X-bit labs

Shuttle SB81P Small Form-Factor System Review (page 8)

Category: Mobile

by Platon Scheblykin

[ 07/12/2005 | 10:20 AM ]

Mainboard Functionality

The reviewed model can make a serious competitor to desktop PCs in terms of functionality. Yes, it cannot take in as many add-on cards as desktop mainboards, but this is in fact the only aspect where it is inferior. For example, not all modern mainboards can boast the same RAID-related functionality as the SB81P’s mainboard. I’m going to give you a thorough description of its capabilities in this section of the review.

So, the mainboard employed here is called FB81 and it is based on the i915G chipset from Intel. The chipset is intended for Pentium 4 and Celeron processors in LGA775 packaging and with 533/800MHz FSB. The three-channel CPU voltage regulator is made on capacitors from Ost. The chipset’s North Bridge (i82915G) contains a memory controller, a PCI Express x16 controller, and a graphics core Graphics Media Accelerator 900. Here are the basic characteristics of the GMA 900: 300MHz frequency, pixel shaders 2.0, DirectX 9.0 support, anisotropic filtering support, 400MHz RAMDAC. This is enough for office work and for simple games, but for a real gamer this graphics core isn’t of much use. That’s why they implemented PCI Express here – you can add an advanced modern graphics card instead of the integrated graphics core. Note, however, that the PCI slot will be blocked if the graphics card’s cooling system is too big. The memory controller allows installing DDR400 SDRAM modules into the two available slots (the maximum amount of memory supported is 4 gigabytes or two double-sided modules by two gigabytes each).

A 2GB/s bus links the North Bridge with the South Bridge (ICH6R). The latter supports one PCI slot, eight USB 2.0 ports, one PATA channel for two devices, and four Serial ATA-150 channels. If you’ve got two or four SATA drives, you can unite them in a RAID array of type 1, 0 or 1+0. The rest of the mainboard’s capabilities are implemented via the external controllers.

A VT6307 chip from VIA is responsible for the two available FireWire 400 ports.

The Gigabit Ethernet port is implemented through a BCM5751 chip from Broadcom.

ITE’s IT8712 controller performs hardware monitoring and is also responsible for the floppy drive, card-reader, and COM and LPT ports.

And lastly, Realtek’s ALC880 chip is used as an audio codec for the High Definition Audio standard supported by the chipset. Among other thing, this codec can reproduce eight-channel sound, dynamically configure the audio connectors, and use the SPDIF I/O interface.

I tested the audio section of the mainboard with the help of the RightMark Audio Analyzer.

General performance: Poor

These are rather doubtable results since the sound seemed to be quite good – without any noise or distortions – by the ear. This may be a defect of the particular sample of the barebone or an incorrect reaction of the test program to the new audio standard. Anyway, I do doubt these results strongly.