Navigate: Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home	.	.
Prices: Mainboards ABIT ASUS Chaintech Shuttle Soyo Tyan CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ Search Prices:

Test platforms

Shuttle AK31 Rev.3.1

The first production board here to use the VIA KT266A chipset with the proper implementation of BIOS instructions to take advantage of SSE and prefetch algorithms of the Athlon XP. Except for substituting the new North Bridge, the AK31 rev. 3.1 is identical to the award-winning Rev.2.0, featuring 6 PCI, one CNR and one AGP expansion slot. Unchanged is also the 4 DIMM configuration.

Shuttle AK31 Rev. 3.1

The VIA KT266A-based successor of one of the already best boards out there

Overall, the performance of the Shuttle AK31 Rev. 3.1 came very close but did not quite match the results of the VIA reference board. However, it is necessary to keep in mind that in any production board some compromises towards stability need to be made.

The differences were most pronounced in StreamD where the fell behind with an average of some 10% performance hit compared to VIA's reference board. This translates into an average of 2% lower scores in SiSoft Sandra Memory benchmark and about 1 - 1.5% performance hit in most gaming applications. In most applications, however, there is still a noticeable distance to the AMD761-based Gigabyte GA-7DX.

next page:    => The Ghost in the Drivers, System Configurations, Overclocking =>