We have considered the first Socket A mainboard about a month ago already, but AMD didn't seem to have wasted its time. They are now actively promoting this form-factor, though it doesn't prevent AMD from supplying Slot A CPUs as well. In fact, AMD is planning to ship up to 1 million of Slot A processors within the second half of the year, which are aimed at satisfying the system integrators' needs. As for us, ordinary users, we will have to deal with Socket A that's why we are particularly anxious to see as many mainboards with Socket A in retail as possible. And in the meanwhile, there is hardly any rich choice in mainboards of this type in the shops. The manufacturers think we should be pretty much satisfied with the mainboard announcements. However, let's hope that the things will change for the better one day. Especially, since AMD is planning to use Socket A not only for its Athlon and Duron CPUs, but also for the upcoming Mustang, a High-End CPU with a large integrated L2 cache.

As for FIC, the hero of our today's discussion, this company has been long known as a mainboard manufacturers cooperating with VIA in the first place. That's why no wonder that FIC appeared one of the first companies to design a mainboard based on VIA Apollo KT133, supporting Socket A. Well, let's take a look at what they have managed to make this time. The product promises to be a nice thing, especially bearing in mind that AZ11 is used in Compaq computers.

Specification

• CPU
  • Supports Socket A AMD Athlon and AMD Duron CPUs with integrated on-die L2 cache, which work at 600-1000MHz and up
• Chipset
  • VIA Apollo KT133 (VT8363+VT82C686A)
• System memory
  • 3 168-pin DIMM slots of 3.3V supporting up to 1.5GB PC100/PC133 SDRAM and VC100/VC133 VCM
• AGP
  • AGP slot supporting 4x mode
• Slots
  • 5 PCI slots compliant with PCI 2.2 specification
• Integrated sound
  • Software AC'97 sound controller
• I/O ports
  • 1 FDD port, 1 serial and 1 parallel ports, ports for PS/2 mouse and keyboard
  • Microphone in, line in and out
  • 2 built-in USB ports and two additional USB ports
  • IrDA TX/RX connector
• Integrated UltraDMA/66 IDE controller
  • 2 UltraDMA/66 Bus Master IDE channels (supporting up to 4 ATAPI devices)
• BIOS
  • 2Mbit Flash EEPROM
  • Award BIOS supporting ACPI for Win98/Win2000, PnP, DMI and antivirus functions
• Other
  • Wake on modem, mouse, keyboard, LAN, USB-devices and timer
  • Hardware monitoring
  • Suspend-to-RAM support
• Dimensions
  • ATX form-factor, 24.4x30.5cm

FIC AZ11 is supplied in a nice-looking yellow box, which also contains the whole bunch of pretty common things, such as a FDD cable, 40-pin and 80-pin IDE cables, detailed user's manual written in several languages and a CD-disk with the drivers and utilities. However, this is not all. There is a couple of very interesting items in the package as well. They are an additional CD-disk and a description to it, called CD Plus. This disk contains three Norton utilities: Norton Ghost, Norton AntiVirus and Norton Virtual Drive and a few strange programs, like a program blocking XXX-sites access, for instance.

Closer Look

Well, as we have already said FIC AZ11 is based on a new VIA Apollo KT133 chipset. This core logic is none other but KX133 chipset adapted for use in Socket A mainboards. KT133 as well as KX133 supports EV6 system bus, PC133 SDRAM and AGP 4x that's why there are hardly any differences between these two chipsets except the supported processor form-factor. So, we don't expect AZ11 based on this chipset to show anything principally new. Nevertheless, this in no way means that the mainboard can't boast any unique features. Anyway, let's start from the very beginning.

There are 3 DIMM slots on AZ11, which support up to 1.5GB SDRAM. In fact, VIA Apollo KT133 supports 8 memory banks, which allows theoretically implementing 4 DIMM slots. However, FIC preferred to avoid risks and to stick to PC133 specs advising the use of 3 DIMM modules. Frankly speaking, we checked the work of 3 DIMM modules in AZ11 and as we had expected the system didn't give us any cause for concern: it functioned perfectly.

Like the mainboards based on other new chipsets from VIA, the BIOS of FIC AZ11 allows setting the SDRAM working frequency equal either to 66, 100 or 133MHz upon the user's desire. It means that you will be able to make your memory work on AZ11, no matter how slow it is. Of course, the higher is the memory working frequency, the better is the overall system performance, that's for sure. Especially, keeping in mind that the data is transferred along the EV6 bus used in all AMD CPUs at 200MHz. Speaking about the memory, we should also mention that FIC AZ11 supports the exotic VCM SDRAM, which is a buffered multichannel PC133 SDRAM version currently manufactured only by NEC.

Since the clock multiplier of AMD Socket A CPUs is locked and all CPUs use one and the same FSB frequency, there are no jumpers on the mainboard, which could serve the CPU configuring purposes. However, the system bus frequency can be changed via BIOS Setup, where you can find 133MHz among the available settings. Note that the PCI and AGP frequencies will remain at nominal values if you set 133MHz FSB in BIOS Setup. So, new AMD processors are very likely to start using this feature pretty soon.

As far as the PCB of FIC AZ11 is concerned, it looks rather surprising. No, even puzzling, we would say. Let us explain. On the one hand, FIC AZ11 is a bit larger than ordinary ATX mainboards, which can cause difficulties when installing the board into some PC cases. But on the other hand, a pretty large part of the PCB isn't used at all, and is none other but a naked textolite. Even the expansion slots, which can be described like 1/5/0/0 (AGP/PCI/ISA/AMR) don't cover the entire free space, so that there remains a lot of room on the left, which could be easily used for the sixth PCI, AMR or ISA slot.

Why is the mainboard layout so strange then? What's the reason? It's unification. Trying to minimize the manufacturing expenses, FIC designed this mainboard as very similar to another board, FIC AZ31, which is a MicroATX piece. In other words, AZ11 is a larger version of AZ31 with two more PCI slots, as simple as that.

However, this is not the last strange thing about AZ11. The mainboard is equipped with only one COM-port and instead of the second COM-port on the rear panel there is just an empty spot. And again this was done for financial reasons. Judging by this situation, we can suppose that the next mainboards built on VIA ProSavage KM133 chipset, which will be just the good old KT133 with integrated S3 Savage4 graphics core, will be designed on the same PCB. Taking into account that KT133 and KM133 are pin compatible.

Well, we could actually put up with these peculiarities of the mainboard construction, if the cost of the product were quite low. But things are not so good, as you could expect them to be. Even though the company has saved time and trouble working out new design for FIC AZ11, the manufacturing of a single board requires more textolite and hence its cost is hardly lower. Unfortunately.

From the point of view of convenience, the PCB layout is pretty conveniently and cleverly designed. IDE, and FDD connectors are located in front of the DIMM slots according to ATX specification. All PCI slots on FIC AZ11 allow installing full-size expansion cards, and the chipset North Bridge is equipped with a green heatsink. In order to "refine" the power properly, there are 12 capacitors of 1500uF on the mainboard.

FIC AZ11 has VIA 686A South Bridge. One of its functions deals with software AC'97 soundcard realization. So, the mainboard is equipped with STAC9744 codec from Sigmatel with a set of basic features. Although the software sound takes about 10% of the CPU resources, it makes the whole system much cheaper, because it allows abandoning an external sound card. If you belong to those users who don't want to sacrifice their CPU resources and are used to high quality sounding with a PCI sound card, then you can disable AC'97 sound via BIOS Setup. One more feature distinguishing FIC AZ11 from the similar products by other manufacturers is connected with the integrated sound realization: unlike other products this mainboard doesn't have a game-port.

The BIOS of AZ11 is based on Award Medallion BIOS v. 6.0 and its interface is very similar to that from Phoenix. At the same time, the amount and functional peculiarities of the available settings make it similar to the classical Award 4.51PG. The BIOS of FIC AZ11 includes quite a lot of memory settings as well as the possibility to disable AGP 4x and FastWrites (which, actually, causes some performance drop in 3D when enabled). Following in ASUS's footsteps, FIC tried to provide its BIOS Setup with some informative Help, which could be quite useful when changing some settings.

Hardware monitoring on FIC AZ11, if it could be called "hardware monitoring" in the full meaning of this word, uses the features of the chipset South Bridge, VT82C686A. Though in fact the system controls only the rotations of two fans out of three, which could be connected to the mainboard. Other sensors, temperatures and voltages, are not monitored at all.

And now let's pass over to the unique features of FIC AZ11, called FIC NOVUS II, which we have already mentioned in the very beginning of this review. First of all, FIC introduced Easy Key, certain hot-key combinations for "lazy" users, which provide easy keyboard access to the BIOS when the system is booting. These combinations allow setting the BIOS either for the optimal performance or for the maximum reliability, or take you directly to the FSB setting menu. Secondly, AZ11 features a friendly onboard voice caution played via PC Speaker and the speakers connected to the mainboard sound out instead of the conventional beeping sounds, we all are so used to hearing if the system is assembled in the wrong way. Though there are only three phrases the function has at its disposal: "Caution! CPU not detected. Please check your PC", "Caution! Memory not detected. Please check your PC" and "Caution! VGA not detected. Please check your PC". Moreover, this function requires an optional module, which should be installed into a special mainboard connector. And the third peculiarity, which is worth mentioning, is LogoGenie, which is supplied together with the mainboard and allows you to create your own customized logo to be displayed during system boot up.

Overclocking

EV6 bus used in systems built on AMD Athlon and AMD Duron is not very overclocking friendly. The data is transferred along this bus at 200MHz and even the slightest frequency increase can result into system stability worsening. So, the best way to overclock AMD Athlon CPU is to change the CPU clock frequency multiplier. Theoretically, the clock multiplier of Socket A processors is locked in the core, however, there are some rumors about a certain amount of processors on Thunderbird core with the unlocked clock multiplier. That is why if the mainboard is equipped with a set of dip-switches or jumpers responsible for clock frequency multiplier switching, the mainboard appears of great interest to everybody. Let's look what we've got on FIC AZ11.

First, a few words about the FSB frequency. FIC AZ11 allows setting the FSB frequency via BIOS Setup. The range of the supported frequencies includes: 100, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112 and 113MHz. Bearing in mind that EV6 will be most probably overclocked up to one of the values lying between 105 and 110MHz, the range of frequencies supported by FIC AZ11 is quite a success. However, even when the FSB frequency was set only to 102MHz, the mainboard suffered some stability problems that's why we wouldn't dare call it a good overclocking solution.

By the way, FIC accompanies its mainboards with a Clockometer utility, which allows you to change clock speed settings directly from Windows, without having to enter the BIOS submenus. The idea implied in this utility is pretty interesting, however, to our great disappointment, this program proved unable to run with AZ11.

And now we are going to discuss the clock frequency multiplier. It is formally impossible to change this coefficient for the CPUs with the unlocked multiplier on AZ11. However, the mainboard features the corresponding jumper contacts. These contacts give away FIC's intention to make four 3-pin jumpers: OVERRIDE 1, OVERRIDE 2, OVERRIDE 3 and OVERRIDE 4 and are located to the right of Socket A, that's why with a "lucky" CPU and a soldering iron at your disposal you will be able to achieve some nice results during overclocking with the help of a clock frequency multiplier.

All in all, FIC AZ11 looks like a mainboard with the whole bunch of unimplemented features. The same thing can be referred to the Vcore changing. The mainboard is provided with a MAGIC_TUNER jumper, which allows changing Vcore, according to the manual. However, the manual doesn't explain how to change the voltage that's why we have to state that you can't change it in any way, actually. Besides, the mainboard also doesn't offer any options for Vio controlling.

Performance

The testing system was configured in the following way:

• AMD Athlon 800 CPU
• Creative 3DBlaster Annihilator Pro (NVIDIA GeForce256 DDR) graphics card
• Creative Sound Blaster Live! sound card
• IBM DLTA 307030 HDD
• 256MB PC133 SDRAM by Micron

And here are the results obtained:

As you can see, FIC AZ11 proves not the best in games, however, as it comes to office applications, the mainboard simply flies. But, speed characteristics isn't the main argument when you choose a mainboard from a range of products based on the same chipset. The performances of different products differ so much, that you can't rely only on the benchmarks when selecting the right board. It's much more important to pay attention to the special features of a product.

As for the mainboard stability, AZ11 again appeared not among the best, as in case of the previous AMD Athlon mainboard, SD11. Actually, we hope this problem will be solved in newer BIOS versions, but today this mainboard is still a bit raw. Even though AZ11 is used in Compaq PCs.

Conclusions

It is pretty hard top decide on this or that Socket A mainboard, while the available range is still not so rich. Especially, since all of them are not deprived of drawbacks. So, we would advice to wait for another short while and to get acquainted with the products from other companies before making the final decision.

Highs:

• Interesting software set;
• Potential options for CPU overclocking by changing the clock multiplier;
• Innovational NOVUS II technologies.

Lows:

• Low stability;
• Strange mainboard design.