Introduction

nVidia's nForce platform is currently one of the fastest evolving platforms in the market. Since the original chipset which arrived in the latter parts of 2001, nVidia have come out with two more additions, the nForce 2 and nForce 3 chipsets. To capture the value ended market nVidia now integrates various features to the south bridge giving it a solid edge over its competition.

The biggest advantage the nForce2 chipset has over its competition is its rock solid performance, competitive pricing, good software and overall stability.

Today we look at one of the newest introductions by Albatron, the KX 18DS Pro II. This board is the successor to their former successful release the KX18D Pro II. In terms of performance I don't expect to see a considerable difference between these two boards, however what the KX 18DS Pro II builds on to its former counterpart is features and greater support for newer processors. A comparison of features are shown in the table below. The KX 18DS Pro II is equipped with nVidia's new MCPS -RAID South Bridge which by default offers a wider range of native features than the MCP-T of the KX 18D Pro II.

Feature comparison

As a company Albatron is well in the forefront of new developments in the industry and offering consumers the best choices along with its aggressive pricing strategy. Lets take a closer look at what the KX18DS Pro II has in offer.

Features & Specifications

Features

AMD Athlon™/ Athlon™XP / Athlon™XP Barton/ Duron™Processor
Socket 462 with FSB 200/266/333/400+(by overclocking) MHz
3 DDR400/DDR333/266/200 Memory Sockets (Dual DDR400)
AGP 8X , 6 channel AC 97 Audio
2 ATA133 Channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE Devices
nForce2 MCP RAID 10/100 Ethernet LAN/ Marvell Gbits LAN
2 Serial ATA150 Channels, Serial ATA RAID 0,1,0+1
2 IEEE1394 Ports
8 USB 2.0/1.1 Ports (4 ports by optional cable)
BIOS Mirror ™
Voice Genie ™

Processor

AMD Athlon™/ Athlon™XP / Athlon™XP Barton/ Duron™Processor

FSB

200/266/333/400 MHz

Chipset

North Bridge: nVIDIA nForce2 SPP (Ultra 400)
South Bridge: nVIDIA nForce2 MCPS
LAN Chip : LAN PHY Realtek RTL8201CL / Marvell MV8001
IEEE1394 Chip : VIA VT6307
Audio Codec: Realtek ALC650
Serial ATA Chip : nVIDIA nForce2 MCP RAID
I / O Chip : Winbond W83627HF

Memory

3 *DDR Sockets:
DDR400/DDR333/266/DDR200 NON-ECC DDR SDRAM up to 3GB ( Single Channel) , up to 2GB ( Dual Channel )

Expansion Slots

1 x AGP 3.0 8X/4X slot (1.5V & 0.8 V Only)
5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant)

IDE Connectors

2 ATA133 channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE Devices

Onboard I/O Connectors

1 x Floppy Connector
2 x USB 2.0/1.1 header (4 ports USB cable optional)
2 x IEEE1394 header (2 ports IEEE1394 cable optional)
1 x CD_IN header
1 x COM Port header
1 x S/PDIF in/out header (S/PDIF in/out cable optional)
1 x CPU fan header with fan rotation detection function
1 x System fan headers with fan rotation detection function
1 x10 pin system panel header (Intel spec)
1 x 3 pin Power LED header
1 x 4 pin Speaker header
1 x Front audio header (Intel spec)
1 x Case Open detection header
2 x 5 pin Com port header
2 x 8 pin Game Port header

I/O via Back Panel

PS/2 keyboard/mouse, 4 x USB(2.0/1.1), 2 x RJ45 ,1 x Com(serial), 1 x Parallel, 1x Game/Line-in/Line-out/MIC

Power

20-pin ATX power connector

BIOS Feature

4 Mb Flash EEPROM
Award BIOS with ACPI, DMI2.0, PnP, WfM2.0, Green Suspend to RAM (S3), Suspend to Disk (S4) Wake on keyboard / Mouse, Wake on LAN/RTC Timer

Hardware Monitoring

2 FAN sensors, CPU/System voltages and temperature monitoring

Special Feature

Zero Jumper Design
BIOS Mirror [TM]Protect BIOS by creating an original mirror image of itself
Voice Genie [TM]Voice Troubleshooting system ( four-Language )
Adjustable CPU frequency by 1 MHz increment, Adjustable V_core, V_AGP, V_Memory for overclocking
Watch Dog Timer (auto-reset system when it can not handle overclock configurations)
Special design for CPU Over Temperature Protection.( OTP )

Certifications

FCC,CE, BSMI

Form Factor

ATX (244*305 mm)

The package consists of the following

• The KX18DS Pro
• Driver CD
• 4 USB port header
• 2 port firewire header
• Data cables for IDE & SATA
• SPDIF audio header
• Manual

Albatron have again decided against having mounting holes around the CPU socket, as a result certain high end coolers wouldn't be able to be install on this board. If not for that minor issue, the surrounding area around the CPU socket provides adequate room for larger CPU coolers. I hope in any future revisions they decide on having these mounting holes as it'll attract more of the overclocking community.

One of the first things you realize in comparing the KX18D Pro II & the KX18DS Pro II is that the latter one consists of a considerably larger south bridge. It's almost 1 ½ times the size of the KX18D Pro II. That is of course for the added native support offered by the MCP RAID south bridge.

The KX18D Pro II did not have native support for RAID and was provided by a Silicone Image RAID chipset. Now the KX18DS Pro II comes with native RAID support and offers 0, 1, 0+1 and RAID Span (JBOD - just a bunch of disks) configurations. There are heaps of documentation on what each of these RAID configurations offer, so if you're new to this, read them first and decide on the best option. The nVidia RAID utility offered in this board along with the user

manual gives clear instructions on how you go about configuring your RAID setup, so anyone new to this can still configure a RAID setup very easily.

The board offers two Serial ATA ports if you wish to have Serial ATA drives in your system. At present SATA doesn't really offer that much of a significant improvement in performance, nevertheless if you wish to be ready for future expansion that's a good option to go for.

One of the other new features offered by the KX18DS Pro II is the Gigabit Ethernet controller. For home users this feature won't make any difference unless your network supports this speed along with there's that much data traveling on the network. However for environments where large data transfers take place, a standard 100 BASE-T network will create quite a bottleneck. Therefore having a 1000 BASE-T (Gigabit) network will provide 10 times the bandwidth of a 100 BASE-T network and naturally solve most of your bandwidth issues. However you will need to have a supporting hub or switch in order for you to reap the benefits of a gigabit network, or it'll work only as a standard 100 BASE-T network. The network connector near the audio outputs is the Gigabit Ethernet port.

In addition to the above, the KX18DS Pro II offers two extra USB headers for 4 USB ports, 2 Firewire ports for greater expansion. Moreover the board consists of the voice genie, BIOS Mirror features which were also found on the KX18D Pro II.

Moreover a SPDIF audio header is also provided for users wishing to make use of digital audio output.

The memory slots are color coded for easy identification on which slots to use for Dual channel setup. You need to attach memory modules to the purple and green slots to enable Dual Channel for this board.

More new Features

NVMixer

These features are more inline with nVidia than the KX18DS Pro II itself, nevertheless we decided to cover them here as well. With the introduction of the new unified nForce drivers nVidia has implemented some new features into their all in one driver package.

nVidia has improved on the former design of the nVmixer for all your audio control issues. Some advanced features have been omitted in this release however and we weren't able to get the digital output working for us, while the older version was working quite perfectly, a spectrum analyzer, and a few additional environmental features.

nvSystem Utility

This is a tool that's not provided in Albatron's driver CD, however you can download it off the nvidia website. The board doesn't support most of the features offered, which could be a reason for not including it. However you can adjust the FSB/Memory bus, AGP bus speeds, memory controller timings. It also shows a graphical representation of CPU & System temperatures along with voltages of the system.