AOpen AX4R Plus

Intel is no slouch when it comes to releasing new processors, the latest being its 3.06GHz Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading support. However, when it comes to motherboard chipsets, it isn't so on the boil. While SiS and VIA have already released Pentium 4 chipsets supporting AGP 8x and DDR400 memory, Intel's recent 845PE chipset lacked both. Good things come to those who wait though, and Intel's new E7205 chipset, codenamed Granite Bay, is finally here to bring Intel's chipset family up to date.

The E7205 north bridge includes two key new features, the first being support for AGP 8x. With most new graphics cards using the AGP 8x bus, it's fair to say it will steadily become the standard during 2003, offering double the bandwidth of AGP 4x, plus other benefits such as isochronous transfers.

The second key change is to the memory interface, which now supports dual-channel PC2100 memory. This offers a peak bandwidth of 4.2GB/sec, placing it on a par with Intel's own 850E chipset using expensive PC1066 Rambus memory. The use of PC2100 memory also allows for synchronous operation with Intel's Pentium 4 CPUs with a 533MHz front-side bus. To retain synchronous operation using older Pentium 4s with a 400MHz front-side bus, Intel recommends using PC1600 memory.

Rather than go for a total overhaul, though, Intel has retained the services of the ICH4 south bridge controller. This is also found on Intel's 845E and 845PE chipset and provides support for USB 2 and Ultra ATA/100 hard disks.

One of the first motherboards to use this new chipset is AOpen's AX4R Plus. On top of the features provided by the E7205 chipset, AOpen includes a Silicon Image Sil 3112 Serial ATA controller, a Realtek RTL8100BL 10/100BaseTX Ethernet MAC and AC97 audio. Six PCI slots and a CNR slot cater for expansion, and up to 4GB of memory can be installed via the four DIMM sockets. Four USB 2 ports occupy the backpanel and two more may be added with the separate backplate. Another backplate provides optical and coaxial digital audio inputs and outputs.

In addition to the hardware features, AOpen includes its BIOS-based Jukebox utility, allowing you to play audio CDs without booting into the OS. Perhaps more useful for most people is AOpen's SilentTek utility, which provides hardware monitoring and intelligent fan control to try and reduce noise.

Despite being an early sample, our AX4R Plus performed very well. For testing, we added a 2.4BGHz Pentium 4, 512MB of PC2100 memory (two 256MB DIMMs), a 40GB Ultra ATA/100 hard disk, a GeForce4 Ti 4400-based graphics card and installed Windows XP Professional.

The PC Pro 2D benchmark score of 1.40 is excellent, beating Gigabyte's 845PE-based Pentium 4 Titan 667 Ultra (see Reviews, issue 98, p147), albeit only slightly. Gaming performance was top notch too, scoring 9,476 in 3DMark2001 SE at 1,280 x 1,024 in 32-bit colour, ahead of any Pentium 4 board we've tested. Due to the early state of the AX4R Plus' BIOS, we can expect performance to increase as well.

The AX4R Plus is a great debut for the E7205 chipset. Features are good, even though EIDE RAID and FireWire would have been welcome. It's unmatched in terms of performance and any Pentium 4 user wanting a powerful workstation platform without the expense of Rambus memory should take a look.

Author: Gareth Ogden