Application:

 AMD Athlon64 motherboard

Provided by:

 Albatron

Available at:

 No Specific Vendor

Review by:

 Michael

Edited by:

 Paul

Review date:

 August 2nd, 2004
   
 

    

     The Athlon64 processor has been given a great amount of support from chipset and motherboard manufacturers since its delivery. The usual chipset suppliers (nVidia, SiS, and VIA) have historically been the pillar of AMD processor success in the battle of desktop supremacy. As long as each motherboard manufacturer continues to release their own mix of offerings based on each chipset, there will always be a very broad selection of motherboards to support the AMD processor. Albatron is just one of the players in a vast field of motherboard designers that have stepped into the Athlon64 arena. Historically their boards have offered a very strong mix of Overclocking features for the enthusiast, expandability for product longevity, and price for the budget minded consumer.

     The K8X800 Pro II from Albatron is a very feature oriented Athlon64 motherboard built on the VIA K8T800 chipset. Based around the Socket 754 interface, the K8X800 Pro utilizes standard DDR RAM and 8x AGP. Bundled with Gigabit LAN and an incredible 8 channel audio solution, the K8X800 Pro II is almost ready to game right out of the box.

Features / Specifications

 Processor


AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor

FSB
800 MHz

Chipset


North Bridge : VIA K8T800
South Bridge : VIA VT8237
LAN Chip : 3Com 3C940
IEEE1394 Chip : VIA VT6307
Audio Chip : VIA VT1720 Evny 24PT
I/O Chip: Winbond Smart I/O W83697HF

Memory


3 * DDR Sockets:
DDR200/266/333/400 NON-ECC DDR SDRAM up to 3GB
 

Expansion Slots


1 x AGP(3.0) 8X slot (1.5V only)
6 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant)
 

IDE Connectors

         
2 ATA133/100/66 Channels, up to 4 ATA 133/100/66 IDE devices
2 Serial ATA150 Channels, up to 2 Serial ATA150 Hard Drives

Onboard I/O Connectors
1 x Floppy Connector
3 x USB 2.0/1.1 header (6 ports by optional cable)
2 x IEEE1394 header (2 ports IEEE1394 cable optional)
1 x CD_IN header
1 x S/PDIF in/out header (S/PDIF in/out cable optional)
1 x CPU fan header ( 1 fan rotation detection function )
2 x System fan headers ( 2 fan rotation detection function )
1 x 10 pin system panel header (Intel spec)
1 x 3 pin Power LED header
1 x Front audio header (Intel spec)
1 x IrDA header
1 x Case Open detection header
2 x 5 pin Com port header
2 x 8 pin Game Port header
 

I/O via Back Panel


PS/2 keyboard/mouse, 2 x USB(2.0/1.1), RJ45,1 x Com(serial), 1 x Parallel,
1x Line-in/Line-out(Speaker Out)/MIC/SUR_CEN/SUR/R:WOF,L:CEN

Power
20-pin ATX power connector, 4-pin ATX 12V power connector

BIOS Feature
4Mb Flash EEPROM
Award BIOS with ACPI, DMI2.0, PnP, WfM2.0, Green Suspend to RAM (S3),
 Suspend to Disk (S4) Wake on keyboard/mouse, Wake on LAN/RTC Timer
 

Hardware Monitoring
3 FAN sensors, CPU/System voltages and temperature monitoring

Special Feature

         


Zero Jumper Design
BIOS Mirror ™ Protect BIOS by creating an original mirror image of itself
Voice Genie™ Voice Troubleshooting system ( four-Language )
Adjustable CPU frequency by 1 MHz increment, Adjustable Vcore, VAGP, VMemory for overclocking.
Watch Dog Timer (auto-reset system when it can not handle overclock configurations)
Special design for CPU Over Temperature Protection.( OTP )
 

Certifications
FCC, CE, BSMI

Form Factor
ATX ( 305*244 mm )

     As we can see, The K8X800 Pro II includes a touch of every technology found on modern motherboards. From the multiple (and expected) USB and Firewire connectors to the more enthusiast oriented features such as the BIOS Mirror, Voice Genie and Watch Dog Timer. Overclocking is made possible by the Adjustable CPU frequency, but we all know there is much more to it than that. On to the board layout!