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It is an interesting board, the AK37GTR, to say the least. From the viewpoint of just looking at hardware, the AK37GTR is the most promising board out there, a well thought-out layout, nothing too fancy but a lot of power under the hood and power is really the operating word here. There are certainly some points where any revision can improve the board, even in the current state of hardware. For once, even though the ALC650 is not a bad solution, there may be better solutions out there, VIA's Envy24 would be one good candidate.

For the average user, there is always the trade-off between eye candy and things that are really useful. Window shopping certainly plays a big role in the retail market but on the other hand, it is not just the enthusiast who buys retail, on the contrary, a very large portion of this market goes into the IT and system administrator segment and here it is where the eye candy doesn't buy anything. What it really comes down to is the question of either carrying inventory of both budget and enthusiast versions like MSI does or else having a bundle that somehow qualifies as a one-size-fits all solution, meaning that it is not just a barebones for the system administrator but that it offers some attractive features without inflating the price too much.

In terms of performance, the AK37GTR can run with the best. In terms of overall system memory that the board can drive, it surpasses every other board we have seen so far, in terms of stability .... it really depends on the processor used. With the 266 MHz FSB CPUs, there were no issues at all that we could see but we did have some rather hair-raising experiences with the XP2800+ and its 333 MHz FSB. Most likely, these issues can and will be resolved with the next BIOS update. While we are at it, there are a few other issues that could be addressed like the obsolete L2 ECC checking entry and the wrong latency showing in DDR400 mode, disabling APIC in fail safe settings should be removed, IOQ depth settings falls in the same category and the burn protection should have a disable possibility (or not?) .....

Once again, the overall verdict is that Shuttle has created exemplary hardware but at the same time, they also need to follow up with the correct software, in this case, the BIOS that needs to be refined to accomodate the latest revisions of AMD processors. If the stability problems with the 333 MHz FSB CPUs can be resolved, I can see the AK37GTR in combination with any Barton CPU and some 3 GB of unbuffered PC2700 memory as the ultimate solution for entry-level workstations in any environment, be it digital real-time imaging, content creation, video editing or data base management. At the same time, the AK37GTR remains a great choice for the enthusiast.

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