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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.
DDR is becoming something of an industry
buzzword, surrounded by hype. The technology serves to
deliver data on both sides of a cycle. Traditionally, to
transfer a piece of data (either 0 or 1) would take one
whole clock cycle, measured in Hertz (Hz). DDR allows data
to be transferred on the falling edge of the cycle, thereby
doubling the throughput. However the number of cycles (Hz)
remains the same. Contrary to popular belief, SDRAM is still
only available in 100 MHz 133 MHz or 150 MHz versions.
The new DDR versions of this memory are
not sold as PC200, PC266, PC300 or PC333, as one might
logically guess, but instead as PC1600, PC2100, PC2400 and
PC2700. This confusing number is the bandwidth throughput,
which can be worked out by multiplying the effective
frequency (200/266/300/333) by the bits (64) and dividing
the end result by the number of bits per byte (8). All of
which leaves us wanting to call it PC200, PC266 or PC300.
The AK35GT-R features four DDR DIMM
slots for PC1600, PC2100, PC2400 & PC2700, and possibly
for PC3200 and PC3700 (neither of the latter are available
yet). Whilst it is totally feasible to run memory at these
higher speeds, indeed the BIOS supports up to a massive
233(466)Mhz for memory, there is no option to set the PCI
divider to 1/5 or the AGP divider to 2/5. This means PCI
cards would have to run at up to 58Mhz and AGP cards up to
116Mhz if you were to want to run your memory at PC3700
speeds. At these settings, it is quite possible (even
probable) to do some damage. However, it can be done,
usually with the help of extreme cooling, like LN2 for
instance. The BIOS supports increasing both the CPU and the
memory voltage beyond the recommended values, no need to do
a voltage mod to get that extra power to the processor!
The integrated sound on the AK35GT-R, as
mentioned before, supports Dolby Digital. The drivers CD
came with a couple of demos to demonstrate this. The sound
quality wasn't too bad either, but what really annoyed me is
the fact that the drivers don't support multiple audio
streams. This meant I couldn't play music whilst playing
games, which infuriated me because I enjoy having some
background music playing if I'm going to play Counter-Strike
(spending most of my time as a spectator, of course). Unlike
the superb sound on the my previous KT266a motherboard, the
Soyo Dragon Plus, the AK35GT-R doesn't include any Digital
I/O, only the three analogue 3.5mm stereo jacks. In fact, to
use all six channels, the stereo line input has to be
sacrificed for the rear stereo output.
The AK35GT-R was made with Athlon XP's
broadly in mind. Based on the core known as Palomino, the
main benefits of the Athlon XP will be increased speeds and
reduced power consumption. Reduced power consumption means
reduced heat. Reduced heat means a greater opportunity to
overclock, and of course you can increase the voltage too.
Other than that the XP is just your normal T-Bird Athlon,
with the same 384k of on-die cache, and the same Socket A
form factor, and clocked at higher speeds than the
traditional T-Bird and is really only a stopgap until
processors based on Thoroughbred/Appaloosa cores come out.
It has to be noted that the numbers the processors are sold
at are PR, not clock cycles. I really couldn't care less
though as they are still really good performers, and above
1Ghz clock cycles becomes a much less accurate method of
judging speeds.
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