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 Shuttle
Computer Group is well known for their brilliantly designed small form factor
XPC's. But it isn't one of these that we will be looking at today.
We will be looking at Shuttle's latest motherboard based on the feature rich
SIS 648 chipset, the AS45GTR. SIS Corp's newest chipset supports a wide
array of features not typically seen in other boards. The question
remains whether or not a motherboard manufacturer could include all these
features without compromising performance and maintaining system stability.
That's were the Shuttle AS45GTR comes in. It's a full-featured board
also offering some unique extras. Just how well does the board
perform? Let's take a look...
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| The board comes
in an attractive box with lots of extra goodies! |
Features:
This board is LOADED
with features. The two unique features are the AGP 8x support and Serial
ATA/RAID support.
AGP 8x support:
ATI is currently the only video card
manufacturer with an available 8x card. We shall soon start seeing them
popping up from other manufacturers. It's a great addition for those
looking for a board with room for upgrade.
Serial ATA:
**click to enlarge**
The Shuttle AS45GTR is the first board to
officially support Serial ATA/RAID. Serial ATA provides faster transfer
rates than EIDE and the cables are tiny. Just look at the pic above to
see the comparison! Unfortunately, I cannot test it's performance as
Serial ATA is still too new and there really isn't any Serial ATA hard drives
currently available. This however will be a new standard and we should
start to see hard drives supporting the new standard by the end of the year.
I believe Maxtor will be the first to release one. ??
USB 2.0 & Firewire:
Yes! That's Right! The board supports both
USB 2.0 AND Firewire. This is all possible through SIS new chipset.
There are a total of 4 USB/USB2 ports. Shuttle provides additional twin
ports for both USB2 and Firewire.
On Board 6 Channel Audio:
The ALC650 onboard Audio provides 6 channel
support and Shuttle provides an optional Audio cable/connector for the
Center/Bass Channel as shown below:
The ONLY feature that's missing is the onboard
LAN. But that's ok. It's got everything you could possibly want in
a motherboard.
Specs:
Form Factor
ATX 305mm x 244mm
CPU Support
Socket 478
Intel Pentium 4 in the 478 pin package
Chipsets
SiS 648
Chipset
Front Side Bus
400Mhz/533Mhz System Bus
Memory
3 x 184-pin DDR SDAM
H/W Audio
AC 97 Audio (6 channel)
Expansion Slot:
1 x AGP Support 4X, 8x AGP data transfer
5 x PCI slots
IDE interface
On board High Point 372 (optional=AS4GTR modle only)
support RAID 0, RAID1, RAID0+1 function
Serial ATA RAID support Raid 0, Raid 1
2 x UltraDMA/133 Bus Master IDE from SiS961
ATAPI IDE CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, and LS-120 Supports
USB
USB 2.0
2 x USB connectors on the back panel
One 10 pin optional USB cable to extend another 4 UsB ports
Power Management:
APM 1.2 compliant
ACPI 1.0 compliant
Bios
Award PnP BIOS
Stored in 2 Mb flash memory
Back Panel Ports
2 Serial Ports
1 Parallel Port (SPP, EPP, ECP)
1 PS/2 Keyboard Port
1 PS/2 Mouse Port
2 USB Ports(Back Panel)
4 USB ports(onboard)
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
3 x Fan Power connectors
4 x UltraDMA/133 Bus Master IDE (2 RAID IDE optional)
2 X Serial ATA
1 x Floppy
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