Albatron PX915G

Albatron's PX915G Pro is the first motherboard we've seen that features the G version of Intel's 915 Express chipset. This includes the new Media Accelerator 900 (GMA 900), designed to provide the next level of integrated graphics performance.

The board centres around one of Intel's new 775-pin sockets, supporting Prescott Pentium 4 processors with 533 or 800MHz front-side bus (FSB) speeds. The northbridge and southbridge chips are passively cooled, which should cut down on noise.

The 915 chipset can use either DDR1 or DDR2 memory solutions. Albatron has gone for DDR1, with the four Dimm slots taking a maximum of 4GB of either DRR400 or DDR333 in a dual-channel configuration.

Intel's GMA 900 may be a leap up from previous generations of integrated graphics chips, but it's still no match for anything other than an entry-level graphics card. It's DirectX9-compliant, but relies on the processor to help with functions such as vertex shading. It also uses a whopping amount of memory - up to 32MB for graphics and an extra 96MB while running a game. There is an empty 16x PCI Express (PCX) slot for upgrading though.

The PX915G Pro comes with two ATA133 ports that can be configured as a Raid setup or standard ATA ports, and another single ATA100 port. There are also four Sata (Serial ATA) ports, but as the board comes with an ICH6 southbridge these can't be configured into a Raid array.

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Specifications:

• Socket 775 (533 & 800MHz FSB)
• Intel 915G northbridge, ICH6 southbridge
• 4 Dimm slots
• 16x PCX slot
• Two 1x PCX slots
• 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet
• 4 Sata ports
• 4 USB2 ports (4 more on expansion plate)
• 2 PS/2 ports
• Serial, parallel and VGA ports
• 7.1 audio