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AOpen i915GMm-HFS Review
[Abstract]
IntroductionIntel is spearheading the mobile market yet again with the launch of their Centrino Duo mobile technology and Core Duo processors; another milestone for the mobile market. This is a...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
Introduction
Intel is spearheading the mobile market yet again with the launch of their Centrino Duo mobile technology and Core Duo processors; another milestone for the mobile market. This is all well and good for notebook junkies as the dual-core craze has landed right on their laps, promising multi-threaded performance boosts and more power saving features than ever before. But what about the older Centrino platform? We know that Intel will continue offering it for the current Pentium M (Dothans) and though there's no sign of phasing them out yet, their role will ultimately be diminished in the mobile world.
Now take one step back and examine market trends in a wider perspective, we think that the Pentium Ms are in a good position to star in another stage altogether ?inside Home Theater PCs (HTPC). In 2005, digital home theater and convergence technology rapidly gained ground as the next big thing for the PC. This movement was more or less spurred by the role the computer industry took in making digital media formats mainstream. The biggest obstacle for any user trying to put up a HTPC system was of course the intricacies of building a PC and the conundrum of building one that is powerful, yet silent and actually looks like it belongs in the living room.
This brings us back to the Pentium M microprocessor. Being a notebook processor, the Pentium Ms were naturally designed for the best performance per watt efficiency and they have become the darlings of quiet computing enthusiasts looking for a silent desktop. While mobile processors have also been sought after in HTPC designs for the very same reasons, they were not powerful enough to handle today's demanding high definition video decoding tasks without additional hardware acceleration. Since this is another problem that has been taken care off by the graphics industry, with major graphics vendors like ATI and NVIDIA pledging support for HD, H.264 and other pre/post-processing functions on the GPU itself, the processor is relieved of almost every graphical/video processing task. Thus, the Pentium M has already established a foothold in a growing market in the PC industry.
The AOpen i915GMm-HFS motherboard. |
Motherboards like AOpen's i915GMm-HFS are an affirmation to this fact. The board isn't exactly new in the market, but it caters to a niche and we think this is an opportune time to showcase what is in store for the HTPC DIY-er. In this review, we take a look at this very board and examine how AOpen might have developed a new category of motherboards that break tradition, in the sense that they are specifically designed not for the PC industry, but for CE (ala HTPC).
Firstly, before we begin, custom dictates that we provide the product bundle and its technical specifications:-
2 x SATA data cables
2 x SATA power converter cables
1 x 80-conductor Ultra ATA data cable
1 x floppy drive data cable
PS/2 Keyboard port bracket
2 x S/PDIF optical converters
CPU cooler and mounting bracket
I/O shield
Driver CD
User's manual
AOpen i915GMm-HFS Technical Specifications.
| CPU Support | - Supports Socket-479 Intel Pentium M processors(Banias / Dothan)
- Supports 400MHz/533MHz FSB
- Supports processors with 1MB and 2MB L2 cache
| | Chipset | - Northbridge: Intel915GM Express
- 400 / 533MHz front side bus
- Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
- PCI Express x16graphics
- Digital Media Interface (DMI) with 2GB/s bandwidth
- Southbridge: IntelICH6M
- Intel High Definition Audio
- Supports up to eight USB 2.0 ports
- Supports four PCI Express x1 lanes
- Supports two SATA ports
- Single-channel Ultra ATA-100 IDE port
- Digital Media Interface (DMI) with 2GB/s bandwidth
| | Memory | - Supports DDR2-533/400 dual channel memoryarchitecture
- Supports two unbuffered DIMMs of 1.8 Volt DDR2SDRAM
- Supports DDR-333 single channel memoryarchitecture
- Supports two unbuffered DIMMs of 2.5 Volt DDRSDRAM
| | Storage | - Intel ICH6MSouthbridge
- 1 x UltraATA33/66/100 (data transfer rate up to100MB/sec.)
- 2 x SATA (Serial ATA 1.5Gbpsinterface)
- Silicon Image SiI3132 SATAIIRAIDcontroller
- 2 x SATA II (Serial ATAII 3.0Gbps interface)
- Supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1
| | Audio | - Intel High Definition Audio (Azalia)
- Realtek ALC880 HD Audio CODEC
| | Networking | - 2 x Marvell 88E8053 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernetcontroller
| | IEEE 1394 (FireWire) | - Agere FW3226-100 FireWire controller
- 2 x 1394aports @ 400Mbps speed
| | I/O Interface | - 1 x Floppy connector
- 1 x Ultra ATAIDE connectors
- 2 x SATA connectors
- 2 x SATA II connectors
- 8 x USB 2.0ports (4 x rear, 4 x header)
- 2 x IEEE1394a ports (2 x header)
- 2 x RJ45 LANport
- 8-Channel Audio I/Oports
- 1 x DVI-I connector
- 1 x D-SUB VGA connector
- 1 x S-Video out
- Component video out (YPbPr)
- 2 x 9-pin serial port ( 2 x header)
- 1 x parallel port (header)
- 1 x mini-DIN-6 PS/2keyboard (bracket)
| | Expansion Slots | - 1 x PCIe x16slots,PCI Express Bus specification v1.0acompliant
- 1 x PCIe x1slots, PCIExpress Bus specification v1.0acompliant
- 2 x 32-bitPCI slots,PCI 2.3 compliant
| | Special Features | - Chrontel CH7021A HDTV Encoder with SDVO support
- Chrontel CH7307 DVI controller
| | PCB | - Micro-ATX Form Factor, 244 mm x 244 mm
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Interesting rear I/O panel layout without any legacy ports at all. AOpen still stacks in full analog audio, dual RJ45s and four USB 2.0 ports though, in addition to the onboard VGA, DVI, S-Video and component out. |
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Wintel MacMini lookalike from AOpen? (2005-10-05)