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Albatron PX915G4-Pro


Date
: 01/2/05 – 10:46:56 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer
: Albatron

Price
: N/A

We last looked at 2 different Albatron products, the PX915P Pro and Albatron PCX 5750. The motherboard offered a very affordable solution that provided ample performance for those wishing to enter into the PCI Express/LGA 775 platform. The Albatron PCX 5750, which I will be using again later, was definitely a budget card not designed for high-end gaming platforms.

Albatron gives potential buyers 5 reasons why you should choose their products over the competitors:
<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>
Intel Direct Account : Testimony to professional management and sound supplier-customer relationship
Rapid time to market : Shortest possible time from development to delivery
Uncompromising quality control : Strict quality control at every turn ensures a near-zero defect rate
Competitive prices : A pricing package that leaves our customers room to maneuver
Support documentation : Products ship with user-friendly, detailed instructions that help minimize follow-on customer support
[/quote]
Today I will be evaluating the
PX915G4 Pro
and seeing how well of a product it actually is. This will be our second look at the PCI Express platforms but one where you can cut down on the costs buy reusing your Socket 478 CPU. As usual, we'll start things off with the packaging…

Page 2 : Package

Here are the contents of the box:
<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>

PX915P4/ PX915G4 Series mainboard
IDE ATA Cable
FDC Cable
USB Bracket (optional)
Game Port Bracket (optional)
SPDIF & FRONT AUDIO Port Bracket (optional)
SATA Power cord (optional)
SATA Cable (optional)
Installation and Setup Driver CD
PX915P4/ PX915G4 Series User Manual
[/quote]
The motherboard arrived inside a standard large FedEx box without any major damages to it. After I tore open the packaging, I was left with a bunch of crumpled up sheets of papers for padding and the retail packaging.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Not much to say here; I guess Albatron thinks they've taken over the planet Mars. NASA has some competition and martians beware![/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>The back of the packaging summarizes a few of the key features found on this motherboard. We'll be looking at some of them in detail.[/quote]
As you can tell, this board came to me without any issues.

Once you open up the box, the first layer is mainly connectors, manuals, and the drivers you will eventually need.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>The three sheets of paper (top of the picture) show the key features of this model and a list of all of Albatron's motherboards and video cards. The manual and RAID controller booklet will be useful to read if you've never built your own system. The driver CD is for drivers and will contain the digital manual as well as some other software.[/quote]
The manual is about 50 pages long in English and 50 pages combined for the other 2 languages – Chinese and Japanese (I believe). The manual is long enough to cover all the important details: features, installation, BIOS and troubleshooting.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Here are a small number of goodies I got, though there are other optional features that were excluded from my package: IDE cable, and FDC cable, 2 additional IDE cables for RAID, a SATA connector, a 4 pin molex to SATA power connector and an IO shield specific to this motherboard.[/quote]

Page 3 : Specifications

The following was copied from Albatron:

Brief Specs

Detailed Specs

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>

CPU:

-Supports Socket 478 Pentium® 4 processor (Prescott)
-Supports Hyper-Threading Technology
-533/ 800 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus) frequencies

Chipset:

-Northbridge Chipset Intel® 915P (PX915P4 Series)/ 915G (PX915G4 Series)
-Southbridge Chipset Intel® ICH6
-I/O Controller Winbond W83627THF
-RAID IDE Controller ITE IT8212F
-HD Aduio Codec Realtek ALC880
-Gb LAN Controller Marvell® MV8001
-Mb LAN Controller VIA® VT6105 (for PX915P4 PRO / PX915G4 PRO)

DRAM Memory:

-Uses either DDR400 (PC3200) or DDR333 (PC2700) SDRAM
-SDRAM modules must be unbuffered and non-ECC
-Supported memory module increments are 256 MB /512 MB /1 GB
-Total memory capacity is 4 GB (see Memory Installation section for more details)
-Supports Dual-Channel data bus

PCI-Express BUS Slots:

-Provides 1 x 16 PCI Express slot with 4 GB/s bandwidth (each direction)
-Provides 2 x 1 PCI Express slots with 250 MB/s bandwidth (each direction)
-All PCI Express slots are fully PCI Express 1.0a compliant

PCI BUS Slots:

-Provides 3 PCI slots
-Contains 33MHz, 32bit PCI interface, PCI 2.3 is compliant

Universal Serial Bus:

-Supports up to 8 USB ports for USB compliant interface devices
-Supports USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) and USB 1.1 Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI)

Onboard IDE Facilities:

-Supports Ultra ATA 66/ 100, DMA and PIO modes
-Supports IDE interface with CD-ROM
-Supports high capacity hard disk drives
-IDE slot can support 2 IDE drives

Raid IDE controller:

-Two RAID IDE slots that supports Ultra ATA 133 IDE
-Supports hard disk drives only
-Each slot can support 2 IDE drives
-Supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD modes

Onboard SATA Bus:

-4 SATA IDE slots
-SATA 1.0 compatible
-Supports 150 MB/s transfer rates

Hardware Monitor Function:

-Monitors CPUFAN/ CHASFAN/ AUXFAN Speeds
-Monitors system Voltage

Infrared:

-Supports IrDA Version 1.0 SIR Protocol with a maximum baud rate of up to 115.2 Kbps

HD Audio Sound Codec Onboard:

-HD Audio (High Definition Audio) protocol compliance
-Compliant with Azalia specifications
-8-channel playback capability
-Supports Sony/ Philips Digital Interfaces (S/PDIF)

LAN Controller:

-Marvell MV8001 supports Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbit/s connectivity.
-The PX915P4 PRO and PX915G4 PRO provide an additional LAN facility using a built-in VIA® VT6105 chipset which supports Ethernet 10/100 Mbit/s network connectivity.

Onboard Video Graphic: (only for PX915G4 series)

-Supports 2D Acceleration
-Supports 3D Acceleration
-Supports Video Acceleration
-Micorsoft® DirectX compatible
-OpenGL driver available

I/O facilities:

-One multi-mode Parallel Port capable of supporting the following specifications:
1. Standard & Bi-direction Parallel Port
2. Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP)
3. Extended Capabilities Port (ECP)
-Contains one serial port, 16550 UART
-Contains one VGA port (PX915G4 series only)
-Supports Infrared Data Transmissions using IrDA
-Supports PS/2 mice and PS/2 keyboards
-Supports 360 KB/720 KB/1.2 MB/1.44 MB/2.88 MB floppy disk drives
-Contains 1 Game header

BIOS:

-Phoenix-Award BIOS
-Supports APM1.2
-Supports ACPI2.0 power management

Watch Dog Timer:

-This mainboard contains a special feature called the Watch Dog Timer which is used to detect when the system hangs during the POST stage due to certain BIOS configuration problems. Once a problem is detected, the Watch Dog will reset the configurations and reboot the system.
[/quote]

Page 4 : Layout

So much to cover, where do I start? As you can tell from the specifications, this motherboard comes packed with features.

Right from the start, Albatron decided to use a bluish colored PCB. This is more or less their trademark color of PCB these days. Color really doesn't have anything to do with a systems performance, but some people will purchase products to match a theme they have. So if you're looking for this color, you're set and you can skip the rest of the review if you don't really care how it performs. For the enthusiasts, color is a small detail. Looks are only skin deep and the performance lies below that shiny coat. Aside from color, we can see there isn't much retail space left.

I shall start with the processor. Albatron opted with the Socket 478 processors on this particular model, you can find a similar make using the Intel LGA 775; for instance the Albatron PX915P Pro that Tony looked at a few months ago.

It's pretty clear here that we're working with a Socket 478 class system. Don't try and shove any other processor in.

Literally, you can tell space is at premium and there isn't much room to work with.

However, with large heatsinks, it'll be the tall capacitors that will get in the way. However, the capacitors used are fairly low level. They only got up to half the height of the support frame.
We'll have a look at how some heatsinks fit in later.

Moving up from the CPU socket we run into the DIMM slots. Note for 4 DIMM's, capable of dual channel. At the lower right portion of the image, you can see how close the DIMM's and the PCI-e slots get. This could pose as a problem for extremely long video cards.

Even further up from the CPU is the power connector. The power connector is often a place of debate – where should it go? Some people prefer it parallel to the DIMM's (as seen in this photo) while others prefer it perpendicular to the motherboard along the top of the board. Your preference on location should be based on how you wire you case. It's not a huge factor to consider.
This motherboard also uses the 24 pin ATX connector as opposed to the 20 pin. There is no problem in using the 20 pin if that is all you have. Just be careful of how you plug in the connector.

Just below the DIMM's is the South Bridge Cooler. Can you see what seems to be missing? To either side of the chipset are clips to support the heatsink, clips I probably should have but according to my contact, this board supports only the glue mount.

After removing the heatsink, it was held down by some form of epoxy or resin. Somewhat tacky still, it came off rather clean.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>You can clearly read the imprinted specs on the Intel ICH6 south bridge.[/quote]
The greater problem is keeping the heatsink attached without the clip. I found with enough pressure, the heatsink will not fall off when I mounted it to a case.

Across from the south bridge is a wack load of connectors ranging from IDE, RAID, FDC, SATA and even all the stuff from your case: power, LED, speaker, etc. The list is endless. If you look right above the IDE connector, the one in red, you will see the jumper and the battery. The jumper is to clear the CMOS. If you have your motherboard tucked into your case with a bunch of hard drives and a enough cables to cramped into the hard drive bay, this could be a problem if you ever need to clear the CMOS. Not a huge one, but a problem nonetheless.

Here is a close up shot of the connectors for the speakers, LED, chassis fan and IrDA.

Across from the connectors is your selection of PCI slots : 1 x 16 PCI Express (red) 2 x 1 PCI Express (blue) and 3 PCI (white) slots.
Below the PCI slots and going left to right is the front audio connector (orange), SPDIF (red), CD-In (black) and game port (black)

At the very edge of the motherboard is a set of ICs. These control other features not native to the south bridge.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>From left to right: Realtek ALC880 audio codec, Marvell MV8001 LAN controller, VIA VT6105 LAN controller, and finally the Pheonix BIOS.[/quote]
Above the PCI slots is the passively cooled north bridge. The use of a passive cooler will allow for a quieter system, however it could become the bottleneck when reaching for a stable, high overclock. The NB did get warm during operation, but thanks to the CNPS7000-AlCu, the air flow cooled it back down.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Regardless of the angle, I was not able to read the text on the Intel 915G chip[/quote]
It should be noted that the north bridge cooler had the typical pink thermal gum. I will be removing it and using some Arctic Silver 5.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>To the left is the south bridge cooler, and to the right is the north brige cooler.[/quote]
Just beside the north bridge cooler is the additional 12 volt supply for the motherboard. You will need to ultilize this.

That wraps up all the important things on the motherboard. Here is a quick shot of the IO:

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Nothing too interesting; PS/2, Serial port, VGA port, Parallel port, 7.1 audio, 4 USB 2.0, 1 10/100 Mbps LAN and 1 1000 Mbps Lan.[/quote]
For those with a clear case and can see the back of the motherboard, here's what it looks like:

Before we move onto the features of this motherboard, let me close this section with a shot of the label:

Page 5 : Features

Albatron decided to stick with the current Socket 478 processors on this model. This allows existing P4 users to migrate over to the PCI-E world without having to buy a new processor. They can further break down the upgrade process as the Albatron PX915G4 already comes equipped with an shared video memory.

From Tony's previous look at the Albatron PX915P Pro, I'll copy and paste these features and their descriptions…

PCI Express

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>One of the most long-awaited updates has come in the form of the PCI Express bus. Though the PCI Express shares the PCI name they have little in common. PCI Express differs from AGP/PCI in that it is a serial, point-to-point link – so no more bus sharing. Additionally, PCI Express benefits motherboard makers as it is simpler to route serial lines than it is to route parallel lines which need to be equidistant. These benefits also provide the ability to scale higher in speed, though at the cost of lower bus utilization (less data is being sent per clock).

Overall the new bus is a large improvement and a single 1 x PCI Express slot offers up to 500 MB/s (250 MB/s each direction) compared to a 33 MHz PCI slots peak 132 MB/s. With those numbers it's easy to calculate the peak 8 GB/s (4 GB/s each direction) of a 16 x PCI Express slot which multiplies AGP 8x bandwidth, 2.1 GB/s, by nearly four times; a considerable improvement. [/quote]

Intel High Definition Audio

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Intel's latest audio specification, formerly codenamed Azalia, calls for support of 7.1 surround sound, Dolby Digital, and DTS. Audio codec support for 192 kHz quality, multiple streams, and better voice input for speech recognition and voice-over-IP. These improvements are part of Intel's digital home trend that has been a focal point at recent Intel Developer Conferences and are materializing today.
The Albatron PX915G4 Pro we're looking at today employs the Realtek ALC880 Audio Codec. The ALC880 is a 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio codec featuring four 24-bit two-channel DACs and three stereo 20-bit ADCs. The DACs feature a peak sampling frequency of 192 kHz and 100dB S/N ratio rivaling many add-in boards. This codec supports EAX 1.0 & 2.0, DirectSound 3D, A3D, I3DL2, and HRTF 3D. A quote taken from Realtek's site is found below and for further information on this codecs capabilities please refer to here.
The ALC880(D) is also the only High Definition Audio codec to integrate three stereo ADCs that can support a microphone array with Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), Beam Forming (BF), and Noise Suppression (NS) technology simultaneously, significantly improving recording quality for conference calls. With this unique feature (3 stereo ADCs), the ALC880(D) can provide high-quality audio using S/PDIF to output analog data, or for multiple-source recording applications.[/quote]

Page 6 : Installation

If you've ever built your own computer, the installation of a motherboard is fairly simple. For this review, I chose the following specifications:

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Intel Pentium 4 3.0 E
Zalman CNPS-7000 Al-Cu
PDP Systems 2*512MB PC3200 2-2-2-5 Review pending
LiteON SOHW 1213S
Maxtor 40 GB 7200 RPM
SilverStone STT-TJ04
Albatron PCX 5750
Ultra Products UV X-Connect Review pending[/quote]
Motherboard
<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>
Albatron PX915G4 Pro
[/quote]
To install the motherboard, simply remove it from its packaging and line it up with the studs on the motherboard tray. Once that is done, install the CPU and apply a thin layer of thermal paste – I choose Arctic Silver 5. I also removed the thermal gum from the North Bridge and replaced it with some AS 5. After a nice thin layer of paste is applied, install the heatsink. Depending on what you're using, you should refer to your manual for installation. Installing the system memory is pretty simple, though be sure match the colors if you want to have Dual Channel support.
All the other components are easily added, though if you have any trouble you should
always
refer to the manual!

As Tony mentioned in his Albatron review, posting did take much longer and it felt like I was posting into a Dell machine. I'm much more use to the my AMD machines post, which is very fast. Instead, I was forced to see this massive Intel logo appear on my window (removable in BIOS). In the BIOS, although everything one would expect in an enthusiast board was there, it took some time finding things. More on that later.

For the actual Windows installation, I put my hard drive on the RAID controller and left the optical drive on the IDE interface. To install on the RAID controller, you'll need to specify the drivers during the Window's installation that are provided by Albatron on a floppy. If you lost it, like me, just download them off Albatron's website. Once Windows was installed I used the provided drivers disk to install the audio and LAN drivers. nVidia ForceWare 66.39 drivers were installed for the video card. Windows XP SP2 and all the latest drivers were also downloaded and installed from the Microsoft website.

The Realtek audio has many options so that you can adjust it to your preference. The NICs worked flawlessly as well. The piece of software I would like to see is an Albatron specific system monitor, voltage, temperatures and RPMS. With the discontinuation of Motherboard Monitor, a quality temperature analysis software is no longer available. The voltage readings from Motherboard Monitor are completely wrong…VCore of 2.09V? 12V rail of 1.89V?! From my sources, Albatron is currently working on a software that monitors your system.

Page 7 : BIOS and Overclocking

Albatron decided to use the Phoneix-Award BIOS for the PX915G4-Pro, and much like the PX915P Pro there are many options available for the enthusiast to tweak and tinker with. Some screenshots below show most of the features:

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Under the advanced tab is where most enthusiasts will be spending their time.[/quote]
One of the most important sections in the BIOS is the customizability of the CPU section. The FSB can be adjusted from 200 Mhz to 300 Mhz in 1 Mhz intervals. The memory voltage can be adjusted up to +0.4 V in 0.1 V increments. The north bridge voltage can be adjusted up to +0.3 V in 0.1 V increments. The core voltage ranges from 0.850 V to 1.60 V on 0.250 V increments and then 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9 V settings. I fail to see any voltage adjustment for the PCI-E. The one feature I'd like to see improved upon is the memory settings, there are only two options: Auto (1:1) or 400, 333. Gone are all the other ratios of 5:4, 4:5, 3:4, 4:3 etc. They may be back in future revisions…

If you're looking for memory timings, it's located under the Advanced – Advanced Chipset tab. Manual timing runs from 2-2-2-4 to 3-5-5-15;
quite loose, but it offers a chance of pushing the memory frequency real high.

Be sure to keep a watchful eye on the temperatures and voltages…

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>61 degrees Celsius just idling in BIOS![/quote]
A neat feature of this BIOS is the ability to save and load your own custom settings.

Regardless, no article is complete without any overclocking, and this is
Overclockers Online
. Starting with my 3.0E I ended up at 3.5Ghz running on 250*15, Vcore at 1.3625 and my memory on a somewhat tight timing of 2-3-3-5.

This was the limitation of the CPU. The memory is capable of running at 266 MHz at 3-4-4-8 timings, though anything above 250MHz and 2-3-3-5 timing was not stable with this particular board. I could boot up to 257 Mhz, but not all of the benchmarks would run successfully.[/quote]
Temperatures were no laughing matter as this baby was on fire peaking at 74 degrees Celsius under full load.

Page 8 : Benchmarking

The suite of benchmarks used consisted of 3DMark 2003 and 2005 PCMark 2004, ScienceMark 2, SiSoft Sandra 2005, Super Pi, Comanche 4, and Quake 3 Arena. 3DMark is well, 3DMark, who doesnt use it? Although intended for video card evaluations, it gives a relative gauge of the systems performance if you have a certain video card, 5750 in my case, and wanted to upgrade the motherboard and CPU. PCMark 2004 provides tests in such situations as encoding, compression, decompression, virus scanning, and content creation which provide a number for comparing system-wide performance levels. ScienceMark 2 and Super Pi provide us with stressful mathematical applications to compare CPU, system, and memory performance between systems. SiSoft Sandra 2004 is a common benchmark used for testing memory bandwidth and performance. Comanche 4 is a benchmark that is very CPU bound benchmark good for evaluating system performance in a real world game environment. Quake 3 Arena in this case was tested at 640×480 to minimize graphic card dependency and place more load on the systems CPU, memory, and chipset for these comparisons in a real world gaming environment.

The test system: (as stated before)
<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Intel Pentium 4 3.0 E
Zalman CNPS-7000 Al-Cu
PDP Systems 2*512MB PC3200 2-2-2-5 Review Pending
LiteON SOHW 1213S
Maxtor 40 GB 7200 RPM
SilverStone STT-TJ04
Albatron PCX 5750
Ultra Products UV X-Connect Review pending[/quote]
Motherboard
<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>
Albatron PX915G4 Pro
[/quote]
Clock speeds
PCI Speed Setting: 33
PCI-E Speed Setting: 100
System Memory Frequency: Auto (1:1)

For reference, I will use Tony's i875 machine:

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Pentium 4C 2.4 GHz @ 3.2 GHz (Northwood)
Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu HSF
1 GB PDP Systems PC4000 CAS 3 DDR RAM
Maxtor 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Abit IC7-G i875 Motherboard
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro Video Card (Catalyst 4.11)
Cooler Master 350 W Power Supply
Windows XP Pro SP2 + Latest Drivers, Updates
[/quote]
I deliberately chose not to use his LGA 775 because of the inconsistency between our machines and the drivers.

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Lower is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Lower is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Lower is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]

<div style='margin-left:1cm;color:#CCCCC9;'>Higher is better[/quote]
The numbers pretty much speak for themselves. As clock speed increased, performance also increased. Where graphic's isn't as big of a role, we see the P4 3.0 dominate when the FSB is the same as the reference system. It should be noted that there is a 550MHz clock speed difference in the two systems. We can see that the performance difference in applications, such as 3DMark 2003 and 2005, doesn't improve very much as the FSB increases, such bottlenecks are due to the video card.

To test out the audio, I played a few rounds of CS: Source, Half Life 2 and watched a few movies. The audio was flawless. I'm definitely not an audiophile, but I think its safe to say that for the majority of the end users they won't need to worry about buying an additional sound card.

Page 9 : Conclusion

After reading our very first PCI-E based motherboard review, I already knew what to expect…performance similar to that of the highly overclocked socket 478 platform. The question still remains: "Why buy this
PX915G4 Pro
?". There simply isn't a simple answer. From the performance view point, we have a solid performer with the ability to do some serious overclocking. This product allows you to slowly migrate over from Socket 478 AGP to Socket 478 PCI-E. The advantage of this is being able to buy the latest and greatest video cards without having to also buy a new processor. However, if you're looking to jump from an AMD system into a Intel platform, there is no real need for you to take this intermediate step. You're better off diving right into the LGA 775 world with something like the Albatron PX915P Pro.

Advantages

Affordable
PCI-Express
Dual Lan
Quality Onboard audio
Ability to slowly upgrade

Disadvantages

Not the most ideal solution for those looking to buy a completely new system
BIOS lacked all overclockable features, some settings didn't even stay after saving