Overclocking for me was pretty disappointing but not unexpected. I have had the chance to read other reviews on Athlon 64 motherboards and for most users the overclockability of Athlon 64 CPUs is very poor. I tried different things to get a good overclock out of my CPU but was quite unsuccessful. After trying combinations of multipliers and FSB I ended up at what you see below, a lowly 11MHz FSB overclock with no clock speed increase. This is probably due mostly to the CPU however the motherboard did not have very good overclocking options.
Conclusion
Albatron has certainly packed a lot of great features into a motherboard supporting one of the best CPUs on the market right. However some of the board layout and overclockability leave a good amount to be desired. Also I have to say that I am disappointed with the quality of the onboard audio.
After switching from my Abit NF7-S nForce 2 motherboard I could hear a big difference in sound quality. If you are looking for the most overclockable, gaming, multimedia motherboard I would have to say this isn’t the one for you. If you are looking for a motherboard with lots of features that is very stable you should really consider this one.
Overall I am somewhat disappointed with this motherboard and am only going to give it a 6/10. I would like to thank Albatron for sending me this motherboard to review.
Pros
- Serial ATA capable of RAID
- 3Com 1Gbits LAN
- 8 USB 2.0 ports
- AGP 8x
- Onboard IEEE 1394a
- Blue PCB
Cons
- Poor overclocking performance
- Poor onboard audio
- ATX and floppy connector pooly positioned
