Shuttle AV32 Socket 370 Motherboard Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

Horizontal Profile of the AV32

The VIA Apollo Pro133(A) chipset has produced some excellent motherboards for the Socket 370 and Slot 1 platforms, but it must now move aside to make way for its predecessor: the Apollo Pro266. So what’s new?

Well, a significant advancement with this chipset is VIA’s new V-Link architecture which connects the north and south bridges via a dedicated pathway, rather than using the PCI bus as in the past. This is much like Intel’s Hub Architecture, both of which allow data to be transferred more quickly and with greater reliability.

The Apollo Pro266 supports DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM with its 266MHz Memory Bus which provides a very large increase in memory bandwidth -- twice as much to be exact. PC100 and PC133 SDR (Single Data Rate) SDRAM transfer data at 800MB/s and 1.06MB/s respectively, whereas the new PC1600 and PC2100 DDR SDRAM transfer data at 1.6GB/s and 2.1GB/s respectively. Unfortunately this extra bandwidth is more than the PIII can make use of so this new feature on the Pro266 isn’t as useful as it seems (at least for the PIII). With Corsair selling their PC1600 RAM at just a few dollars more than their PC133 RAM, the fact that it will be under-utilized by the PIII won’t make much difference.

Shuttle is one of the first manufacturers to produce boards based on the Apollo Pro266 chipset. They have two models, the AV30 and the AV32, and they sent us the AV32 for reviewing. Here are the board’s specs:

Specs

CPU Interface Socket370 Chipset VIA Apollo Pro 266 VT 8633 North Bridge VT 8233 South Bridge FSB Speeds 66 / 100 / 133 / 136 / 140 / 145 / 150 / 160 / 166 Clock Multiples n / a Core Voltages -0.1 / -0.05 / +0.05 / +0.1 / +0.2 / +0.3 / +0.4 I/O Voltages n / a AGP Voltages n / a RAM 2 x 184-pin DDR slots (up to 2GB of PC1600 or PC2100) 2 x 168-pin SDR slots (up to 1GB of PC100 or PC133) Expansion 1AGP (4x) / 5PCI / 1ACR (Advanced Communication Riser) 2 USB ports onboard (4 optional) PCI IDE 2 x UltraDMA 100/66/33 channels Other Award BIOS v6.0 PG, Onboard Audio

(Note: You can either use DDR RAM or SDR RAM in the board, but you cannot use both at the same. If you do attempt to use the system with both types installed, it simply won’t boot. Sorry to burst your bubble :] ).

The coolest feature on the AV32 is the support for both DDR and SDR SDRAM which is ideal for people who already own PC100 / PC133 RAM. Despite this, having the ability to use either type of SDRAM is extremely useful and will save you a fair chunk of change if you already own SDR SDRAM. If you don’t already own that RAM, there is much less of a reason to purchase this board because having the two types of DIMM slots on the board increases its price. The extra cost would be offset by the money saved on not having to purchase DDR SDRAM, but if you aren’t saving that money, way pay more for less?