AOPEN Pitches Two New P4 Socket 478 Motherboards

Picking a motherboard/CPU combination is always a tough decision. As with most high-tech goodies, whatever you decide on is likely to be obsolete a week after you take delivery. You do have to take the plunge sometime, however, in your endless pursuit of faster hardware. Trying your best to stay ahead of the curve by picking the right parts is half the fun. In the midst of a particularly slow news week, AOpen has decided to give you two new boarding options for that shiny new P4 Santa left under your tree. The first is the jumper-less AX45, which makes use of the SiS645 DDR333 Chipset. It supports DDR333 (2GB) and DDR266 (3GB) DIMMs and comes with a 4X AGP slot, six USB ports (two rear/four via cable), Ultra DMA/100 HDDs, and has AC'97 audio on-board. The $99 AX45 also supports ACPI 1.0 and APM 1.2 specs, comes bundled with Norton Anti-Virus 2002 software, and includes AOpen's three-year warranty.

The second new board, called the AX4T II, uses Intel's 850 chipset and gives you a 400 MHz system bus, dual RDRAM memory channels and an AGP 4X interface. The AX4T II supports four USB ports, has AC'97 audio on-board, and dual Ultra ATA/100 controllers. It has an estimated street price of $159 and also supports ACPI 1.0 and APM 1.2 specs, comes bundled with Norton Anti-Virus 2002 software, and includes AOpen's standard three-year warranty.