The Pentium 4 scene has changed several times since the chip was first introduced. Some of these changes caused many users to stray to AMD’s (at the time) more stable architecture, attractive price, and competitive performance.
It appears now that the politics over the Pentium 4 have ceased, the architecture matured, and the cost of ownership has become affordable once more. In my opinion, the turning point of the P4’s outlook occurred when DDR memory was supported, and has been advancing with the support of DDR333.
Aopen is a veteran motherboard maker but has never really been able to break into the enthusiast market, focusing mostly on OEMs. Their latest product breaks the mold by laying the features on thick, while keeping their distinctive sleek black colored PCB, which looks great (especially combined with other colored PC cards).
This latest motherboard utilizes Intel’s I845PE chipset, using DDR333 SDRAM and increasing the Pentium 4’s throughput with a 533 FSB. A lot of thought has been put into the board, and AOpen lets you know: as they list many features that most people would never notice if not mentioned. The board incorporates onboard sound, onboard LAN, USB 2.0, Firewire, Dual BIOS, Serial ATA and ATA133 plus many other nice features that make this board a real value.
AOpen is Back in Black!
Features:
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CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Processor (Socket 478)
Chipset: Intel 845PE (533Mhz FSB capable)
Architecture: 6PCI slots + 1 AGP slot (4x) + 1 CNR
Max. Main Memory: Max 2GBDDR SDRAM for 184pin DIMMx3
DIMM Type: 64/128/256/512/1GB
On Board LAN: Realtek 10/100Mbps Ethernet controller
On Board Sound: Realtek AC’97 CODEC 5.1 channel
IEEE 1394: Texas Instruments TSB43AB22 Control Chip
Battery: 3V Lithium Battery
Green Function: Yes
BIOS: Award PnP 4MB Flash ROM BIOS (2nd Flash ROM for DieHard BIOS)
Board Size: 305mm x 244mm, ATX form factor
Storage and Back Panel I/O:
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Onboard Connectors:
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Included software:
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This motherboard is boxed in standard cardboard with a print of the product on the front. Included with thte board is a black floppy cable, a black ATA100 cable as well as a yellow ATA133 cable and red Serial ATA cable. Also included is the S/PDIF header and bracket, 2 FireWire ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a rear I/O plate and installation CDs. Of course you also get a pull-out installation guide and manual.
The board layout is fairly well though out, but there are a few areas of concern. The CPU area has been crowded with the Northbridge, power regulation circuit, and ATX12V header. Heatsink airflow could be impeded if the snaking 12V power cable is not tucked away. I did have a more difficult time maneuvering the heatsink clips into place. Some of the more monstrous heatsinks may have to be removed if the 12V line needs to be unplugged. The CPU retention mechanism is a very hard plastic, and is reinforced on the underside of the board, so the board will not warp under the stress of any retention clip.
Like many motherboards, the AGP slot is in close proximity to the DIMM slots, sometimes requiring video card removal when installing memory. The AGP port is protected by a circuit that automatically detects the voltage of the AGP card and prevents the chipset from being burnt out. If a 3.3V AGP card is used, a special LED will light up on the motherboard to warn you of possible damage.
Six 3300Mfds and three 2200Mfds capacitors have been placed around the CPU socket. These are much larger than capacitors used on cheaper motherboards (1500Mfds) and offer greater power stability. The voltage regulation circuits are triple phase and bi-Mosfet. This provides very clean power to the processor, with little dips or jumps to maximize stability. This is just one of the little unmentioned features that attributes to the overall quality of the board.
The layout of the motherboard implements AOpen’s design methodology they call a “Frequency Isolation Wall”. Basically certain trace leads on the motherboard are lengthened to avoid cross-talk and frequency interference between different regions of the motherboard. Looking at the board, you can see that some traces seem unnecessarily long and seem to waste space, but this is actually by design. The trace length and route is calculated so that clock skew will be controlled to within a pico-second (1/1012 sec). This is just another example of the thought and care that has gone into this board’s development.
The motherboard implements a special circuit that allows you to save your current CPU and CMOS Setup configurations without the need for a battery. The real time clock can also keep running as long as the power cord is plugged in. Basically the onboard battery isn’t used until the power cord is unplugged, thus saving battery life.
The motherboard has two tiny but bright red LEDs called the STBY and BOOT LED. These STBY LED will light up when power is provided to the motherboard, which can be a convenient power indicator when the computer is in standby mode. The BOOT LED will blink while the system is in POST, and then remains steady if everything is ok.
The board’s northbridge chip (the Intel 845PE chipset) is passively cooled, with the standard Intel rentention mechanism. The retention mechanism is sturdy, yet allows for easy heatsink removal. The heatsink uses a thermal pad for heat transfer, and I would advise replacing this with a bit of thermal compound of some sort.
The board houses 3 DIMM sockets with no room between them and the AGP slot, meaning that most video cards should be removed when adding memory. You could easily break one of the plastic retention clips if left open while installing a video card.
The main ATX connector for the board is located just below the last DIMM slot. It is out of the way and helps to increase ventilation. Below the ATX connector resides the board’s integreated speaker. Below this are two sets of jumpers that control the board’s Dr. Voice capabilities. Dr. Voice is a built-in diagnostic tool that actually speaks common motherboard problems through the speaker.
The boards’ three IDE headers are located just below PCI slots 1 thru 4, and the southbridge chip. They are different colors for easy identification, blue for IDE1, black for IDE2, and the third is ATA133 and colored yellow. Next to the IDE headers are two SATA connectors.
AOpen looks ahead to the future by offering Serial ATA RAID capability through the Promise PDC20375 controller, which is sandwiched between the two Serial ATA headers. This controller can support two independent Serial ATA devices, similar to the Silicon Image 3112 controller.
Below PCI slot 4 is the USB 2.0 header, as well as the BIOS restore jumper This jumper restores the hardwired BIOS to the settings stored within the user BIOS, through AOpen’s Die-Hard BIOS technology. Through the BIOS menu screens, you are able to backup a currently loaded BIOS to the board’s user BIOS for restoration at a later time. The CMOS clear jumper is located just above the board bios, between the USB 2.0 header and the southbridge chip. Along the edge of the board, you can see the System Fan 3 header and the 2 firewire headers (powered by Texas Instrument’s TSB43AB22 controller). Note that the SYSFAN3 header is not monitored by the Winbond W83627HF chip, but can be useful for powering a front or side case fan.
The rear panel contains no suprises. It is loaded with the standard set of ports: a keyboard and mouse port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 serial ports, a parallel port, a 100Mbit Ethernet port, and 3 software configurable audio ports.
The manual states that the motherboard is jumperless, which is not accurate. It is true that there are no jumpers relating to any CPU settings, but there are numerous jumpers for such things as changing the Dr. Voice language (which can be set to English, Chinese, Japanese, and German), clearing CMOS, switching to the backup BIOS, and computer wakeup functionality
I had a few issues installing this board. To ensure smooth installation, the user must be aware of a few caveats.
Upon initial installation of the board and preliminary testing, I received horrible benchmark scores (like a 7000 3dMark 2001 score in Windows XP). After installing the Intel chipset drivers did I reach the expected performance levels for a high-end Pentium 4. Installation of the Intel Application Accelerator only crashed my system, and had to be removed.
Memory issues
I initially had problems getting all of my memory recognized. Any time the this occured, Dr. Voice would tell me there was a “problem with AGP”. This isn’t very accurate, as I should have received a memory error message. After trying different memory modules with varying results, I consulted the manual, which states that only the first slot could handle double-sided RAM. Since most of my RAM was double-sided, I had to go and buy new single-sided RAM.
After only using 1 double sided module in the first slot, and 2 single sided modules in the remaining slots, the system finally posted all available memory without a single error. I do not know the technical reasons why Aopen felt it necessary to skimp on this feature, but I feel cheated that so many extras were added to the board, and yet some of the more critical features are half-assed.This is just one more thing to have to remember when troubleshooting the board.
Also, the only way to achieve a 533FSB is by using DDR333. PC2700 memory runs at 166MHz, while the quad-pumped CPU bus is running asynchronously at 133MHz. The motherboard is running at a 4:5 ratio between the CPU and RAM. AOpen has a BIOS update that now supports an 800MHz FSB, getting around the 4:5 limitation.
ATA133’s dependancy on SATA
There are 3 parallel ATA ports, for a total of 6 IDE devices! This seems like a super bonus until you realize that only 1 of those ports are ATA133. I know that ATA133 is really more of a marketing gimmick than anything else (there isn’t a noticeable performance difference between ATA100 and ATA133), but still, if you’re going to include ATA133, why not make all of the ports capable? I can understand the technical reasons for this, as the ATA133 port is tied to the serial ATA chip, so a cheaper ATA100 chip is used for the other ports to control costs.
Since the ATA133 port is tied to the Promise PDC20375 SATA chip, enabling this port uses additional resources and slows boot time (any devices on this line are found after POST). The serial ATA driver must be installed to utilize this port, even if no SATA devices are present, and must be installed when installing Windows 2000 or XP, else no drives will be found. This seems like an additional caveat that the user must remember when troubleshooting the board.
Other boards “simply work” without any additional configuration or installations. Also, the system would not boot completely using the drivers that come with the driver CD. I had to download and install the latest version (version 1.06) of the Serial ATA driver before ATA133 would boot properly.
The keyboard fuse
I also had problems with the keyboard whenever the system was soft-reset (when rebooting from BIOS or the CD Jukebox). Dr. Voice would constantly complain that the keyboard had a problem. It appeared that the special “keyboard fuse” had been tripped, but I could not figure out how to reset it, and the manual does not mention how to do this, or if a reset is automatic. I could press F1 to continue (clearly the keyboard was working), but the keyboard would simply not register in Windows (not even Ctrl+Alt+Del would work). This persisted until I changed the jumper that controls wake-on-keyboard functionality.
Once these initial problems were resolved, I had a pleasant experience with the board. It is very easy to overclock, and is rock stable.
AOpen has chosen the Phoenix AwardBIOS for this motherboard. The BIOS menu should be familiar to most users. Some settings have been customized to achieve the board’s full potential. The user can save or restore the Die-Hard BIOS through the menu’s “Save EEPROM” and “Load EEPROM” menu options. This feature allows the overclocker to tweak every little bit of power from their board and then save those settings, and is a nice feature that the enthusiast target should appreciate.
AOpen has added a feature called the “Vivid BIOS” which basically just displays a 256-color .GIF image during POST (yes, the .GIF can even be animated). In the manual, AOpen appears very proud of itself to achieve graphics and text on the screen simultaneously. This image can be updated using the included EzSkin utility.
The Advanced Chipset screen is where most of the board’s overclocking power can be exploited. The user can manually configure every possible memory setting, including CAS Latency, Active to Precharge Delay, DRAM RAS and CAS Delay, and RAS Precharge. Changing the memory timings can offer vast improvement in memory performance, but can lead to system instability.
The board supports a feature called AC Power Auto Recovery. Basically you can set the PC to power back on after a power failure, which is a handy feature if you are running a server or any other PC that needs to keep the power on.
The board does not permit the manuall assignment of IRQs.
The board features hardware monitoring within the BIOS, and can even silence the system. Fan voltage can be set to a certain percentage within the bios, which lowers fan speed, and thus system noise. The hardware monitor menu can also be set to respond to various catastrophic events, such as a CPU temperature threshold. If the threshold is exceeded, then a warning sounds and the CPU speed is automatically throttled down.
The fans can be set to various modes of operation. When set to full speed, the monitored fans run at their default rating. When set to Smart Control, the monitored fans are run at a lower speed until a determined temperature threshold, at which point the fans speed is increased. The user can also select a fixed fan speed, and is adjustable between 50 and 100 percent. Note that FAN3 is omitted from this feature.
Using the Frequency/Voltage Control menu, the user gains full control over CPU FSB and voltage, RAM FSB and voltage, and the PCI and AGP bus frequency and voltage. Most motherboards are not flexible enough to clock the peripheral timings independently of the FSB, using a fixed multiplier. Thus, if the CPU FSB was increased, the AGP and PCI bus would also increase, causing instability with cards that were not tolerant of these specs.
This BIOS automatically adjusts the bus multipliers so that any FSB increase will keep the PCI bus at 33Mhz, and the AGP at its default 66Mhz. This automatic adjustment minimizes the possibility of system instability and hardware damage, although it can still occur. Of course, the user can independently change any of these settings manually.
You can set your AGP bus to 70Mhz if you want, and it will not adversely affect the other system buses. The FSB can be changed in 1Mhz increments from 100 to 248Mhz, the PCI can be set to between 33.33 and 48.25Mhz, and the AGP frequency set between 66Mhz and 96Mhz. These overclocking features far exceed anything that AOpen has offered to date, representing their first big push into this market.
The “Watch Dog Timer” feature makes unbootable BIOS configurations a thing of the past. This feature keeps track of the last batch of valid bootable settings. If the system refuses to boot after a bit of tweaking, the Watch Dog Timer will wait 5 seconds before restoreing the BIOS settings to a valid state. I have not had to clear the CMOS during my overclocking adventures with this board.
As most enthusiasts know, the voltage of some components must be increased to maintain signal strength while overclocking. The board plays it safe when it comes to voltage options, being only mediocre given the vast amount of frequency selections available. The CPU can be set within the range of 1.10v to 1.92v. The AGP voltage is pretty weak, and only adjustable as high as 1.6V. The RAM voltage ranges between 2.50v and 2.65v. This maximum may keep you from frying your RAM, but will not be enough to push stubborn RAM into achieving a high FSB.
The board also features an interesting built-in CD player, which can be skinned using the included EzSkin utility on the Bonus CD. The user can enter the Open JukeBox by pressing the Insert key while the system is in POST. This is a hardware driven utility that allows the user to play CDs in any attached CD-ROM drive. This is a neat little bonus, but not really very practical. The CD will only play through its own onboard sound card, however, and an audio cable must connect the CD drive to the CD_IN port of the motherboard. There is also no mouse support, as all commands are sent through the keyboard. Pressing “B” will continue the boot sequence without resetting the system.
Installation of the drivers is simple and problem free. Once the codec is enabled on the motherboard, Windows will detect the chip and ask for drivers, which can be found on the Bonus CD. There is no real mode DOS support, and no DOS drivers to install. The chip’s D/A and A/D converters support 16-bit 48KHz sampling.
The audio circuitry is base upon a Realtek ALC650 sound chip. The ALC650 supports AC3 and 5.1 surround sound via the included S/PDIF header, which has an RCA and optical port. WDM drivers are included for Windows 9x operating systems, and VXD drivers are provided for Windows 2000 and XP.
Audio fidelity can be very subjective, especially dependant on the speakers or headphones used, so I used RightMark’s Audio Analyzer program to definitively test the chip’s sound capabilities. I compared the chip to a Soundblaster Audigy, and the results are listed in the chart below.
| SB Audigy | Realtek ALC650 | |||
| Frequency Response | +0.10,-0.26 | +.25,0.34 | ||
| Noise Level | -100.1 | -80.5 | ||
| Dynamic Range | 92.1 | 78.0 | ||
| THD | 0.0026 | 0.0029 | ||
| Intermodulation | 0.127 | 0.383 | ||
| Stereo Crosstalk | -93.6 | -73.8 | ||
Frequency Response
The most noticable factor that the casual user can actually hear is frequency response, which is the range of audio frequencies that a device can produce. Basically when audio is amplified, the input and output waveforms differ by the loudness and phase. Frequency response consists of the differences in magnitude between the input and output waveforms. A perfect frequency response will be almost flat across the entire audio range. You can see that the Realtek does well until around 10Khz, where it starts to fluctuate and eventually falls off at around 18Khz. While the Audigy starts to fall off near the end as well, it is more stable and can reproduce the entire frequency range.
Pure sound quality is very good, while it’s not quite at the level offered by the Audigy, it’s more than good enough to satisy the majority of casual listeners. The test levels of the Audigy are consistant with high-end “pro-sumer” or low-end professional equipment, and the Realtek’s values are similar to average consumer levels (basically the levels of a Soundblaster 16). The dynamic range of the chip is average, but the stereo crosstalk could be better. I was impressed with the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) level of the Realtek, being very low in relation to its other values. It is more than adequate to play games with, but I doubt any audiophile would be recording any music with it. Overall, it is very adequate for consumer-level audio requirements.
Comparison testing would not be on equal footing, as there is only 1 Pentium 4 in house, so results will simply be posted without comparison to unequal platforms. You can compare these results with your current rig to see how this board performs. The only comparison shown details the performance difference between a unclocked system (currently at 2.53GHz) and an overclocked system (the overclocked core is 2.79GHz). Your mileage may vary when recreating these tests, depending on your RAM and components.
Test bed
- AOpen AX4PE Max
- 2.53GHz Pentium 4
- 1024MB DDR333
- AOpen Geforce4 Ti4200
- 120GB Western Digital 1200JB
- Soundblaster Audigy
We took a screenshot of WCPUID to grab the current unaltered settings of the FSB. We are currently running a quad-pumped FSB of 133MHz x 4 = 533MHz. The system multiplier is 19X (133MHz x 19 = 2527MHz).
We used Futuremark’s 3dMark2001 to test gaming performance, as it is rather standard. An AOpen GeForce4 Ti4200 was used without any overclocking or registry hacks, and was using nVidia’s 41.09 drivers. AGP aperture was set to 128MB in the BIOS, and AGP fast writes was not enabled. When recreating this test, your mileage may vary.
SiSoft’s Sandra is a useful utility for comparing motherboard performance, and we used it to measure the memory bandwidth’s increase when overclocking the FSB. There are many parameters regarding memory performance; the most general being access time and memory bandwidth. An upcoming article will be comparing detailed memory performance, but for the purposes of this comparison all memory is running at CL2.5. Below is the difference using the same RAM between the default FSB (133MHz) and the maxumum stable FSB with this memory (146MHz).
Sandra was used once again, but this time to test the drive performance of a Western Digital 1200JB hard drive. This drive has an 8MB cache, and was used on the ATA133 header.
HDTach is a more accurate drive benchmark, in my opinion. It displays a graph indicating throughput as it relates to the location on the disk. Since the disk is spinning at a constant rate, the bits on the outside of the platter will pass the head more quickly than the inside. This may be more of a benchmark of the drive rather than the motherboard, but it demonstrates that the drive controller is not a bottleneck in performance. Listed here is a Western Digital 1200JB and an IBM 60GB Deskstar. Again, your mileage may vary, especially when using different hard drives.
Overclocking with this board is very easy, as there are many settings you can play with. The BIOS automatically changes the multipliers for the PCI and AGP bus at a constand 33MHz and 66MHz whenever the FSB is modified. Keeping these buses within their specs definately keeps the system more stable. There was no real need to change the PCI or AGP buses, so I kept their speed and voltages at default, and concentrated more on the speed and voltages of the FSB.
RAM can be the weakest link in your overclocking ability. Using the right RAM, I could achieve a 166MHz FSB for a 3.06GHz core clock, but I am using different brands of RAM with varying quality, and was only able to reach a stable 146Mhz FSB using all RAM (2.79GHz core clock speed). The memory voltage had to be raised to the maximum 1.65V to achieve this reliably. Since DDR33 is running at 166MHz, I thought I should be able to clock to at least 166MHz FSB. After some research, AOpen reveals that their memory runs at a fixed 4:5 ratio, but can be adjusted with a BIOS update, allowing RAM to run at a normal speed when overclocking. This update also allows an 800MHz FSB when using DDR400, but is not officially supported. Above is a WCPUID screenshot of the final stable clock setting.
Overclocking the FSB provides additional memory bandwidth. This simple overclock achieved an additional 400MB of bandwidth, for a total of 2.6GB / sec! This type of overclock isn’t unusual for an 845PE-based motherboard. Intel chipset-based motherboards are the only way to go if you’re an extreme overclocker.
Conclusion
This is AOpen’s first real attempt at the high-end enthusiast market. The product is not perfect, but they are on the right track. There are more than enough features to keep an experienced overclocker busy, and enough safety features to make it enjoyable. The many caveats that must be remembered really keep this product from being directly competitive, but is still offered at an attractive price. Most people will find different features more useful than others, but there are so many features that there is something that everyone will like. This new generation of AOpen motherboard gets a well deserved 8 out of 10, and the OCmodshop seal of approval!
Pros
- Excellent Feature set (Watch Dog Timer, Ez Win Flash, Silent PC)
- On board Serial ATA
- 3 IDE channels
- On Board NIC
- USB 2.0 and Firewire
- High overclock configurability (1Mhz stepping and independent bus multipliers)
- Die-Hard BIOS
- Hyper-Threading support
Cons
- Must use DDR333 to take advantage of 533MHz FSB
- Only 1 ATA133 port
- Only 1 memory slot can handle double-sided RAM
- Poor experience “out of the box”