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Specs
CPU Support
Okay you see this board and then you think to yourself has Ali come up with a new breed of chipset in the Magik 1 or what? When reality sets in you will find that the Ali Magik 1 chipset was actually introduced long before the VIA KT266A chipset and has just never quite caught on with the public eye as the more popular VIA chipset has. One of the main reasons for this lack of stardom is its lagging performance so far shown on silicon. Even though it showed stability in some of the other released boards compatibility also became an issue with both hardware and software using this chipset. As far as just features go the XP333-R is a loaded gun that can stand on its own when it comes to offering the user a fine tuned environment as the backbone of their system. From the bottom up the motherboard is made to be user friendly from its pull-tab jumpers to its well designed layout you can tell Iwill went all out to make sure this motherboard would be appealing to its target audience. The Ali Magik 1 chipset shares some common traits with its cousin VIA as it is based on the Ali M1647 North Bridge and the M1535D+ South Bridge both very similar in name and design as the VIA chipsets.
Being the first to bring an AMD CPU motherboard with both standard ATA133 and ATA 133 RAID 0/1/0+1 controllers to market is a ground breaking thing that will become the industry standard in short time but they were still the first. This offers the user a multitude of setup variations that can be achieved by the user and offers total support of up to eight IDE devices. The XP333-R takes advantage of the High Point HPT372 RAID controller and offers the user stable and increased data throughput via RAID 0 or Striping mode and for backup purposes the RAID 1 or Mirroring mode configuration is available. RAID 0+1 a combination of simultaneously running Striping and Mirroring can also be achieved.
As you can see the North Bridge comes with an excellent cooling fan attached to it in order to keep the chip from overheating. This as well as the "PCB Guards" around the ZIF Socket that protect the silicon from being damaged by the accidental off kilter screwdriver when installing the heatsink are excellent visually ready extras on the XP333 series of motherboards. The three memory slots supporting up to 3GB of PC2100/2400/2700 DDR SDRAM can be fully populated and still be accessed while the AGP card is installed. The XP333 is the first motherboard that claims to support DDR333 memory running at 166MHz.
While this may be a true statement any system running at standard settings will not take advantage of this increase and only an overclocked system will ever notice a true 33% increase in their memory bandwidth if setup properly. Having only five PCI slots will not win them any extra points with most crowds but it is a very minor thing as five PCI slots should be more than adequate since the sound is an onboard feature that is included and frees up a slot that would be filled anyways therefore becoming an almost mute point in the end equation of five slots VS six. The XP333s onboard 5.1 sound is nothing to sneeze at and is a high quality audio solution especially when combined with their Super System digital I/O connector option that comes with both RCA and optical in/out SPDIF connectors for the cleanest clearest audio signal available. The XP333 uses the C-media CMI 8738-MX six channel HRTF that supports 3D positional audio as well as the EAX an A3D audio extensions for immersing yourself in the true 3D gaming experience when used in conjunction with a 5.1 speaker system. There are overclocking features that I will discuss further in the test setup section of this review but overall the XP333-R is a feature rich product that should appeal to people looking for something different in their system other than the usual fair.
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