Jetway M2A480VP is the first RD480 board we tested that comes with a single PCIe x16 slot. Thus no CrossFire support is available on this board. In terms of performance, it is on par with the other AMD 480X board we reviewed before. In fact, some some of the tests, we were pleasantly surprised that the speed is faster than the CrossFire (Dual 8X capable) boards.

In terms of features, the M2A480VP is a scaled down version of the M2A481-OG board we reviewed before. Gone are CrossFire support, GbE and HD Audio and 4 DIMM slot support (2 now). There is also no SPI BIOSBACK feature on this board nor diagnostics LED.

As it uses the SB600, the board supports 1 IDE channel and 4 SATAII ports for RAID 0,1,5 or 10 and 10 USB 2.0 ports.

For overclockers, there are a lot of BIOS options for you to tweak. The Vcore can be adjusted up to 1.55v + 1.35% (offset). This feature is part of the CPU Vcore 7 Shift feature which gives higher voltage levels especially useful for the extreme overclockers. For example, I set vcore to 1.4v and Vcore 7Shift to 1.15%, the final voltage is 1.6v for vcore. That is to say, if you apply 1.55v for Vcore and +1.35% for your 7-Shift, you will be getting the MAX of 2.0925v. Final CPU Voltage = Vcore X 7-Shift. The DIY COOL Users can alsomount an optional fan to cool the capacitors.

In our overclocking tests, we were not so lucky with this board. To date, we aren't able to reach anything beyond 240x10 even though we lower most of the settings. This is in contrast to the 481 board which can complete the run of SuperPI 32M at 290x10 (2.9GHz) on our 4000+ X2. The BIOS also has similar options compared to the Jetway M2A481VP board but some options are not available.  See BIOS screens shots

As for documentation and packaging, Jetway definitely has room for improvement. Additional brackets should be provided and documentation should be clear and concise.

Overall, the board performed well. The only regret is the 2 DIMM slots and no CrossFire, SPI BIOS support. The BIOS also needs some changes to allow it to overclock better.