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Posted by
Toby Crundwell
on January 21, 2002
Manufactured by: Shuttle
Product: AK35GTR
KT266a Socket A motherboard
Find
low Motherboard
prices here.
 Shuttle is a well known name in some
circles, but hasn't really made a big name for itself in
consumer motherboards. The latest in its long line of VIA
based motherboards is the in-memorably named AK35GT-R, based
on VIA's KT266a, seeing a lot of action recently.
The AK35GT-R came in a silver packaging
seeming not unique to the model, simply marked as
"Spacewalker" as other Shuttle motherboards are.
It took a trip to the website to actually find out the model
number, this is probably due to the AK35 doesn't seem to be
available to the public yet. As far as accessories go, the
AK35GT-R must be unique, at least when compared to other
manufacturer's offerings. It is the first motherboard I have
come across to feature a carry bag. The nylon bag is
emblazoned with Shuttle, the logo, and two URLs. The bag is
just about big enough to carry the motherboard in its box,
in case you need to, hmm, move the motherboard around. I'm
sure it would rate very highly in the unnecessary accessory
stakes. Honestly, for the cost to make an extra bag I'm sure
Shuttle could have included something eminently more useful.
Other accessories are...sparse. In the
box are the customary two extra USB ports, a couple of
double wired IDE cables for use with UDMA/ATA up to 100 (the
maximum the motherboard supports), a floppy cable, and a
rather wasteful way to make the onboard sound six channel
compatible. Whereas the previous KT266a board I was using (Soyo
Dragon Plus) had multiple sound I/O connectors, the only one
Shuttle saw fit to include on the AK35GT-R was just one
3.5mm jack for the LFE & Centre stereo channel. A very
wasteful use of space. Still, at least it does enable Dolby
Digital support, which is better than some of the
competition.
The board itself is rather more liberal
with expansion than most, comprising four DDR DIMM slots and
six PCI slots. The AGP port, although not AGP Pro, does have
a retaining mechanism for larger cards. At first I thought
the slot was broken at the end, but the bit of plastic to
the rear of the slot serves to secure the AGP card, more on
this later.
The sixth PCI slot shares with the small
obligatory CNR slot (that is rarely ever used). As mentioned
before, to get six channel audio and the extra USB slots,
backing spaces have to be used up. Shuttle could have easily
integrated the LFE/Centre channel jack in with the USB
ports, saving the need to use up backspace, or alternatively
they could have followed Soyo, Asus and Creative's lead and
used a front plate to serve for I/O.
Otherwise, the board was largely
forgettable, with no special colouring. Most users shouldn't
mind though, as in the majority of cases it spends nearly
all of its lifetime out of sight.
The board of course came with a drivers
CD and a manual. Both of them weren't final shipping
versions though, the driver CD was a CDR with a pen
scribbled "BAK35OA" marking it. The same could be
said for the manual, although comprehensive, it was printed
on A4 sheets held together by a paper clip, awkward to look
through. It also had quite a few passages in it that were
badly translated. Not quite on the scale off "All your
base are belong to us", but "after upgrade, new
memory value will be computed" sounds less than
convincing. Having said this, I could still easily
understand most of the manual. There was a separate manual,
in the same A4 style as the main system manual, but marked
"raid administrator". This, unsurprisingly,
covered the onboard raid controller, and was as
comprehensive (and unprofessional) as the main manual.
Obviously Shuttle didn't have these
items ready-to-go yet but should have by the time they get
the boards on stores, we didn't get any other related notes
from them so we assume the motherboard itself was indeed
final revision, no word about the BIOS either.
You can check out the complete technical
specifications for AK35GT-R on the next page, if you want to
bypass them, go directly to Page # 3.
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