DFI AK75-EC Motherboard Review

Author : Wayne Date : 1st May 2001

3DVelocity would like to thank DFI and especially Eliza (Huang Yi-Chin) for their help and courtesy in providing this motherboard for review.

Introduction :

One of the things that's changed most where motherboards are concerned is that it has become less and less a question of performance and more a question of features, flexibility and price. A couple of years ago, motherboards were fitted with a variety of chipsets with, in some cases, a huge difference in overall system performance as a result. These days however, the consumer is beginning to see the benefits of all those formative years with mature, stable chipsets that really offer very little variation in performance no matter who builds a motherboard around them.
One of the big partnerships of the past twelve months or so has been the AMD/VIA allegience, a combination that with chilling force has pegged back the mighty Intel and found its way into systems around the globe. Unlike the K6 range however, these systems aren't budget systems, we're talking servers, power gamer's rigs, business systems and more. No longer do IT professionals insist on "Intel Inside" for mission critical hardware, and AMD has finally shaken off its image as a "budget alternative", that offers inferior performance at a vastly superior price. AMD has come of age, and VIA has pushed that process along nicely.
Today I want to look at a motherboard that blends that killer combination of a VIA chipset and SocketA platform into a neat, well specified motherboard, the DFI AK75-EC.

Let's dive straight in with the board specs :

Specifications :

Chipset

VIA KT133A/686B

CPU Socket

Socket A

CPU Supported

200/266 MHz Alpha EV6 FSB for AMD Athlon /Duron processor 600MHz~ 1.3GHz and faster

Memory

3 DIMM sockets max. 1.5GB (unbuffered or registered) Supports PC 133/ VCM SDRAM

PCI IDE

Dual PIO mode 3/4 EIDE channels up to 4 IDE devices UltraDMA/100 transfer rate up to 100MB/sec

Super I/O

2 x NS16C550A compatible UARTs 1 x SPP/ECP/EPP parallel port

External Connectors

2 x USB, 2 x DB-9, 1x DB-25, 1x PS/2 Mouse, 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x game/MIDI, 3 audio jacks

Internal Connectors

1 x IrDA, 2 x external USB, 2 x IDE, 1x Floppy, 1 x ATX power, 3 x fan, 1 x WOR, 1 x WOL, 3 x internal audio

Power Management

ACPI and OS direct power management Wake-on event: RTC/Modem/LAN

Hardware Monitor

System, processor temperature, voltage and fan speed

Expansion Slots

1 AGP slots (supports AGP 4x / 2x) 5 PCI slots 1 CNR slot

Audio On Board

AC`97 Audio codec

Other features

Suspend to RAM, Ratio/Mutilper supports

BIOS

Award / 2Mbit

Form Factors

ATX, 4 layers 30.5 cm x 22 cm 12.0 inch. x 8.66 inch.

 

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