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Date |
: Oct 22nd, 2001 |
| Category |
: Motherboards |
| Manufacturer |
: ASUS |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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The M1651+ North Bridge, the core of the Aladdin Pro 5T chipset, sits between the CPU socket and the AGP slot. It provides all the major features of the chipset, namely DDR, 66/100/133MHz FSB as well as AGP 1x/2x/4x support. ASUS opted for the classic green North Bridge heatsink, something not often seen since the venerable 440BX chipset. The heatsink is a tad small but is sufficient as the North Bridge doesn't get overly hot under normal operating conditions. You can however opt to install an active cooling solution such as the Thermaltake Blue Orb. This shouldn't present any problems since ASUS has provided ample allowance.
The TUA266 is that it comes equipped with an AGP Pro slot, something that seems to be commonplace among ASUS motherboards, but rarer among other brands. The slot comes pre-installed with a safety tab, which should
not be removed unless an AGP Pro card is being used. Otherwise, the card might slide back and get damaged. Another interesting aspect is the TUA266's DIMM slot configuration. Unlike other Tualatin boards, the TUA266 sports 2 DDR DIMM slots and 3 SDRAM DIMM slots.
It supports either 2GB of DDR-SDRAM or 3GB of SDRAM. This is supposed to be one of its key advantages, as this configuration will allow the end-user to make use of his / her existing SDRAM while waiting for the prices of DDR-SDRAM to fall. As mentioned earlier however, no Socket-370 CPU features clock synchronous clocking, meaning the FSB is limited to a single data rate and that doubling the peak memory bandwidth (via the use of DDR-SDRAM) would not greatly add to overall system performance.
The ALi M1535D+ South Bridge is part of both the Aladdin Pro 5T and the ALiMAGiK 1 chipset (see our K7AMA review), which boasts support for the Ultra-ATA 100 protocol and 6 USB ports. Basically, the M1535D+ is on par with the VIA 686B South Bridge. For expansion slots, ASUS chose to go with the OEM oriented 1/5/0/1 (AGP/PCI/ISA/AMR) configuration. The inclusion of an AMR slot is rather pointless by many accounts as peripherals are virtually non-existant. All expansion slots are capable of ccommodating full-length cards.
The distribution and quantity of capacitance are critical considerations in designing a stable motherboard. There are 13 1500uF, 3 3300uF and 7 1000uF capacitors, not counting the numerous ones that are less than <1000uF. ASUS is known to aim first for stability then overclockability, and the TUA266 reflects this design principle. Overclocking is not a neglected aspect however, as ASUS included fully jumper free FSB adjustment (admittedly close to standard fare nowadays) and DDR DIMM voltage adjustment.
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