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03 DEC 2004 |
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PowerColor A350A-VF Motherboard |
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When thinking about
motherboards, many people think of
popular companies such as Intel, Abit,
Asus, etc. They have provided quality
motherboards for many years now and are
brands that can be trusted. What I
wasn't aware of is that the fact that
Tul makes motherboards as well. With
the recent review of Tul's PowerColor
Radeon X800XT as well as other reviews I
had seen of their products, they have
made excellent graphics cards with their
award winning PowerColor series. Now,
Tul has brought the PowerColor series
name to their motherboards as well. I
was surprised when I first learned that
Tul made motherboards, because they have
released quite a few of them already. I
suppose that many of us have not really
heard about their motherboard products
because we simply have not heard much
news about them. Today, we had the
chance to review Tul's PowerColor
A350-VF motherboard.
There are two
important aspects that we will examine
in this motherboard. The most important
aspect about this board is that this
motherboard is based on ATI's 9100 Pro
IGP chipset. Second, in this review, we
will examine the quality and features of
this board. This can easily be
determined by benchmarking it in a
variety of tests and comparing it with a
chipset similar in features with Intel.
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It is quite obvious
that ATI makes excellent graphics
cards. ATI decided to bring their
knowledge of graphics cards into the
integrated realm of motherboards. The
9100 Pro IGP is a breakthrough because
it provides the most advanced integrated
graphics solution on motherboards
today. With full support of DirectX 8.1
and pixel shading technology, it is
capable of providing a rich graphics
experience. This chipset is very
flexible because it is compatible with
the latest processors and technologies.
This was created to provide an all
around package that is very affordable.
Here is a specific list of features you
can expect to find in the 9100 Pro IGP
(obtained from ATI's website):
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CPU
Interface
-
-Up to 800
MHz CPU FSB for
Intel® Pentium®
4 Processor
-Supports Intel®
Hyper-Threading™
processors
-In-Order Queue
(IOQ) depth of
12
-Supports
Dynamic Bus
Inversion (DBI)
-Supports system
bus interrupt
delivery
-
System Logic
Features
-
-Integrated
master clock
generator with
spread spectrum
support
-AGP 3.0
compliant AGP 8X
interface with
Fast Write
support
-266MB/second
point-to-point
interface to ATI
IXP in A-Link
mode
-Unified Memory
Architecture (UMA)
-Dual channel
128-bit DDR SDRAM memory
interface
-DDR400 SDRAM
support provides
up to 6.4
GB/second
bandwidth
-Up to 4 GB DRAM
support with two
unbuffered DIMMs
-16 MB to 128 MB
of main memory
configurable as
display memory
-Up to 8 USB2.0
ports
-Up to 2 SATA
ports
-Two independent
IDE channels
with support of
mode 0 to 4, and
ATA 100
-Supports LPC
based Super I/O
-Integrated
3-COM™ Ethernet
controller
-
3D
Graphics
Features
-
-HyperZ™
memory
optimization
technology
-Hardware with
Pixel Shader 1.4
support
-Supports up to
2048x1536 @
32bpp.
-Supports 3D
textures and
Microsoft®
DirectX® texture
compression
-Anisotropic
texture
filtering and
Full Screen
Anti-Aliasing (FSAA)
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Video Features
-
-Video
scaling and
filtering with
advanced 4-tap
horizontal and
vertical filter
-Integrated
hardware motion
compensation and
iDCT
-Enhanced MPEG-2
hardware decode
-Hardware DVD
sub-picture
decode
-Video
deblocking with
FULLSTREAM™
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2D
Graphics
Features
-
-Highly
optimized
128-bit 2D
Engine
-Hardware cursor
up to 64x64x32
BPP
-Supports a
maximum
resolution of
2048x1536 @
32bpp.
-Support for
Microsoft®
Windows® XP
alpha cursor
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Display
Controller
-
-Dual CRT
controllers
provide
independent dual
display support
-Display
rotation support
-Comprehensive
DDC and hot
plugging support
-Integrated high
precision 300MHz
triple 10-bit
DAC supports
resolutions up
to 2048 x 1536
-
Flat
Panel Monitor
Support
-
-12-bit
digital output
to support DVI,
DFP and VESA P&D
via external
TMDS
-Supports up to
1600x1200 screen
resolution for
LCD panels
-Support for
VESA defined
reduced blanking
modes
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TV-Out Support
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-Integrated
TV encoder with
composite,
S-Video, and RGB
interfaces
-Supports
PAL/NTSC TV
formats
-10-bit DAC with
8-tap filter and
ATI-exclusive
enhancements
-Macrovision
7.02 copy
protection
standard
-Supports up to
1024x768 32bpp
mode
-
Optimized
Software Support
-
-Microsoft®
DirectX® 8.1 and
OpenGL® drivers
-Unified driver
support for all
RADEON® discrete
and integrated
graphics
products
-Support for
Microsoft
Windows® XP,
Windows® 2000
and Linux
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The motherboard was
contained in a black box. The
motherboard is part of the 'Medusa'
series. There is a large Medusa's head
at the front of the box. This has no
significant meaning other than just a
name. The back of the box has a quick
description of the features that this
motherboard has. It quickly indicates
that this motherboard has a powerful
integrated graphics solution. When
opening the box, I found the contents of
the package. Included in this package
is a Serial ATA, IDE, and floppy
cables. There is a floppy disk
containing the drivers if you plan to
use your Serial ATA drive in a RAID
configuration. The extra software
included is a CD containing the complete
Cyberlink software suite. This includes
PowerDirector SE+ for video editing,
MediaShow SE for photo slideshows,
PowerDVD for DVD movie viewing,
PowerProducer for DVD authoring and
burning, and Power2Go for data/music
burning. Lastly, there is the typical
installation manual and a CD containing
the drivers necessary to allow full
function of the motherboard.
Although Tul provides the necessary
wires, this is more or less an average
package for a motherboard. There are no
specific features offered exclusively on
the motherboard by Tul which is
something I would like to see. This
would be a good way for Tul to
differentiate their products from the
major competitors. The Cyberlink
software is more of a 'nice to have'
rather than a necessity with this
motherboard. Other that that, it will
still generous of Tul to include it with
this package.
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This motherboard is
specifically designed
for the Pentium 4
processor up to 3.4 Ghz
as well as Celeron
processors. This
motherboard supports
Intel's Hyper-threading
technology for the
processors that have
it. For Pentium 4
processors, both the
latest Prescott and
Northwood processors can
be used. Since this
motherboard supports the
latest Prescott
processors, it natively
supports up to a maximum
of 800mhz for the front
side bus.
This motherboard
supports the both single
and dual channel
memory. DDR266, 333,
and 400 are supported.
You can have a maximum
of 4GB of memory in the
motherboard with each
slot containing a
maximum of 1GB of
memory.
This board has a total
of 5 PCI slots and a
single AGP slot that
supports both 4X and 8X
graphics cards.
Unfortunately, this
motherboard does not
support the latest PCI
Express interface.
I
find it puzzling how
there are quite a few
new motherboards that
only support a maximum
of ATA100 while there
are many hard drives
available in the market
that support a maximum
of ATA133. This
motherboard does support
up to ATA133 or 133Mbps
UltraDMA. I was glad
that this motherboard
does support the latest
hard drive technology
with 2 serial ATA ports
with up to 1.5Gbps.
With 8 USB 2.0 ports,
you will have plenty of
USB ports for all your
devices. Keep in mind
that only 4 of them are
available at the back of
the motherboard. The
other 4 need to be
connected to your
computer case assuming
that your computer case
has that many USB ports.
Many gamers as well as
typical users are
starting to have more
than just 2 speakers
these days. This
motherboard supports up
to 6 channels of sound.
This means you can plug
in your 5.1 channel
speaker system. The CD
comes with the drivers
to allow this to
function. When you have
the software installed,
an icon will show up at
the bottom right of your
Windows screen. When
plugging in my 5.1
channel speakers, it was
able to detect it
plugged in. With their
simple configuration
software, you can set up
your speakers to make
sure that each speaker
is in the right spot.
In addition, there are
two Firewire ports
supporting up to a
maximum of 400mbps at
the back of the
motherboard.
The motherboard has a
rather typical layout
and did not find much
too unusual. There is
just enough room where
the processor goes.
There is a line of
capacitors close by that
you should be aware of
if you happen to have an
oversized CPU cooler.
Typically, the USB port
pins are located toward
the edge of the board.
I found it slightly
unusual that the it was
right near one of the
PCI slots on both
sides. Therefore, it is
recommended to place the
USB connectors first
before placing the
expansion device in the
PCI slot.
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One of the
most important aspects of a motherboard is the BIOS.
The BIOS makes sure that all your basic functions and
capabilities of your computer are working properly. For
a gamer, the BIOS is an important consideration because
it determines whether they can overclock certain aspects
of their computer such as the memory and CPU. This
motherboard uses the AMIBIOS version 8.00.11. The main
part of the bios shows a system overview of the
computer. It displays the specific type of processor as
well as the exact speed. In this case, my 3.2 Ghz
computer runs at 3215 Mhz. Lastly, the main screen
shows the amount of memory in the system as well as the
typical system time and date.
The advanced menu in the bios contains most of the
important functions. This is where you can observe the
information everything from your PC health to the
detected drives in your computer. Each of the items
listed in this menu expand into further menus. I will
not go through each of the menu items, but I will
explain just the more important ones.
The PC health bios menu is appropriate where it shows a
variety of different temperatures in the computer
system. It shows the CPU temperature, north bridge
temperature, as well as the overall system temperature.
The fan speeds plugged into the motherboard complement
the temperatures. For those overclockers out there, the
voltages are displayed.
In the voltage control menu you will be able to control
the voltages to a certain extent for the CPU, memory,
and the AGP slot. For instance, you change the voltage
on the CPU from 1.075V all the way to 1.1625. Being
able to control voltages is extremely important for the
overclocker as mentioned before. Changing the voltage
allows the overclocker to achieve better stability when
overclocking parts of their system.
Also important to the overclocker is the memory options
in the bios. In this bios, you can change important
items such as the CAS latency as well as the timing.
Overall, the options provided are more than enough.
Lastly, you have the ability to disable or enable
certain features of the motherboard if you so desire.
I'm not sure why though you might want to disable USB
2.0. The temperature control, I have to admit, is a bit
sparse of options. All you can do is set the maximum
temperature limit before the computer shuts down. I'd
like to see a more comprehensive set of options which
allow you to specify a range in temperatures as well as
warnings when it reaches a specific temperature.
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Here are the specs
of the computer used to test the
computer. The motherboard was tested
with both application and gaming
benchmarks. I mainly compared the
PowerColor A350A-VF motherboard with an
Intel D865GLC motherboard. Both
motherboards are extremely similar in
terms of features with the exception
that the PowerColor motherboard has a
better integrated graphics solution
considering that it fully supports
DirectX8.1 and has pixel shading
support. In addition, the PowerColor
motherboards has Firewire ports built
into the motherboard. The Intel D865GLC
motherboard, as the model name
suggestions, is based on Intel's 865G
chipset.
-Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz
Processor (Prescott) running at 800Mhz
FSB
-400GB Hitachi 7K400 hard drive (Serial
ATA)
-1GB IBM PC2700 DDR memory
-PowerColor X800XT Platinum Edition
-Windows XP w/SP2
-Catalyst 4.08 drivers from ATI
-DirectX 9.0c
Disclaimer: The following benchmark
numbers are the values that I obtained
when I ran the tests on my machine. If
you have any questions or comments about
how they were obtained, please contact
me. I’d be glad to re-run and retest
any benchmarks that you think may be a
bit inaccurate. The benchmarks were run
in order to provide a general idea of
the performance of the card. The
results you obtain may be slightly
different than mine.
Benchmarks
-PCMark2004
-Sisoft Sandra 2004 Pro
-SuperPi
-3DMark2001
-Aquamark
-UT2004
-Doom 3
-CounterStrike Source Video Stress Test
PCMark2004
The performance of a computer is
mainly determined by four major
components: the hard drive, graphics,
memory, and CPU. PCMark performs common
tasks such as file compression, video
encoding, accessing data in memory, and
even testing video performance. The
benchmark has been broken down into the
four different categories. We can see
that both the PowerColor A350A-VF and
the Intel D865GLC both had nearly the
same performance in all categories.
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Sisoft Sandra 2004
Sisoft Sandra is a commonly used synthetic benchmark whose
results have consistently been close to the real world tests.
The PowerColor motherboard performed slightly better than the
Intel for memory bandwidth. For both the CPU Arithmetic and CPU
mult-media tests, both motherboards performed neck and neck with
each other. |
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SuperPi
SuperPi is a program that calculates the time needed to
calculate a certain number of digits of 'pi'. In this
benchmark, I calculated pi to 1 million digits. This is mainly
a CPU intensive task. The PowerColor motherboard fell behind
Intel's by 4 seconds which isn't too bad.
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3DMark2001
I only decided to use 3DMark2001 rather than 3DMark03
because I think benchmarking today's games will be a more
accurate representation. 3DMark2001 tests performance under
DirectX8.1. This benchmark has always provided an accurate
general idea of the performance in games and also represents how
well your older DirectX8.1 games will perform. The PowerColor
motherboard fell slightly behind under 1000 points.
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Aquamark 3
Aquamark 3 is a benchmark based on a game engine written
from scratch. This game engine has been used in games such as
Aquanox 2: The Revelation. I did an official benchmark test
where the official scores are being reported. The Intel
motherboard's score was a bit over 1000 points higher.
Nevertheless, both motherboard are extremely close because the
Intel motherboard had an average framerate of 51.55fps, whereas
the PowerColor motherboard had an average frame rate of
49.77fps. That is less than 2 frames of a difference.
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UT2004
Unreal Tournament 2004 is as always an appropriate
game to use as a benchmark. It is still a common game
played today and provides real world performance. I
performed the benchmark in a 3-bot botmatch timedemo on
3 different maps. The scores were then averaged.
Again, both motherboards are still neck and neck with
only a 2 frame difference.
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Doom 3
With Doom 3 having been released already, I found it
appropriate to test the motherboards on this latest game. With
Doom 3's intense graphics, both motherboards performed the same
overall.
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CS Source Video Stress Test
As Half-Life 2's release is quickly approaching, I wanted to
test the motherboards on the latest Source engine. This will
provide a general idea of how well these motherboards will
perform on the upcoming Half-Life 2. Again, just like the other
game benchmarks, there was less than a 2 frame difference which
shows how similar Intel's 865g chipset performed with ATI's 9100
Pro IGP.
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The
integrated graphics chip on the Powercolor motherboard
is a very powerful graphics chip for an integrated
solution. It supports DirectX 8.1 games as well as
pixel shading 1.4 for those extra details. I quickly
tested the chip's capabilities by performing the CS
Source Video Stress test. The chip performed at a lousy
12.66fps. In addition, I even benchmarked the
integrated chip in 3DMark2001. It got a low score of
3090. What does this all mean? Although the integrated
graphics chip on this board is definitely more advanced
than Intel's integrated graphics chip called the Intel
Graphics Extreme 2, you're still going to find it unable
or difficult to play today's games. This obviously
means that a dedicated graphics solution is still the
way to go if you plan to use this motherboard for
gaming. The extra capabilities and performance of this
integrated graphics chip seems to be meant to provide an
overall better visual experience for budget computers.
For instance, there will probably be better video
playback as well as increased performance when dealing
with more intense applications on the web.
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With
PowerColor still being a new name to the motherboard
market, I was impressed at how similar the motherboard
performed with the similar Intel 865g chipset. In most
of the game benchmarks, the PowerColor motherboard was
able to keep up with Intel's with only a maximum of 2
frames of a difference. This motherboard has a list of
features and performance that will surely attract those
looking for a value motherboard. I would like to see
PowerColor add some of their own features to make their
motherboard much more unique and to help differentiate
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Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net |
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