ASUS K8V
Of the two K8Vs that arrived, only the bundle differentiates them. Here's the formal board spec.| ASUS K8V | |
| CPU Support | 1 x Socket 754 |
| Northbridge | VIA K8T800 |
| Memory Support | 3 slots, DDR400 max, 3GB max |
| AGP | 8X |
| Southbridge | VIA VT8237 |
| Audio | Analogue Devices AD1980 SoundMax from VT8237 feed |
| Audio Connectivity | 3 port backplane speaker, S/PDIF output on backplane, PCI I/O mounted S/PDIF (coax and optical) output module |
| PCI | 5 x 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.1 slots |
| IDE | 2 ATA133 compliant ports from 8237 |
| IDE RAID | Promise R20378, single port |
| SATA | 2 ports from VT8237, 2 ports from Promise R20837 |
| SATA RAID | VT8237 able to RAID provided ports, Promise R20837 able to RAID provided ports |
| Ethernet | 3Com 3C940 Gigabit Ethernet LOM controller |
| USB | VT8237, 4 x backplane USB2.0, 4 x I/O USB2.0 |
| FireWire | Single backplane port from VT6307 |
| Other I/O | PS/2, Parallel, 1 x Serial, ASUS WiFi slot |
A decent stab at a full featured K8T800 design. On the previous page I mention it seemed to take the best features from the P4G8X, those features being the AD1980 SoundMAX CODEC and the VT6307 FireWire ASIC. I'm a big fan of the audio, having come across a SoundMAX combination (it needs software to get the SoundMAX designation) first on the Intel D845PEBT2. The AD1980 is a 20-bit resolution, 96dBA SNR chip that can sample at 48kHz. Enough for decent sounding audio to make you think twice about buying something discrete. Digital output from coax S/PDIF tops things off on the audio front.
ASUS forego the benefits of the Ethernet interface and probably cheaper VT6103 100MBit/sec PHY, in favour of the increasingly popular 3Com 3C940 LOM (LAN on Motherboard) chip. The 3C940 is a Gigabit Ethernet device, giving 1000MBit/sec performance with compatible network infrastructure. Not too useful for the average home user, despite it being very capable at 100MBit/sec, it's more of a nod to the corporate user looking for a fast development or content creation workstation, or the home power user that's splashed out on a decent switch for their home setup.
ASUS give you access to all 8 USB2.0 ports, 4 on the board backplane and 4 on a single fly-off PCI I/O plate, keeping things neat. A single PCI I/O shield mounted FireWire port (the 400Mbit variety) rounds off the fast serial I/O connection list, to go with the port on the backplane, giving you full access to both ports on the VT6307.
The SATA setup is pretty flexible. ASUS choose Promise to provide the two extra ports that the 8237 can't provide on its own, so you get four full ports in total. A single IDE RAID channel, Promise provided, is present, along with the two regular IDE channels from the 8237. It's a flexible setup, favouring SATA or PATA depending on how you want to set it up, giving you the best of both worlds while you migrate to a complete SATA disk setup (if indeed you want to). One of the board highlights.
Memory support is a little more complex. While you can can put up to 3GB in the board using the three slots, and you have DDR400 support, both together is impossible. Populating all three slots drops maximum memory speed to DDR333 or even DDR200 (if you use double sided modules in all slots), regardless of the modules you are using and since 1GB DDR400 modules are exceedingly rare and expensive at the time of writing, 1GB of DDR400 is the realistic usable maximum in the K8V. It's not an uncommon situation either, all shipping K8T800's that I'm aware of suffer the same limitation when using 3 slots.
Being a single channel implementation, using a single memory slot is fine. For example, dropping a 512MB stick of something nice like Mushkin Level II PC3200 would be a nice compliment to the rest of the board features, while giving you upgrade possibilities in the future with a second stick.
Last on the list of things to talk about on this page is the ASUS WiFi slot. Sharing backplane space with PCI slot 5, it's a proprietary interface to ASUS' own WiFi 802.11 card and aerial. The card is mixed mode, supporting both 'b' and 'g' variants of the standard. 54Mbit/sec is the maximum theoretical transfer rate of the 'g' standard, a step up from the 11Mbit/sec of the 'b' variant currently shipped by the likes of Intel with its Centrino technology bundle. The card and aerial seem to be shipped in two out of the three bundle variants, with only the cheapest K8V not getting the privilege.
ASUS are a fan of renaming technologies under their own terms, so if you take a look at the manual you'll see things like ASUS AI NET, AI BIOS, Q-Fan, CPR, MyLogo and a bunch of other labels for technology that everyone else usually implements. We take network cards, BIOS' with vendor tweaks, CPU fan control, auto BIOS recovery and the ability to change boot logos for granted these days, ASUS like to make them stand out.
A look at the first of the bundles based around the board now.
