Shuttle AV32 Socket 370 Motherboard Review - PAGE 3
Daryl Grant - Monday, February 26th, 2001

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-- Article Quick Nav -- 1 - Introduction & Specs2 - Box Contents & Installation3 - Impressions & Benchmarks4 - More Results & Final Thoughts

Impressions

Angled View of the AV32

I had a couple of stability problems with the AV32 right out of the gate. I wasn’t able to boot the system with an AGP Aperture above 64MB – it wouldn’t even POST. This was very odd since I have never experience any problems with the AGP aperture setting. It could possibly have something to do with the new chipset although I have no other evidence to back this up.

The system also wouldn’t boot when the memory CAS setting was set to 2. This happened with a module of Micron RAM as well as with a module of Corsair RAM despite the fact that both modules have been thoroughly used in other systems without any problems. The cause of this is most likely related to the rigorous timing demands associated with running RAM at CAS2.

I found further issues while running stability tests within Windows, especially during the Quake3 stress test (Demo001 and Demo002 looped for 12 hours) which saw an above average number of crashes.

These instability problems are likely due to a short development cycle. Being one of the first Apollo Pro266 boards out of the gate, there are bound to be a few problems that need to be worked out.

Test System

Operating systems:
Windows 98SE (v4.10.2222 A)
Windows 2000 (v5.00.2195 w/ SP1)

Hardware:

CPU: Intel Pentium III 800EB Mobo(s): Shuttle AV32 rev1.3, Epox 3SPA3 rev1.0 RAM: 128MB Micron PC133 RAM Video Card: Visiontek Geforce2 Ultra (Detonator drivers v6.50) HDD: 30Gb IBM Deskstar 75GXP 7200rpm, Ultra ATA-100 CD-ROM: Creative 52X CD-ROM

Benchmarks

All scores are averaged from at least 3 runs.

Sisoft Sandra 2000.7.6.49:
CPU Benchmark
CPU Multimedia benchmark
Memory Benchmark

Business Winstone 2001
Content Creation Winstone 2001

Quake Timedemo Demo001

Resolution: 640 x 480 Color Depth: 16bit Lighting: Vertex Geo. Detail: Low Tex. Detail: Low Tex. Quality: 16bit Text Filter: Bilinear

Benchmark Results

As has become so common in the motherboard market, the benchmark performance hovers around a differential of only a few percent. These days it’s stability, upgrade-ability, features, and price that play larger roles in deciding which mobo to purchase, rather than just performance numbers.

next: More Results & Final Thoughts »

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