Bundle and presentation
ASUS crams a surprising amount into a regular motherboard box. The heavy weight is reassuring indication that money has been well spent. ASUS' Ai, which seeks to automate some of the mundane BIOS settings, is an attempt to distinguish the board from other manufacturers. The trouble is, MSI has its CoreCell, ABIT its uGuru, and DFI its CMOS Reloaded feature. Ai, in this context, refers to jack-sensing audio (AD1985 CODEC), automatic overclocking within BIOS, and BIOS recovery through ASUS' Crashfree BIOS 2.
Saves yours truly from writing out a specification sheet. If we're being critical, what's missing is out-of-the-box WiFi support and a third FireWire port.
Cables galore. 4 SATA cables matches the board's requirement. We like the ASUS-branded leads, of which there's 2 UDMA100, a single UDMA33 and floppy drive cable. ASUS also included a three jumpers in the pack. SATA support is further helped by 2 molex cables with 2 SATA connectors on each. Due to the single extra FireWire port, ASUS bundles in a lead with just a solitary port. To make up there's a 4-port USB 2.0 cable and GAME port.
The manual is subjectively excellent. It's written entirely in English and explains both hardware and software in just the right level of detail. It's not an afterthought, unlike some manufacturer's that we could mention. ASUS has a long-standing relationship with InterVideo which manifests itself in the ubiquitous WinDVD Suite Gold. WinDVD, WinRip, and Win DVD Creator make up the constituent parts.
Our sample's installation CD contained drivers and utilities dated back to mid-2003. Presented in an easy-to-use GUI, chipset, USB 2.0, and sound drivers were packaged together with ASUS PC Probe hardware monitoring software, ASUS Update (a handy OS-based BIOS-flashing utility), PC-Cillin 2002, Adobe's Acrobat Reader v5, and an ASUS screensaver. Perhaps a Windows-based overclocking tool might have been a good idea?.
