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Asus P3V4X |
| Slot 1 motherboard. Rs 7,950 Features: Support for PII, PIII, and Celeron processors; Support for AGP 4x cards; 133 FSB support; up to 2 GB SDRAM; HSDRAM support. Pros: Rich set of features. Cons: None. Source: Zeta Technologies A/2 , Shreeji Niketan 541/D, Dr Ambedkar Raod, Matunga (C. R.) Mumbai 400019. Tel: 22-4102288 Fax: 4102277 E-mail: tejas@zetaindia.com Website: www.zetaindia.com |
This is a Slot 1 motherboard from Asus based on VIA Apollo
Pro133A chipset. The board has support for AGP 4x cards, meant for high-end
graphics work. The motherboard supports FSB of 66, 100, and 133 MHz, so you can
add PIII, PIIIE, and PIIIEB, as well as Celeron processors in its Slot 1. The
board has DIP switches that can be set to Auto mode to let the BIOS
automatically recognize the processor you put in. You can also manually adjust
the DIP switch settings to get the right speed for your processor.
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The
board has four DIMM slots that can handle up to 2 GB of SDRAM. It also supports
the latest HSDRAM. It has six PCI slots, enough to handle any further expansion.
An ISA slot can put any old cards that you might have to use. The board has all
the regular ports–one parallel, two serial, PS/2, and USB ports. These are all
color coded for easy recognition.
We tested the motherboard for productivity applications,
graphics and gaming, and compared it against the Asus P3BF motherboard–a
winner in the motherboard shootout earlier this year (see PC Quest February
2000, page 93).
The P3V4X fared well in productivity applications, scoring
almost as much as the P3BF in Business Winstone 99. In gaming, however, the
board wasn’t as good as the P3BF. We ran 3D Winbench99, and Intel Game
Launcher benchmarks for this. It managed a score of 675 in 3D Winbench99
compared to 1010 scored by the P3BF. In Quake III Arena, the board gave a frame
rate of 72 fps at 800x600 resolution with 16-bit color depth, which dropped to
42 fps at 1,024x768 with 32-bit color depth. The board scored 143, 127, and 150
in Dispatched, Battlezone II, and Iron Strategy respectively–the three games
of Intel Game Launcher benchmark. Overall, it didn’t perform as well as the
P3BF, but the frame rates are, nevertheless, decent for games.
The motherboard has a very comprehensive manual, and comes
with a CD containing PC-Cillin98 anti-virus, Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.06, and Asus
Probe 2.11. Considering the rich set of features, the motherboard is a good buy.