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In a fast moving
world like computers market it's no surprise that new motherboards
appear every month. Generally new motherboards aren't based on new
concepts or ideas and are slightly different on characteristics,
design, components. At PC Hardware we hardly see entirely new products.
Anyway we noticed that every year a new technology changes somehow
the face of computers (or a least brings an improvement). I mainly
speak here about motherboards because this is the main part of a
computer system (I don't talk about CPU which is the brain). DDR
is not a new concept, in fact the idea is quite old but it took
a while to hit the market. A few months ago we reviewed a DDR powered
motherboard for Intel CPUs from Shuttle. We were not very impressed
about the performance boost because in benchmarks the difference
was minimal, but we positively appreciated the impact of DDR memory.
As we all know the old SDRAM is based on a twenty years old concept
and we think that DDR may take things further. Today I will take
a look at a motherboard for AMD Thunderbird/Duron, more precisely
to the DFI AK76-SN.
First
look
AK76-SN is based
on AMD761. I know that most Thunderbird/Duron motherboards on the
market with DDR support are based on VIA266 so it would be a pleasure
to see how it performs against its competitors. DFI packages this
mobo like all the other ones, no special things. The manual is not
as detailed as needed to satisfy a hardcore user, but it successfully
describes the installation process. Users with low English skills
should be happy that DFI included chapters in four languages. At
a first look I was impressed that the motherboard offers six PCI
slots, but the IDE and floppy connectors placed perpendicular to
the two memory slots are not the best choice. AK76-SN is a big board
and it suffers from early implementation problems. Space is not
used to maximum and this reflects into ATX connector position. It
was impossible not to see the two DIP banks of jumpers on the board.
There are also several other jumpers on board which made me think
to a hard CPU installation. A positive fact is that there is enough
place around the socket for a big heatsink.
DFI
AK76-SN product picture
Fan
headers are placed close enough to the socket and it should be appreciated
that DFI used a heatsink plus a fan to cool down the AMD761 chip.
All slots support full length cards, but due to IDE and floppy connectors
place it's not too easy to insert cables when the PCIs are filled
with long cards. The motherboard has an additional front USB header,
but the bracket is not included in the package. Overall the motherboard
design is not the most inspired but we will see in next sections how
it performs on real tests. |
23:22 
Tagan TG480-U01 480W ATX / EPS Power Supply Review 
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