Chipset: Intel 815 Price: Rs 5,500 Software: PC-Cillin Antivirus, Power DVD trial version Website: www.jetway.com.tw |
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.