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Introduction.It has been a while since we last reviewed a Pentium 4 board here at Processor Emporium. There have been reasons for this with the main one being the relatively short production life of the superb Intel i845D chipset. No sooner had we tested the excellent AOpen AX4B back in February did board manufacturers start gearing up towards the next big DDR chipset release from Intel in the form of the i845E. As a result we looked at a few superb KT266A and KT333 Socket A boards whilst we waited for the new i845E to hit the market. Now the i845E has been on the market since late May we have been able to test the latest Aopen Pentium 4 board, the AX4B Pro-533. The big change from the i845D to i845E is the addition of 533 MHz Front Side Bus support (133 MHz QDR) over the 400 MHz bus of the i845D. This is driven from the new high-end “Northwood” Pentium 4 “B” processors which use this new bus speed to increase bandwidth between CPU and memory. There is also the addition of the new ICH4 chip (equivalent to a South Bridge controller) on this board which brings with it standard support for USB 2.0. As readers of Processor Emporium will know Aopen’s Intel based motherboards are some of the best boards we have tested. In our opinion this is the area where AOpen’s greatest strenghts are in the motherboard market. Whilst we very much liked the Socket A AK77-333, we still feel that AOpen’s best boards are their Intel based offerings. When we looked at the AX4B back in February we concluded that it was one of the best boards that we have ever tested and that it re-defined the meaning of stability. If anything the AX4B Pro-533 has an extremely tough act to follow. Like much in the motherboard market today, the pressure of competition is growing as PC sales have slowed. Making a good motherboard is no longer sufficient (although some OEM PC’s may shatter that illusion), as motherboard manufacturers seek to differentiate their products from those of their rivals. High-end motherboards now feature items such as ATA-RAID, USB 2.0 support and many overclocking features designed to appeal to the discerning PC buyer. The AX4B Pro-533 is a good example of this trend towards more high-end features. The AX4B Pro-533 like many Aopen boards before it builds upon the successes of its predecessors and adds new features as they arise. The question is, how well does it stand up to the impressive standard set by the superb AX4B? To find out, read on... Intel i845E.Like all Intel chipsets since the release of the i810 back in 1999, the i845E is based upon the Unified Hub Architecture. The i845E MGCH (Memory and Graphics Controller Hub), contains features such as support for up to 3 GB of main system memory (whether you can fit 3 GB of memory is another matter) along with standard features such as AGP 4X.
The i845 MGCH is complimented by the new ICH 4 controller (whatever happened to ICH3?) which looks after the PCI bus, Ultra ATA 100 Hard Disk Controller and
the AC-97 compatible Audio codec. The ICH 4 chip also features USB 2.0 support.
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