Jetway J618 AF

Another 815 chipset-based board, we tested this board in both our categories.

It scored very well in performance in both categories, but lost points mainly

due to its price and features. Though it costs only Rs 5,500, others in the

shootout were priced even lower.

Interestingly, for a high-end board, the J618 AF comes with a DIN connector

instead of a PS/2 for the keyboard. This was also the only board without any DIP

switch settings to enable a jumperfree mode. You have to manually adjust the CPU

Host/ SDRAM clock settings, which is an older way of handling things. It has

only two onboard USB ports. So you wouldn’t pick this board for features.

In our entry-level suite of tests, this motherboard was one of the top

performers, second only to Vesta VMB103. With the scores, there was a peculiar

observation. The J618 AF performed great for all the application, graphics, and

gaming benchmarks. The area where it lost out was in the optimization of its

sound sub-system–a must for entry-level boards. So here go the statistics.

With a score of 30.6 Winstone units for Business Winstone 99, this board was the

best in its category.

Similar was the performance in running the graphics benchmarks and the score

for 3DMark 2000 stood at 12.5 units, again the best. It achieved the best frame

rates for the gaming benchmark, Quake III Arena, where it averaged to 21 fps.

However, the board got 8.99 percent in CPU utilization, which was high compared

to other boards.

Scores in the high-end category, though good, were lower than what most

boards got. It got an overall performance score of 93.7, while most boards

managed to get above 96. So overall, the board is a good choice for either

category, if you’re not choosy on features. The bundled software includes PC-Cillin

Antivirus and a trial version of Power DVD software DVD player.