The AV32 sports a full complement of ports.

This mobo's onboard sound comes courtesy of an Advance Logic ALC100P codec chip, which, in combination with the Via south bridge audio controller, delivers some pretty decent sound. Note that this is not a purely "soft" audio solution—the Via south bridge acts as an AC'97 audio controller. (For more info on the ALC100P chip, see here.)

In casual use, I noticed no serious distortion or bus noise, though it was only casual use. In fact, using this mobo's onboard sound made me wonder out loud whether PCI add-in cards are really necessary. If you're building a new system based on the AV32, I'd at least give the built-in audio a shot before deciding to disable it and plunk down the cash for a PCI sound card.

Finally, the AV32's layout is marred by one really annoying problem. Access to one of the two DDR DIMM slots is blocked by any standard-size AGP card in the AGP slot. Shown below is an Asus GeForce2 card blocking the tab. I had to remove the video card in order to put a DIMM into the DIMM slot.

The DDR DIMM slot's tab is blocked by a standard-sized AGP card.

There's really no excuse for this sort of problem in this day and age. It's not a huge problem once the system's built, but having to pull your AGP card to swap out some RAM is just wrong.

The AV32 in its native environment.