• VIA K8T800 chipset

This board of the highest price range (even without a wireless adapter) has a good bundle and excellent features.

The company hasn't changed the traditional board design and hasn't moved memory sockets to CPU realigned, as seen on some prototypes. Therefore it has no unusual circuitry, but a number of usual disadvantages peculiar to higher-end motherboards: some slots to the left are not very suitable for installation, audio connectors are located in front of PCI slots, while FDD and SATA/IDE RAID are behind them (still you can lay the former sideward, so it doesn't impede). In their turn, cabling might impede memory modules manipulations. And some jumpers might be hard to access during the installation. +5V Standby is indicated by a green LED. The 3-channel CPU switching regulator has 6 x 1500 microfarad and 3 x 1200 microfarad capacitors. There are also AGP (2 x 1000 microfarad and some of less capacity) and memory (4 x 1000 microfarad) voltage stabilizers.

Circuited, but unsoldered are: CPU clock switches, IrDA and SMBus. We don't know in what model these should be present, as today it's company's only solution on VIA K8T800 (it seems like a legacy of samples or even the previous chipset). The board is sized 305õ245 mm (full-size ATX, 9-screw mount to fix all parts). Winbond W83697HF chip is used for hardware to monitor:

• CPU voltage, +3.3, +5 and +12 V;
• Two fan rpm;
• CPU and motherboard temperatures by respective integrated sensors.

• Socket 754;
• 3 x DDR SDRAM DIMM sockets w/o ECC. The first socket is coloured. It's recommended for DDR400 modules. Besides, DDR400 is supported for two modules only;
• 1 x latched AGP slot;
• 5 x PCI slots;
• ASUS WiFi (combined the a PCI slot);
• ATX standard and 4-pin 12V power connectors;
• 1 x FDD;
• 3 x IDE (Parallel ATA): 2 by chipset, 1 by additional controller;
• 4 x SATA (Serial ATA): 2 by chipset, 2 by additional controller;
• 2 x headers for 2 x USB (2.0) each;
• 1 x Second COM connector;
• 1 x Game connector;
• 1 x FireWire connector;
• 1 x CD/DVD audio connector;
• 1 x AUX-In;
• 1 x Chassis open detection connector;
• Audio and S/PDIF connectors;
• 3 x fan connectors (2 of these support rpm control).

• PS/2 keyboard and mouse;
• 1 x LPT, 1 x Coaxial S/PDIF-Out, 1 x COM;
• 2 x USB (2.0) and 1 x FireWire;
• 2 x USB (2.0) and 1 x RJ-45 (Gigabit Ethernet);
• Mic-In, Line-In, Front, and Game.

• Box: stylish design (Wireless Edition special);
• Manual: for motherboard and WiFi-b;
• Cabling: 2 x Serial ATA (with power adapters/headers), 2 x ATA66/100/133, 1 x ATA33 and 1 x FDD – all wide and black with logos;
• 1 x back-panel board for 4 x USB;
• 1 x back-panel board for 1 x FireWire;
• 1 x back-panel board for Coaxial S/PDIF-Out and TosLink;
• WiFi-b card with antenna (Wireless Edition only);

• Back-panel stub;
• 2 software CDs:
• Drivers;
• Adobe Acrobat Reader;
• DirectX 8.1;
• PC-cillin 2002;
• ASUS Live Update;
• ASUS PCProbe;
• ASUS Screensaver;
• Winbond Voice Editor;
• InterVideo WinDVD Suite;
• Software AP (for wireless access points organization, Wireless Edition only).

• Audio – based on Analog Devices AD1980 AC'97 codec, supports 5.1 systems, has front-inputs/outputs and S/PDIF;
• LAN – based on 3Com Marvell 940-MV00, supports 10/100/1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet);
• IDE/SATA RAID – based on Promise PDC20378, supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, has 2 x SATA and 1 x PATA;
• FireWire – based on VIA VT6307, supports 2 ports.

The integrated audio quality was estimated in the 16bit/44kHz mode using RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.1 and Terratec DMX 6fire:

General performance: Good (details).

• ASUS AI Net (cable damage detection by LAN controller with the help of diagnostics utility);
• ASUS CrashFree BIOS 2 (automatic BIOS recovery from bootable diskettes or CDs even if flash chip information is corrupt);
• ASUS POST Reporter (POST voice warnings, customizable);
• ASUS Q-Fan Technology (adjusts CPU fan rpm depending on CPU load);
• ASUS EZ Flash (BIOS upgrades without OS bootup);
• ASUS Instant Music Lite (Audio CD playback without OS bootup)
• ASUS MyLogo2 (customizable bootup logos);
• ASUS Multi-language BIOS (selectable BIOS Setup language);
• ASUS WiFi@Home (proprietary board slot (for WiFi-b cards bundled with Wireless Edition boards).

We used BIOS 1003 beta 012 as the latest available at the moment of testing.

According to the preliminary tests, this model is very close to the leaders as well as almost all other solutions on VIA K8T800 (<2% difference).