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Date |
: Dec 24th, 2001 |
| Category |
: Motherboards |
| Manufacturer |
: AOpen |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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As is the standard practice nowadays, AOpen opted to integrate AC'97 audio. Once again, they chose the no frills Analog Devices AD1885 CODEC, the same CODEC used on the AK73 Pro (A) and AX3S Plus. For casual use, the integrated audio performs acceptably, with processor use not noticeably slowing down the system. However, for more intensive uses, such as DVD playback or gaming, it is definitely better to go with a hardware-based sound card as they generally hog less CPU time while providing more audio functionality and better sound quality.
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The AK77 Plus is equipped with a Promise PDC20265R ATA-100 RAID controller, which supports RAID 0 (striped) and RAID 1 (mirrored) arrays. If you elect not to use the RAID functionality, the Promise FastTrack 100 Lite also doubles as a second IDE controller, supporting two more IDE channels (4 devices). This makes for a grand total of 8 IDE devices, certainly more than enough to overwhelm just about any case.
Another standard feature on AOpen motherboards are the Dr. Voice, Dr. LED and Die-Hard BIOS technologies. Dr. Voice is a diagnostics tool, audibly telling you what is wrong with your motherboard in 4 languages; English, German, Chinese and Japanese. Dr. LED, an optional accessory, is a set of 8 LEDs, which indicate which part of the motherboard might be having problems. Finally, the Die-Hard BIOS technology helps to protect your system from virus attacks or failed BIOS updates. Essentially, there are two BIOS chips on the motherboard, with only the primary chip being active during normal use. Upon corruption of the primary chip's contents, the machine will switch over to the secondary chip.
To round out the bundle, AOpen includes a product registration card, their superb "getting started" poster with the basic instructions on how to setup the motherboard and 2 CDs; one with an electronic version of the manual, the drivers and utilities; the other with a full version of Norton Antivirus 2001 for Win9x/NT/2000. This saves the end-user the time, money and inconvenience of separately purchasing an antivirus program. The package also contains two detailed manuals, one for the AK77 Plus, and the other for the onboard Promise RAID controller. So far, AOpen's motherboard manuals describe the product and related technologies / terminologies in detail but lack any descriptions and explanations of the BIOS settings. The RAID manual however, is very in-depth, providing more than enough information on how to setup and maintain a RAID array.
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