Shuttle AE25R Motherboard Review


The Shuttle AE25R Motherboard Review - Page 1

 

Shuttle's AE25R Motherboard
Twice The Fun

By, Jeff Bouton
September 25th, 2001



 

It seems like it was just yesterday when I was running a state of the art 486 processor at 33MHz. and a whopping 16MB of RAM.  A hot new game called Doom had everyone talking and I had just installed a brand new 2X CD-ROM drive in my rig.  Since then (thankfully), the industry has seen a steady influx of new technologies, as well as improvements upon existing ones, that have raised the bar of performance to what at the time seemed improbable.  Countless times through the years we?ve heard statements that a certain product had reached its limit, and a few months later the limit would be broken.  Take the Intel Pentium III for example: I can remember when they were able to achieve the speed of 1GHz.  Not long afterward, there was talk that it was unlikely the 1GHz. speed would be broken.  Well, here we are talking about the new ?Tualatin? Pentium III processor running at 1.20 GHz., thanks to the new .13 Micron process.  With the new manufacturing process and lower core voltage requirements, Intel was able to kick clock speed up by another 20 percent.  Once again, existing technology was improved even further to enhance an already proven design.

 

Since its release at the end of July, the ?Tualatin? has been making quite a name for itself.  After reviewing several motherboards in the last few months that incorporated support for Intel?s new PIII, it is clear that the performance gains of the new design are nothing short of excellent.  With such an impressive showing, it is no surprise to this reviewer that motherboard manufacturers would be quick to add a Tualatin-ready motherboard to their product line.  Today we?ll be taking a look at yet another of these motherboards, the AE25R from Shuttle.  To start, let us take a look at what the AE25R brings to the table.

Specifications of the Shuttle AE25R Motherboard
The Run-down...

 

The AE25R offers a nice mix of features that should allow it to be quite a capable motherboard.  Let's take a little closer look at the physical design of the AE25R and highlight some of its finer points.

Quality & Setup of the Shuttle AE25R Motherboard
Very Nice...

 

The layout of the AE25R is fairly neat with plenty of room to spare.  This is in-part because of the added length of the board to accommodate the additional R.A.I.D. components.  With this additional room, it would've been nice to see the power connector located on the edge of the board.  Its current placement allows the wires of the power supply to lie in the path of the CPU fan's airflow.  The board comes with 3 fan headers to supply the CPU fan and two additional chassis fans.  The AE25R also has headers for additional USB support, but unfortunately Shuttle does not supply the necessary hardware to take advantage of this added feature.
 

 

The AE25R incorporates an on-board Promise FastTrak100 R.A.I.D. controller with Lite Bios v1.31.  Lite basically means that you can set up the type of array you would like with minimal options or tweaks.  We hope that there will be future BIOS updates available that would allow the more experienced user the ability to change important settings based on their configuration.  In the case of the AE25R, everything is automatic, which is a breeze for the novice user.

 



More Quality, Setup and the BIOS...

 

 

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