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The general layout of the AK37GTR is rather conservative, featuring five PCI slots and one 1.5V AGP slot. In the tradition of the AK31 / AK35 family, the AK37GTR sports four DIMM slots, flanked on the far right of the PCB by the IDE and floppy connectors. The ATX I/O panel is similarly conservative, except for the integrated Ethernet RJ45 port, it looks just like anything we have seen in the past 3 years, featuring serial, parallel, USB, Sound and MIDI / gameport interface.

The four DIMM slots can accommodate up to 4 GB of unbuffered system memory with the limitations mentioned earlier, that is, in reality, it is rather 3.7 GB and beyond 3.0 GB stability starts to go down. Realistically, though, three GB of unbuffered system memory can be run without problem and three GB is also where Shuttle sets the cut-off for PC2700 memory. We tried it and had the system running 3DMark2001 demo in a loop for 4 days with 3 x 1GB of system memory at 333 MHz without problems.

Mushkin 1 GB unbuffered PC2100 DDR DIMM. With the AK37GTR, we were able not only to run three of these puppies but actually overclock them to DDR333 without problems.

Unusual is the positioning of the BIOS ROM and the ITE LPC I/O interface in the upper half of the PCB, almost directly adjacent to the CPU socket. However, this arrangement has the advantage that the current layout can be easily modified into any micro or Flex-ATX design. Along those trains of thought, the placement of the VT6103 VIA Fast Ethernet controller in the same area of the mainboard makes perfectly sense.

RealTek Sound Panel, classic view. Note the "Recoder" function and the EQURLIZER adjustments.

On-board sound is provided by the RealTek ALC650 AC97 audio codec and while this solution may not be as powerful as some hardware-based sound, it is more than adequate for most users. It would have been nice to see the board with VIA's new Envy24HT sound on the AK37GTR, maybe the next revision will bring that one. In the present form, the on-board audio is supplemented by a SPDIF and the usual CD, Aux and Modem-In connectors as well as the Center/Bass selection header.

Center of the board is the VIA KT400 chipset with the VT8235 southbridge and the VLink 8x interconnect for 533 MB bandwidth between North and South Bridge featuring 8 PCI IRQs (only four of which are available for the PCI slots, though, the others are internally hard-wired to soft modem, LAN etc.). We have described this latest spawn of the VIA chipset family in detail in our review of the ASUS A7V8X so there is no need to go into further detail here.

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