V
- Support IRQ manual assign table
- Bootable from Floppy, ATAPI device, USB device, SCSI device

Shuttle's engineers did a fine job when they designed the AV40 / AV40-R!! The board is fully featured and ready to be used in an ultra powerful system with the need for a truckload of features and adjustable settings.

It is available in two flavors: the AV40 and the AV40-R. As you probably already guessed, the latter has onboard RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). That's really the only difference between both boards. I got the R version to play with but be assured that the non-RAID version performs identical to the AV40-R.

The onboard RAID controller is made by one of main players in the IDE-RAID business: Promise. There are three main providers of onboard RAID … Promise, High Point and AMI. Promise is widely used by Shuttle and MSI, High Point is used by ABIT and EPoX and AMI can be found on IWill motherboards. Which one is best?? Performance wise, Promise and High Point take the lead so those are the ones to get if you are in for a fast system. The bad thing about the Promise setups is the fact that most of the time, the onboard RAID controller is a "Lite" version. This means you can only run in RAID0 (striping) or RAID1 (mirroring) and not a combination of both (RAID10 or RAID0+1). High Point does offer this feature so if RAID10 is what you need, HP is the way to go. Personally I prefer High Point as well, but like I said it is up to your needs and preferences …

The board comes with 5 full size PCI slots and one AGP 4x slot. This should cover all your expansion needs very well, but it would have been nice to see an additional PCI slot for a total of 6 PCI slots. Especially since Shuttle (god thank them for that) decided against installing a CNR slot, AMR slot, … or anything alike that only takes space and is seldom used. Instead of the 6th PCI slot, the floppy connector was placed at the bottom of the board. Not the best location, but I'll get to that later on.

Adding memory to your system should be easy as well, since there are 3 memory slots preinstalled. A total of 1.5GB PC1600/PC2100 DDR memory is supported. 4 memory slots would have been nice, but only a very small selection of boards comes with that memory configuration so I think the AV40-R is falling right in the middle.

I don't need to add that all four IDE channels (2 chipset, 2 RAID) support UDMA100!! In fact, recently Shuttle released a new board using the P4X266A chipset, meaning it uses the VIA 8233A southbridge instead of the 8233 southbridge that is used on the AV40/AV40-R. In short, the P4X266A offers UDMA133 support whereas the P4X266 is limited to UDMA100. Although no hard drives use the UDMA100 support at all time, there is a thought behind this revolution. Why would a manufacturer install UDMA133 support on their boards, when there are no hard drives to use UDMA100 at its full capacity? The general idea is that now, the hard drives have peak moments at 100MB/s (UDMA100) and run at 66MB/s most of the time (UDMA66). With the UDMA133 standard, hard drives would run at 100MB/s (UDMA100) in normal conditions whereas they would reach peaks of 133MB/s (UDMA133) on other moments. So the UDMA133 is here to make UDMA100 standard … weird huh?

Furthermore the Shuttle unit comes with the usual parts: two USB ports onboard (plus two through bracket for a total of four ports), parallel port, two serial ports, PS2 ports for mouse and keyboard, … and onboard sound. Nothing to dream about though … AC'97 sound, included in the VIA chipset. It will do fine for every now and then usage but don't expect it to sound like a symphonic orchestra playing in the Yankee stadium ;).

Now let's see what you can expect when you open the box heh …

Oh before I forget … there was a USB2.0 marking on the board and room to put the chip as well … so there will be a board with USB 2.0 or they will use the PCB for a next gen. board as well …

Page 3 : Package

The Package

I don't know about you, but I still feel like a little kiddie opening up a Christmas gift when I open up a box of hardware :). After reviewing numerous motherboards, video cards, … I still feel excited when a new box pops up at my door (thanks God for UPS, DHL and FedEX :D). When the AV40-R showed up, I was eager to see what's inside … want to know what I found … ok …

Of course there was the motherboard, but I also got a cd with all necessary drivers and tools, a floppy cable, two IDE cables (heck you need two of these if you want to make use of the RAID feature … next to two hard drives of course ;)) and also the USB bracket that adds to extra USB ports to your system. Before I forget, the board comes with two manuals as well. One to explain every single bit of the board and its settings and one to cover the RAID controller and setting it up.

All in all I was pleased with the content of the box, and although there was nothing out of the ordinary inside, I think you are getting everything you could ask for :).

Page 4 : Layout

The Layout

When it comes to designing the layout, Shuttle passed the test with flying colors in my book. In fact there is only one point of discussion concerning the layout, and that's the placement of the floppy connector. Shuttle has installed it horizontally, right underneath the 5th PCI slot. This won't be a problem if your floppy drive sits in the bottom front of your case, but if your floppy drive is installed at the top of your server case tower, something tells me that you will run in big problems …

As far as the socket placement, everything is a-ok! Thanks to the heatsink-mounting design, there is 99% of the time enough space around the socket to house any giant heatsink you want to install.

The memory slots are installed very well, because you can use all of them without having to remove the video card! This is one of few boards I tested lately that let's you install or remove memory sticks from the first slot without the hassle of removing the video card … I love it :).

Another positive point is the location of the ATX power connector: top right of the board! Great huh? The ATX 12v and the other power connector are located at the left bottom side of the CPU socket … not so good, but since those cables are less wide, it is not so much of a hassle.

That covers the layout chat so let's head for the BIOS shall we?

Page 5 : BIOS

BIOS

At first glance, Shuttle did a fine job with the BIOS design. The board comes with all the necessary tweaks and settings to make your system a tad faster than the average P4 setup ;). The multiplier can be adjusted to your needs, but since the P4 is locked, these settings won't do you any good. This means that overclocking will be arranged through the front side bus.

Luckily, Shuttle's engineers are aware of the need for a wide range of FSB selections, and they opted to equip the AV40R with a 1MHz increments FSB selection! You can set the FSB from the default 100MHz all the way up to 160MHz!! If that doesn't fulfill your needs, nothing will.

Of course some voltage adjustments will be needed to overclock the P4, so Shuttle installed voltage tweaks as well. The CPU voltage can be increased all the way up to 1.85v, which will enable you to crank up the speed a bit. I would like to see a P4 board that offers higher voltages increases, more like +2v for the CPU core.

The DDR memory voltage can be increased as well, although the same limitation applies … 2.7v is the max you will reach, and since I already tested my memory up to 3.0v on some AMD boards, I know it can take that kind of power without endangering the memory.

Apart from the voltage settings, you can also adjust the usual CAS, RAS, interleaving, … settings which should increase the performance as well. Note that the AV40/AV40R makes it possible to run the memory 33MHz faster than the processor's FSB. This means that (if not overclocked) your P4 will run at 100MHz FSB whereas your PC2100 DDR will be humming along at 133MHz, as it is intended to run. Good move VIA :).

Page 6 : Overclocking

Overclocking

As I said before, overclocking will be done solely by the use of the front side bus. First I set the board to a FSB of 105MHz, which resulted in an ultra-stable setup. 110MHz was the next setting and again everything was perfect. When I tried 115MHz again everything was fine and I could run Q3, 3D Mark, … in Windows 2000 but when I rebooted the PC, something went wrong and my Win2K installation was corrupted and I could reinstall the OS. I got the board all the way up to 119MHz and it always loaded Windows but when I rebooted, Win2K was damaged badly … I don't know what was causing it, but it tells me that the board is not stable at +110MHz settings … although it remained stable in Windows as long as I didn't reboot. Anything above 119MHz would not even post, no matter what voltage settings I used.

All in all, 110MHz is not all that bad for a Pentium 4 motherboard, but it totally kills the need for a FSB up to 160MHz … Note that because of the high multipliers used with P4's, a small increase in the FSB results in a pretty big increase in the CPU speed!!

Is the Shuttle the king of overclocking? Not really, but it is not a loser either … it sits somewhere in the middle when it comes to overclocking.

Page 7 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

The time has come, to give this P4 board based upon the VIA chipset a run for its money … How will the P4X266 chipset hack it in some real world testing and torturing? Only one way to find out …

Test system:

- Shuttle AV40R motherboard
- Intel P4 2.0GHz CPU
- 2x 128MB PC2100 Crucial DDR memory
- VisionTek GeForce 3 video card
- Western Digital 20GB hdd
- Accton 100mbit NIC
- Windows 2000 + SP2 + VIA 4.35 + latest Detonator drivers

MadOnion's 3D Mark 2001

The P4X266 is performing very well when compared to the Intel 850 chipset, especially since the RDRAM is giving more power to the end-user than the DDR memory. The KT266A based test system is doing very good as well, although it is a tad behind the P4 chipset's …

Quake 3: Arena

History repeats itself in the best shoot'em up ever … Quake 3: Arena. The Pentium 4 has always been the number one when it comes to this great killer game, and the story isn't different this time. The AMD system is clearly losing ground in these tests, and the Intel 850 is a little bit faster than the VIA chipset. This is just a matter of a few frames, so you will NOT notice the difference in real life gaming but you will notice the difference in your wallet (RDRAM <> DDR RAM).

Sisoft Sandra Memory Benchmark

As expected, the Intel 850 chipset takes the lead in this one … The P4X266 is coming in second and the KT266A is coming in as a good third place. No real losers here, but the RDRAM is clearly showing its muscles in this test. If it is worth the $$$, that's up to you but for me it isn't. Still one heck of a show-off heh ;).

When we look at the overall benchmarking results, the P4X266 is performing very well and is here to stay for sure! Although the Intel 850 chipset takes the upper hand on the VIA chipset, the P4X266 can be considered an absolute winner when it comes to price/performance ratio's!!

Page 8 : Conclusion

Conclusion

Being the first Shuttle motherboard that was reviewed in the O² test bunker, it did a very good job at persuading me in favor of Shuttle. The P4X266 chipset has shown to be a worthy contender in the battle of the P4 chipsets and it is only the beginning because at this moment the P4X266A is already available, bringing UDMA133 to the P4. In the near future we'll see the P4X333 show up, and that one will crush the Intel 850 chipset on all levels … at a much lower pricetag!

So is the Shuttle AV40/AV40R worth your greenies?? In my humble opinion, it definitely is. The board performs great, offers a long list of features and tweaks and it showed to be a very stable config. If you are building yourself a Pentium 4 based system, make sure you check out this board because you won't be disappointed.

Good

- P4X266 performs very well
- Onboard RAID
- Good layout
- Fair price

Bad

- Overclocking above 110MHz ended up in reinstalling Win2K
- Placement of the floppy connector