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With the overwhelming success of the XPC small form factor series that has made Shuttle computers #1 amongst the second tier mainboard manufacturers, it is easy to forget that the Taiwanese manufacturer actually makes real ATX mainboards as well. Since the days of the AK31, Shuttle has been on a roll with the VIA KT266(A) and 333 chipsets, making some of the most competitive mainboards in the market. Where everyone else is pushing features to gain additional market share, Shuttle is releasing the AK37GTR with features that are more geared towards the insider but are nonetheless mile-stone breakthroughs in board engineering by fully implementing the ATX 2.03 concept for the first time in a single processor board for the Socket A platform. The result is the capability of driving insane amounts of system memory at high speed without any hiccup. On the downside, the BIOS of the AK37GTR is still far from perfect, especially when a 333 MHz CPU is used, resulting in lack of stability in more demanding applications. What else did we find out? Read on ...

Despite the fact that the nForce2 chipset has shaken up the SocketA arena pretty badly, the average user is currently still facing the fact that availability of nVidia's new system logic is somewhat limited. Moreover, the boards will most likely run at a higher price point than the established VIA chipset-family boards. At this point, there is little doubt that the nForce 2 will be more powerful in some applications, particularly those demanding high bandwidth like 3D gaming. That is, contrary to the current grain of wisdom, the advantage of the TwinBank architecture is not limited to integrated graphics solution but will bear fruit also in standard mainboards in gaming situtations where CPU memory accesses may collide with direct memory accesses of the AGP card drawing textures from the dedicated AGP aperture.

FOUR DIMM slots, Auxiliary power connectors, all of this looks like a server class P4 board but in fact we are looking at the Shuttle AK37GTR here

On the other hand, only a sensationalist precox would count VIA Technologies out yet. While the KT400 chipset may no longer be the crown of the Socket A creations, it is a mature and solid chipset and, very importantly, it is readily available. In addition, the performance is still rather respectable and from a price/performance standpoint, it is hard to beat. Moreover, even though it affects only a relatively small group, the KT400 is the only desktop chipset supporting up to 4 GB of memory with the caveat that this actually means four billion bytes which, in the current memory parlance translates into 3.7 GB.

Let's stick with the memory for another few seconds. Four GigaBytes in whichever metric require four DIMM slots. Four Gigabytes of memory further require an oxen of a memory clock and drive strength for the address and command bus. Four Gigabytes of memory also mean roughly 12W / 15W power consumption (PC2100 /PC2700) in active standby mode (clocks running) and that number will increase to approximately 28-30W whenever a four bank interleaved read is executed (based on ICC7 values of 300 mA / 256 Mb PC2700 components, one bank open).

We have often enough emphasized the importance of high quality board power supplies for the CPU, 2 phases versus 3 phases and auxiliary 12V input to warrant equal current distribution across the entire PCB and ensure reliability and endurance of the mainboard. We have further found that, whenever the manufacturers skimped on the board power circuitry, the first thing that went down the tubes was the capability of the board to drive more than a marginal amount of system memory, closely followed by the mainboard endurance. Needless to say that the same goes for an insufficient power supply unit.

Exactly the above raised points have been the reasons for Intel to add a sensor to their desktop Pentium4 boards that prevents initialization of the CPU if the auxiliary power connector is not plugged into the board, regardless of whether the ATX power connector delivered adequate amperage. Keep in mind that each 5V Rail can only deliver 5 Amps and there are only four of these rails accommodated in the standard ATX connector. Ergo, we need the auxiliary power, if not for the CPU then for the other on-board power hogs like AGP and, increasingly important, the system memory.

After the above said, there will be two groups, one of which will claim that AMD is different from Intel, the other one shaking their heads in disbelief why, with all the known stability issues we have experienced with higher memory density configurations, why haven't we seen the auxiliary power connector on SocketA mainboards. Good question, to say the least and even better, Shuttle has the answer in form of the AK37GTR.

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