Albatron's K8X800 Pro II motherboard
All that, no chips
All that, no chips
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I LOVE TO see manufacturers pack in all sorts of extra goodies with their mainboards as much as—or maybe even more than—the next guy, but not everyone needs rounded IDE cables, case straps, multiple Serial ATA and IDE RAID options, MOSFET cooling, or on-the-fly hard drive encryption capabilities. All those bundled goodies and extra peripherals are great, but they raise the price of the board and are really a waste if unused.
As the Athlon 64 3000+ hits a price/performance sweet spot for budget-conscious enthusiasts, the outlook is good for Athlon 64 boards that trade bundled bells and whistles for lower price tags. One of these more affordable Athlon 64 boards is Albatron's K8X800 Pro II, which has all the essentials without the frilly extras. Is the K8X800 Pro II worthy of an Athlon 64 3000+? Read on to find out.
The specs
The K8X800 Pro II isn't loaded with every conceivable extra, but it does have everything most users will need.
| CPU support | Socket 754-based Athlon 64 processors |
| Form factor | ATX |
| North bridge | VIA K8T800 |
| South bridge | VIA VT8237 |
| Interconnect | HyperTransport (3.6GB/s) |
| PCI slots | 6 32-bit/33MHz |
| AGP slots | 1 4x/8x (1.5V only) |
| AMR/CNR slots | None |
| Memory | 3 184-pin DIMM sockets Maximum of 2GB of DDR266/333/400 SDRAM |
| Storage I/O | Floppy disk 2 channels ATA/133 |
| Serial ATA | 2 Serial ATA channels via VT8237 south bridge |
| RAID | RAID 0, 1 support via VT8237 V-RAID |
| Legacy ports | 1 PS/2 keyboard, 1 PS/2 mouse, serial and parallel ports |
| USB | 2 USB 2.0 ports Additional 4 USB ports via PCI expansion header |
| Firewire | 2 IEEE 1394 Firewire port via VT6307 Firewire controller |
| Audio | 7.1-channel audio via VIA Envy24PT audio controller analog front, rear, surround, and center outputs analog line and microphone inputs digital S/PDIF input and output ports (coaxial and Tos-Link) |
| Video | None |
| Ethernet | 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet via 3COM 940-MV00 |
| BIOS | Phoenix AwardBIOS |
| Bus speeds | CPU: 200-300MHz in 1MHz increments DRAM: auto, 100, 133, 166, and 200MHz |
| Bus dividers | None |
| Voltages | CPU: 0.8-1.9V in 0.05V increments AGP: 1.5-1.8V in 0.1V increments DIMM: 2.6-2.9 in 0.1V increments Northbridge: 2.5-2.8V in 0.1V increments Southbridge: 2.5-2.8V in 0.1V increments LDT: 1.2-1.3 in 0.1V increments |
| Monitoring | Voltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring |
As far as integrated features go, the K8X800 Pro II is really only missing IDE RAID. Not bad for one of the most affordable Athlon 64 boards on the market.
