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Appearance

The board looks ordinary: average dimensions, traditional colors (yellow surface etc.). I didn't have any inconveniences when I was installing it. Actually power supply connector is mounted in inconvenient place.

Processor socket is located very close to board's edge and this obstructs removal (replacing) of CPU cooler if the board is already installed. Actually, I can only recommend either a capacious computer case or a case with sliding panel for sophisticated users. The fact is that there are many boards with such design and if coolers or processors are being changed frequently, such case can save much time.
Upon a closer view a thermal sensor is not seen on the socket (it is external and very small). And the board doesn't support internal Athlon XP thermal sensor.

There is enough room around the socket to install massive coolers. All popular coolers have been installed onto the board without any problems (I tried Tt Volcano 7, 7+ and 9, Igloo 2400).
Leftwards from the socket, there is a north bridge, which is cooled by a fan. Heatsink dimensions are quite small. Possibly such cooling scheme won't satisfy serious overclockers.

There are 3 DIMM slots under the north bridge. Therefore maximal memory volume totals 3Gb.

AGP slot is installed nearby. That is a long videocard can block DIMM latches.

Near memory slots there is a small LED indicating DIMM power supply. Unfortunately, it can hardly be seen in a case with lots of cables.

As for AGP slot, an interesting principle of videocard fixation must be noted (it is implemented with a black plastic frame, like on Shuttle boards).

FDD and IDE connectors are installed under memory slots. There were no any problems with connections of cables. As regards RAID controller, this function is not covered by PCB design. Actually, this is correct. Usually, RAID controllers are used in first-level workstations or servers. But for these systems, users buy motherboards of well-known manufacturers, which do not include Albatron.
The board Albatron KX400+ has rather powerful extension capabilities including 6 PCI slots and one CNR slot.

There are only 4 USB 1.1 ports installed on the board. But if you buy KX400+ PRO (which is made under the same PCB), you must remember that it has a new VT8235 south bridge. Such board has 6 USB ports and all of them support USB 2.0.

On our board two ports are installed on its back panel and the other two are located on the bracket (contained by package), which is plugged into the respective connector (USB2 at the edge of the board).

Now let's look at the back panel, it is standard.

A habitual ACL650 chip provides onboard sound on KX400+. It supports 6-channel sound.

2 BIOS chips are installed nearby. I've already noted in the introduction, that many employees from Gigabyte work now in Albatron. That is why presence of BIOS backup technology is not a surprise. A drawback specific to Gigabyte is obvious: all chips are soldered into the board (but not installed into their sockets). This approach obviously lowers cost but increases maintenance cost in case of something brakes.

There are only few jumpers on the board: the first one is for CMOS clearing (JP1, near the battery), the second one is for FSB start clock selection (JP2 near power connector; the possible values are 100, 133 and 166 MHz). Besides, there is a JP4 jumper for OTP function management (Over Temperature Protection). PCB design covers a block of dip-switches for manual setting of CPU clock multiplier. But my board didn't have one. However in the corner of the board I discovered another block of switches (S1), which is intended for selection of language of voice messages. Really, it became popular in recent time to apply new diagnostic technologies and reporting error as LED combination (Abit), seven-segmented indicators (Epox and again Abit) and voice messages (Asus, Soltek and Albatron).
However only two switches are intended for language selection (available languages are English, German, Japanese and Chinese). The third one is used to apply Mirror BIOS function, which is intended for BIOS resetting in case of its damage (unsuccessful flashing, viruses). Besides that, Mirror BIOS technology allows using of different BIOS update utilities from Windows (however none of such utilities were discovered on my CD).

There is a table with jumpers description nearby. Marking quality is mediocre.

BIOS

Now let's look at BIOS. BIOS on Albatron KX400+ is based on Award Phoenix BIOS.
The distinctive feature of BIOS of this board is a scrolling line at the top of the board.
First of all let's have a look at memory settings.

There are all necessary parameters present, no complaints. Also I don't have any knocks to other BIOS setup sections including system monitoring section.
A user has a possibility to monitor CPU temperature and control rotation speeds of two of the three fans.

Besides, it is possible to set values of critical temperatures at which system will either warn a user or turn off immediately.

Many western observers who have tested KX400+ Pro (with VT8235 south bridge) noted an interesting feature: the board supports DDR400 memory. Actually it is achieved with processor overclocking up to 160MHz. At the same time MEM:CPU divider of 1.25:1 is used and this makes memory working at 200MHz (i.e. DDR400). It is interesting to note that such some other boards has the same function, but these manufacturers don't advertise such boards as Albatron does. Because anyway this is overclocking.

I must note that Pro version is manufactured with the same PCB. So an option if a new BIOS appears for KX400+, which will support DDR400, is not excluded. Anyway growth of performance should not be significant because there is no a sensible lack of memory bandwidth in AMD systems.

• Page1 - Specifications
• Page2 - Appearance
• Page3 - Overclocking and Stability
• Page4 - Benchmarks and Conclusions