Jetway A210PDAG ATi Express 200P (ULi M1573 SB) Mainboard Gallery 1/4
Bluetooth 19 Jan 2004

Jetway A210PDAG - First K8 PCI-E board with HD AUDIO

Last year, we tested the ATi reference board and it has brought many readers wondering when can they buy the boards. Well, Jan 2005 is here and we see more manufacturers are starting to ship their boards. We are fortunate to be able to test out the first ATi Xpress200P (RX480) board by Jetway. This board is a bit difference from the previous MSI MS-7093 board we reviewed last year. The north bridge is not changed but the South bridge is a ULi M1573.

We did a preview of the ULi M1573 PCI-E compatible South Bridge last year and here is a recap of what this new south bridge differs from the rest of the existing K8 PCI-E solutions.

The M1573 integrates a Azalia High Definition (HD) Audio/AC'97 Host Controller, 2-channel dedicated Ultra-66/100/133 IDE Master controller, SATA Host Controller (4 SATA ports that can support SATA RAID 0,1,0+1) supporting Native Command Queue, USB 2.0/1.1 Host controllers, IO APIC controller, as well as 1/10/100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet MAC layer and PCI Express interface. With these features, it brings it one step closer to the NF4 Ultra with some plus and minus. Read more about it here.

As you probably know, HD Audio can deliver the support and sound quality for up to eight channels at 192 kHz/32-bit quality, while the AC‘97 specification can only support six channels at 48 kHz/20-bit. With 8 channels of indepdent audio, you can probably have 4 channels playing a game while another 2 channels playing music and 2 others for a voice conferencing software.

As most of us would be wondering if the board has any overclocking features. Yes, the board has adjustments for multiplier, vDIMM, vCore, vChipset, FSB is adjustable to 300MHz.

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