AOpen AK72 AMD Athlon VIA KX-133
Tuesday, June 27, 2000
The performance tests results
All tests were all performed under Windows98.
The system setup was as following:
Motherboard: AOpen AK72
BIOS version: R1.03
CPU: AMD Athlon 800Mhz
Memory: 128Mbb Corsair PC133 SDram CAS2
Primary IDE Port Controller Master: Quantum Fireball KA 9.1gig ATA66
Secondary IDE port Controller Master: none
Secondary IDE port Controller Slave: Kenwood 52X True X CD-ROM
AGP Port: GeForce 256
Graphics card driver revision: Nvidia 4.11.01.0368
OS: Win98 built 4.10
DirectX 7.0a
GlSetup 1.0.0.110 Beta
Suggested memory to use
Corsair 128Mb Sdram PC133 CAS2 = Tested OK
Mushkin 128Mb Sdram PC133 CAS2 = Tested OK
Transcend 128Mb Sdram PC133 = Tested OK
Micron 128Mb Sdram PC133 = Tested OK
Winstone99 - Winbench99
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Ziff Davis Winstone99 - Winbench99
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Winbench CPUmark99
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70,0
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Business Winstone99 ˆ 800Mhz
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30.26
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Business Winstone99 ˆ 880Mhz
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31.6
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Video sub-system tests
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Quake2 version 3.20 @800Mhz
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800 X 600 X 75Hz
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178.75 FPS
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Quake2 version 3.20 @880Mhz
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800 X 600 X 75Hz
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181.2 FPS
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Quake2 version 3.20 @900Mhz
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800 X 600 X 75Hz
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180.5 FPS
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Note here that the best results were obtained with the FSB set to 110MHz. This is the case, because of the fact that the L2 cache was Overclocked along with the processor, whereas using a Goldfinger device would Overclock the processor alone. For that reason, we have the 900MHz results showing inferior to those at 880MHz.
Disk sub-system tests
Overall Quality Evaluation
The evaluation table below shows both the strong and weak points of the tested motherboard. No need to remind you that performance is not the sole purchasing criteria in a motherboard. Most of today's motherboards exhibit performance very close to each other, so we need additional information in order to help us distinguish the real advantages of a motherboard compared to its competitors. This is exactly where this evaluation table comes in handy.
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AOpen AK72 AMD Athlon VIA KX-133
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Feature
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Evaluation
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Design Originality
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Circuit Board Quality
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Component Layout
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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3
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Capacitiors
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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CPU Retention Mechanism
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Amounts of Expansion Slots
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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4
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Amount of Memory sockets
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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4
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Ease of installation
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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BIOS Setup Design
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Performance
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Overclockability
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Stability
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Bundled Software
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Bundled Hardware
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Users Manual Quality
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Packing Quality
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Poor
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Good
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Average
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Excellent
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Top Grade
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5
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Features supported
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ATA66
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PC133
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Wake On LAN
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Modem ring
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Pwr Fail Res
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5
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Features supported (suite)
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SB-Link
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AMR
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Mouse Pwr On
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Susp. to RAM
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Susp. to Disk
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4
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Features supported (suite)
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IRDA
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SCSI
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Keyb. Pwr On
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Hardw. mon.
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Vcore adj.
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4
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Features supported (suite)
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RAID
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Alarm
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Soft Menu
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L2 latency adj.
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IRQ assign.
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2
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Total Score obtainned for this motherboard
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91 point out of 100
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Features color codes: Blue = supported, Red = optional, Black = not supported
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The weak points
The AK72 has few faults, and they sum up as follows: poor placement of the CPU fan connector, the ATX connector, and of the disk connectors, as well as the inability to manually assign IRQs.
The strong points
The AK72's strong points are: its great simplicity of use & installation, excellent performance, a great choice of Overclocking frequencies, and an ensemble of features that are quite intriguing.
Conclusions
AOpen's AK72 motherboard is a very interesting product. Whether your talking about performance, or features, the AK72 is hard to find fault with. The only minor quibble we had was a slight loss of stability when the board was pushed past 115MHz. Of course, when we used a Gold Finger device to do the Overclocking, everything worked smoothly. In short, I would say that the AK72 is one of the best Athlon boards we've reviewed to-date.
For additional information, visit AOpen's web site.
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