1.3Special features

1.3.1 Product Highlights

Latest processor technology

The motherboard supports the latest AMD Athlon™, Athlon™ XP and AMD Duron™ processors via a 462-pin surface mount ZIF socket. The AMD Athlon™ and AMD Athlon™ XP processors features a 400Mhz front side bus and the QuantiSpeed™ architecture for rapid execution of applications.

NVIDIA® nForce™ Platform Processing Architecture

The motherboard combines the power of NVIDIA’s nForce2™ Ultra 400 and nForce2™ MCP-T chipsets that improves processing efficiency and overall system performance.

Serial ATA solution

The motherboard supports two interfaces compliant to the Serial ATA (SATA) specification, an evolutionary replacement of the Parallel ATA storage interface. The Serial ATA specification allows for thinner, more flexible cables with lower pin count, reduced voltage requirement, up to 150 MB/s data transfer rate. See page 2-21.

AGP 8X support

The motherboard support AGP 8X (AGP 3.0) specification offering 2.12 GB/s bandwidth. See page 2-13.

Dual LAN (Fast-Ethernet and Gigabit) solution

The onboard Marvell® Gigabit LAN controller and Fast-Ethernet LAN controller integrated in the southbridge supply two separate ports for LAN on Motherboard (LOM) applications. The Marvell® Gigabit LAN controller is equipped with the net-diagnosing utility, VCT (Virtual Cable Tester), that intelligently diagnoses and reports cable faults from a remote location up to 100 meters. This feature helps maintain a more stable network connection. See pages 2-18, 5-17.

S/PDIF in/out function

The motherboard’s S/PDIF out function turns your computer into a high- end entertainment system with digital connectivity.

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Chapter 1: Product introduction