Conclusion
This motherboard will truly come of age when the faster FSB Athlon XP become available. Right now, using DDR400 memory does it no favours at all. Having to lower memory timings to accommodate such a high frequency negatively impacts upon performance.
That aside, the Shuttle AK37 GT/R is an impressive motherboard whichever way you look at it. It looks good, is loaded with features, and has a BIOS that even the most die-hard overclockers can relate to. Having 2.85v available for system RAM and a mind-numbing 2.4v available for the CPU, makes it something of a tweaker's delight.
On-board RAID, courtesy of the capable Highpoint HPT372 controller, together with Serial ATA support make it one of the best for managing your hard drive situation. Decent on-board sound, on-board LAN, and 6 USB2.0 ports round off an impressive specification list. The inclusion of Firewire support would have been a nice bonus, though.
I'm not totally convinced with the KT400 chipset yet. Its time will come when faster FSB Athlon XPs are released. As it stands, I have little in the way of criticism for this motherboard, as it appears to have all the bases covered.
Shuttle may not be a household name in the same vein as Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI, but if they keep producing motherboards that are as stable, feature-rich, and tweakable as this one, they may just join the upper echelons of motherboard world in a year or two. Recommended.
Highs
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Extremely stable during days of testing
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Feature-packed with a decent layout
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Decent performance in DDR333 mode.
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Ready for the next iteration of Athlon XP processors by having a 5:1 FSB:PCI divider in BIOS.
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Extremely adjustable BIOS with a CPU-frying 2.4v on tap
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IDE and S-ATA RAID are decent extras
Lows
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May be hard to find in this country
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The KT400 chipset doesn't offer many radical improvements over the KT333, although that is not a criticism of this motherboard.
Overall rating 8.5/10, Recommended.
