Tuesday, December 17, 2002

Introduction

The AOpen product-line is a vast and evolving creature, forever expanding and improving on its list of goodies. As of today, that list includes the AX4PE Max; an Intel 845PE motherboard with all the trimmings.

AX4Pe Max's principal selling-points are its support for Hyper-Threading CPUs, 400MHz and 500MHz FSBs, and DDR333 memory. The AX4PE Max can also boast of its controllers, which give it the ability to connect not only to Firewire devices, but also add Serial ATA RAID support.

The AX4PE Max also includes a long list of AOpen technologies, including Dr. Voice II, Die-Hard BIOS, Vivid BIOS, Easywin Flash, EZRestore, and JukeBox.

We've always said that AOpen boards had a well deserved reputation for features and innovation, and the AX4PE Max definitely seems intent on preserving that tradition.

So, with that in mind, let's see what this mobo has under the hood.

Audio

The AOpen AX4PE Max's audio circuitry is based around a Realtek ALC650 sound-chip. The ALC650 supports AC3, and 5.1 Surround Sound, and allows users to hook-in up to six audio channels, including a center base channel.

From a fidelity standpoint, the Realtek AL650 is quite good at what it does, and should satisfy most users.

Please note that SPDIF and RCA ports are included as part of the package.

Configuration

The AOpen AX4PE Max is devoid of any jumpers that relate to the CPU. Thus, once the motherboard has been installed, configuration is handled by simply dropping into the BIOS.

Once there, users will immediately be drawn to the "Frequency/Voltage Control", menu, which will allow them to set the FSB frequency to between 100Mhz and 248Mhz in 1Mhz increments, or else allow the system to determine the frequency automatically.

The AGP bus frequency can be similarly adjusted (or set automatically) to operate at any of thirty-one separate frequencies ranging from 66.67Mhz to 96.50Mhz.

A similar batch of thirty-one settings is offered vis-a-vis the PCI bus, which allows it to be set to operate at between 33.33MHz and 48.25Mhz.

The synchronous memory bus can itself be adjusted as well to operate at either 133Mhz (DDR266Mhz), 166Mhz (DDR333Mhz), or Auto.

And finally, the BIOS also provides users with the option to tweak any number of memory timing settings.

We have to say, quite frankly, that the sheer range of the AX4PE Max's Overclocking features far exceeds anything that AOpen has offered to date. To put it simply, the release of the AX4PE Max seems to represent AOpen's first big push into the Overclocking market.

Next: Technical details.

AOpen AX4PE