P4 Motherboard for Offices

This latest motherboard from Asus is based on the Flex ATX form factor and can fit into the tiniest of cabinets. Its SiS 645 chipset supports the latest Socket 478 Intel P4 processors based on the Northwood core, DDR-RAM and up to 2 GB of system memory. The motherboard has AC97 audio but no onboard video. Also included is onboard LAN for office environments. Expandability for more cards is limited as it has only two PCI slots. It has four USB ports. Other neat features in the board include connectors for adding a variety of devices, like a smart card reader, front panel audio controls, S/PDIF audio module for digital sound output, and infrared

modules.

We tested the motherboard using a 2.0 GHz Northwood P4 processor, 256 MB DDR-RAM, IBM 7200 rpm HDD and a GeForce2 GTS. Performance in all benchmarks was excellent. In Content Creation and Business Winstone 2001 the motherboard scored 56.5 and 52.4 respectively. Even though this motherboard is almost completely geared towards office productivity, it scored a very decent frame rate of 61.1 fps at 1280*1024*32 resolution.

This motherboard is good for offices. It makes little sense for a home user to buy one, as there is very little room for

expansion. 

The bottom line: At Rs 8,750, it is priced well compared

to other P4 motherboards. The software bundle is also quite good.

Anuj Jain at PCQ Labs