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Albatron KI51PV-754


Date
: 11/13/06 – 05:25:45 AM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: Albatron

Price
: $299.99 Newegg

For the third year in a row Albatron has been acknowledge by the annual Taiwan Symbol of Excellence awards. Albatron has put motherboards, VGA cards and MiniPC products on the front of their marketing lineup for the past year and high value has always been the emphasis.

This is not something that should come of a surprise to those who frequent
Overclockers Online
. The 7300GT was the last product we reviewed and it boasted a very respectable performance to cost ratio. In this latest review, we discover the potentials in miniPCs with a look at a mini-ITX motherboard.

Page 2 : Package & Content

I was quite excited to get working on the KI51PV-754 review. When the package arrived from Taiwan, it was like an early Christmas here at Overclockers Online.

I wasnt quite sure what to expect from a packaging standpoint when it came to a Mini-ITX motherboard. This is the first one ever reviewed at Overclockers Online!

I was quite shocked and worried when I saw a full sized ATX box arrive at my door step. Not because I feared I had received the wrong board, but with improper packaging the motherboard would be able to slide around and get damaged.

This is a pretty generic box. This isnt the kind of product you would typically shop for at a computer store. You would have done your research and know exactly what youre getting or youre some type of PC builder and need this product in bulk. Both situations dont require packages with flashy eye candy or a wealth of specifications.

The back side of the package reflects my comments above as see no specifications or features listed.

Once we open up the package, we see the motherboard is well protected inside the box. It was even taped across to prevent the board from sliding into the bubble wrap.

To one side of the box we see several manuals and driver CDs.

There are also a very limited number of accessories 1 SATA cable, an ATA ribbon, custom I/O panel and a jumper cable of sorts.

Before we go any further with the motherboard, lets run over the specifications and features.

Page 3 : Specifications & Features

We will conduct our mandatory specification review before moving onto the layout of the motherboard. The Albatron website makes gathering information quite easy. Ill start with a direct link to the product.

Features

Im a little surprised to see Albatron entering the market with a Socket 754 processor. The AMD AM2 would have been a better choice as DDR2 prices are dropping, processors are very affordable with the option of dual cores and reduced power consumption.

The rest of the features do not come as a surprise. The nVidia GeForce 6150 and 430 offer an excellent combination of power while providing all the features needed to get a PC going with minimal additions.

R
estriction
o
f
H
azardous
S
ubstances doesnt come as any surprise. As technology advances, so does our desire to maintain a clean environment. ROHS during manufacturing is one way of doing so.

Specifications

The specifications for a mini-ITX motherboard look very appealing. If you wanted to use the motherboard as a small server it already sports two NICs!

There are also a wide number of other uses you could use this motherboard for. I wouldnt be surprised to see the KI51PV-754 inside a few cars. The AMD and nVidia backbone will provide ample power for all your computing needs and the large number of SATA ports will mean a large supply of MP3s and movies could be stored for your entertainment pleasures.

Lets move on to the layout of this motherboard.

Page 4 : Layout

This is a very small board, so in essence one photo gives you a great overview of the layout.

Around the socket we find several capacitors, but none of any height that would be of concern. Due north of the retention bracket is the single DDR slot. This board is capable of 1GB and thats exactly what Ill be giving it.

To the left of the socket we see a wide variety of interfaces. Despite being a mini-ITX board with only 289 cm² of area, Albatron still provides you with four SATA 2 ports, two IDE channels and a lone floppy connector. In all you could have ten drives plugged into this motherboard!

I do think the 24-pin power connector and the 4-pin auxiliary connector could be placed in better locations. The locations that have proposed will mean power cables running over the motherboard, particularly the CPU, restricting the airflow. In any HTPC case, this air flow restriction could have a severe impact on thermal performance.

With such little real-estate, it doesnt come as a surprise that things are quite cramped. There are even a few components on the backside of the motherboard.

More specifically, we have a Winbond IC and two Marvell ICs

The Winbond Smart I/O W83627HG IC provides all of the voltage and temperature sensory results while the two Marvell ICs provide 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet performance. Its a shame were not blessed with dual Gigabit controllers as that would make this a killer server!

Running along the bottom edge of the motherboard we see an array of jumper connections and the Phoenix BIOS chip. Beneath the small aluminum heatsink lies the nVidia C51PV (GeForce 6150) and nVidia MCP51 (nForce 430) silicon. The passive cooling will ensure a very silent system, and the GeForce 6150 is no slacker when it comes to any type of media performance.

Its clear to us that Albatron has opted for a standard PCI slot, but I sure wish they put in a PCI-E x16 slot! Drop that into a car-computer and you have one serious machine!

The rear IO may appear to lack any form of TV output which would be a complete failure on Albatrons part had this been true.

However, the rear IO shield comes with an S-Video cable built-in and all you need to do is connect the 4 pin connector to the motherboard. The data transfer is only done through four cables, so it doesnt exactly scream high quality media transfer.

Page 5 : Installation

I will be working without a case when it comes to the installation of my components. Everything I have has been designed for mATX or larger and would seem enormous for this board.

Grabbing a hold of the motherboard and all my necessary components, I didnt have any difficulty getting the system to boot. I first started with my new Sempron 3000+ and the stock heat sink followed by one of my Patriot Memory sticks.

I then proceeded to plug in my hard drive, optical drive and floppy drive.

Next to be installed were the power cables, rear I/O shield and all the necessary cables.

Within 20 minutes, I had everything up and running.

With the computer booted, it was time to explore the BIOS.

Page 6 : BIOS

As I had mentioned earlier, this is not an enthusiast motherboard. For that reason and that reason alone, I dont expect too much out of the BIOS section. What Ill expected to see was a thinned out version of the Albatron K8SLI BIOS setup I last reviewed.

I was correct and the pages very more or less identical with a few features missing from the KI54PV-754 version.

Main Menu

Advanced Menu

Advanced BIOS Features

Advanced Chipset Features

DRAM Configuration

Within the DRAM Configuration page, the Memclock Index Value (MHz) can be changed between 100/133/166/200/216/233 and 250. The CAS can be changed between 2, 2.5 and 3. The TRAS has the following options: Auto and 5T through 15T. The TRCD can change between Auto and 2T through 7T. The TRP has the same options. Last but not least, the command rate can alternate between 1 and 2T.

Frequency/Voltage Control

Theres not a whole lot to this page. The KI54PV-754 is not targeted to extreme enthusiasts so the number of overclocking features are quite limited. That said, we still have CPU Frequency controls. We are able to increase the frequency 1 MHz at a time from 200 to 450. Additional controls include NB HT Ratio and SB HT Ratio Controls

Peripherals

Power

HW Monitor

That wraps up the main BIOS features. The other two sections allow you to save and exit or restore the defaults. Lets move onto our system configuration and overclocking page.

Page 7 : System Configuration & Overclocking

We now know a fair bit about the board and its about time I got to the basement and dusted off some components for this machine. Heres a breakdown of the goodies.

When it came down to overclocking, there were a number of features to consider. First and foremost, this is
not
an overclocking motherboard. At the same time, the S754 Semprons have been known to scale well above stock frequencies so my socks wont be easily knocked off.

How well does the KI51PV-754 perform when it comes to overclocking? Putting the board over 2 GHz, 225*9, was not difficult. I optimistically jumped to 250 which failed fairly quickly with both Prime and Super Pi. At 240 Super Pi passed, but Prime failed. It was not until I lowered the bar down to 235 that I found a nice stable setting allowing for a series of benchmarks to complete with Prime chugging away in the background.

Im sure if this board had some voltage options or if I played with some settings a little more, I might have been able to squeeze a few more megahertz out of it. At 235*9 for 2.115 GHz I was pleased with the results. For benchmarking purposes, I will evaluate the performance at 1.8 GHz, 2.025 GHz and 2.115 GHz. Lets look at those numbers!

Page 8 : Benchmarking

To make things clear from the get-go, this is a mini-ITX motherboard
without
a PCI-E or AGP slot and as such there will be no video card used during testing. In addition, I will not be benchmarking any video games as that will not be the primary use of this system. I will focus on system performance and video playback.

The benchmarks I will execute include:
Everest
Futuremark 3D Mark 2001 se, 2003, 2005 & 2006
Futuremark PC Mark 2003 & 2004
HD Tach
Rightmark Audio Analyzer
ScienceMark v2.0
Sisoft Sandra 2007
Super Pi

For consistency, each benchmark is executed three times with a reboot between each run. The average results, rounded appropriately, are tabulated and graphed for your reference.

Futuremark 3D Mark 2001 se, 2003, 2005 & 2006

Higher is better

Futuremark PC Mark 2003 & 2004

Higher is better

HD Tach

Rightmark Audio Analyzer

Lower is better

ScienceMark v2.0

Lower is better

Sisoft Sandra 2007 Cache Index

Higher is better

Sisoft Sandra 2007 CPU Arithmetic

Higher is better

Sisoft Sandra 2007 CPU Multimedia

Higher is better

ScienceMark v2.0 Memory

Higher is better

Everest Memory Benchmark

Higher is better

Sisoft Sandra 2007 Memory Benchmark

Higher is better

Sisoft Sandra 2007 Memory Latency

Lower is better

Everest Latency

Lower is better

Super Pi 1 / 2 / 32M

Lower is better

As expected, once you start increasing the CPU frequency, the performance scales more or less linearly. If you compare the performance of this board to a micro-ATX or an ATX board, the performance here is slightly worse. However, that is expected. The KI54PV-754 certainly does a lot more per square inch of board space compared to my DFI RS482. I bet, if the two boards were put head to head, the performances wouldnt be too different.

Overall, the results are pleasing. The board would be able to play some of the most basic games but it would not be something Id recommend. The decoding of video files and outputting onto a TV was done without any trouble and will be the majority of the entertaining processing work this board will see.

I was particularly pleased to see such a tiny board sport both DVI and D-Sub with an S-Video adapter. There is absolutely no reason why Mac Minis or Mac Mini alternatives shouldnt have dual display capabilities!

Page 9 : Conclusion

The Albatron KI51PV is a mixed bag of goodies. For anyone looking to build a powerful car-computer this is a great alternative to the usual VIA solutions. However this would easily be the most expensive solution available, taking a three bill bite out of your wallet!

With that said, if good things come in small packages, this board has it all. The dual Ethernet solution could easily turn this into a mini-server or custom router. The GeForce 6150 makes for a very powerful backbone allowing great video playback and dual display output with TV-out.

The overall system performance is respectable given the system configuration. Unfortunately by todays standards, itd be considered a rather old and weak board thanks to the release of cheap dual core S939 and AM2 processors and the very overclockable Conroe cores. Thankfully Ive been told that a KI51PV-AM2 isnt too far off and we can finally be blessed with dual core, low power drawing high performance machines.

Advantages

Exceptional performance for mini-ITX solution
Very small foot print
Fully featured board
Dual display w/ TV-Out capable

Disadvantages

Only Socket 754
Expensive

Overclockers Online would like to thank Albatron for making this review possible.