written by deepz0ne on 28/08/2003
Good Points
Cheap, drivers easy to install.
Bad Points
Chipset.
General Comments
The cheapest motherboard I was able to find for an AMD Duron 1300MHz. The sad thing is that it makes the processor perform as a Pentium II 350MHz when you play games. It gets much much much worse if you configure the Chipset to use more than 16MB for video. Clearly the chipset can't cope with video, sound, system bus and hard disk at the same time. I think the problem resides in the fact that unlike other integrated motherboards that come with a Northbridge and a Southbridge, this one has only one chip to do the job of two.
AGP has been around for almost seven years now, however the manufacturers of this board can't get a extremely simple video card (TNT2 Vanta in my case) to work well. The video gets corrupted when I try to play OpenGL games. They even have a list of the few videocards that they (the experts) could get to work with this mobo. .
The ATA66 is another feature from which you should expect nothing more than a below average performance.
However I wouldn't have a problem with all I have mentioned and some other things I haven't, but the thing is that the manufacturer really shouldn't induce buyers to think that the motherboard can do things it can't.