LOSTCIRCUITS
ASUS Pundit
SFF à la ASUS
(Review by MS, August 19, 2003)
SHORTCUTS:
Pundit
At One Glance
Features
On the Outside
Inside the Pundit
Integrated Peripherals
Assembly
BIOS
Test Configuration
Memory Performance
I/O Performance
Application Performance
Conclusions
Flame Us
Get A Pundit Online
What You Get
The Pundit ships in a rugged, corrugated cardboard box without any fancy
design, just an average brown box with a few compartments inside, creating a
buffer zone to prevent the unit from shock damage or scratches and dents by
careless handling by the carrier.
Shipping contents are the Pundit itself, a plastic bag with an UATA ribbon cable,
a phone cable, an analog audio cable and a bag of extra screws for securing e.g.
the CD/DVDROM. As far as software and documentation goes, the material
enclosed features the ABP 2600 User's Guide and the P4S8L driver and utility
CD.
The manual itself is pretty straightforward with a few glitches where it talks about
the floppy (while there are no provisions for any floppy drive at all) and some
minor omissions in the installation manual. For example, installation of the
memory modules is illustrated in all detail, however, the manual does not lose a
single word about the fact that the CPU heatsink needs to be removed first in
order to get access to the memory slots. Actually, in this case, it is only the thumb
clips that are in the way, a different design of the retention mechanism would
solve all those issues.
Otherwise, the documentation is more than sufficient with the exception of ASUS
Instant Music, which is supported in the BIOS but not mentioned anywhere in the
manual. As with previous versions of Instant Music, we got to the point
whereupon pressing the "Esc" key, the system would power up and display all
vital signs of an audio Jukebox, that is, the Scroll-Lock button on the keyboard
was lit, the F2 button did the "Eject" function but none of the other features were
working. There is a chance that we missed something, however, without any
documentation, that's as much as we can tell.
Chipset
The Pundit uses the SIS651-SIS962 combination, connected by the MuTIOL
interconnect. The interconnect in this case is a bi-directional 16 bit-wide bus
running at 533 MHz for a total of 533 MB/sec bandwidth each way. Keep in mind
that upstram and downstream are separate 8 bit buses. SIS lists a distributed
arbitration scheme meaning that different DMA engines can be set up in parallel.
Below is a brief listing of the chipset's key features but note that the verbal
description and the diagram are not consistent.
SIS 651 block diagram showing the 533 MB/sec bandwidth interconnect between the
651 and the 962 components
Chipset Specs
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PC2001 Compliance
High Performance Host Interface
o Support Intel Pentium 4 series CPU with data transfer rate of 533/ 400MHz
64 bit high performance DDR-266/333 Memory Controller
o Supports DDR333/DDR266/200 SDRAM or PC133/100 SDRAM
o Support Up to 2 un-buffer DIMM DDR333 or up to 3 un-buffered Double-sided
DIMM DDR266/200
o Up to 1 GB per DIMM with max. memory size up to 3 GB
o Supports 16Mb, 64Mb, 128Mb, 256Mb, 512Mb SDRAM technology with page
size from 2KB up to 16KB
o Sustains DDR SDRAM CAS Latency at options of 2, 2.5, & 3 clocks
o Programmable buffer strength optimizing performance and stability
o High performance unified memory controller optimizing the DRAM bus
utilization
Integrated A.G.P. Compliant Target/66MHz Host-to-PCI Bridge
o AGP v2.0 Compliant
o Supports Additional AGP4X/2X interface and Fast Write Transaction
High throughout MuTIOL® Connect interfaced to SiS962 MuTIOL® Media I/O
o Bi-directional 16 bit data bus
o 1 GB/s performance in 133MHz x 4 mode
o Distributed arbitration strategy with enhanced mode of contiguous DMA data
streaming
o Packet based, pipelining, and split transaction scheme
Dedicated Isochronous Response Queue
o Built-in a high performance 256-bit 3D engine
o Built-in a high quality 3D engine
High Performance 2D Accelerator
Complete TV-OUT/Digital Flat Panel Solution
MPEG-2/1 Video Decoder
NAND Tree for Ball Connectivity Testing
702-Balls TEBGA Package
1.8V Core with Mixed 1.2V 1.5V 1.8V, 2.5V and 3.3V I/O CMOS Technology
Amongst the features listed, the one of primary interest is the lack of support for DDR400
next page: => The Pundit =>
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