Albatron PX925X Pro-R Motherboard Review :: The Board

Albatron PX925X Pro-R Spec Sheet
Powered by MOBOT
Part Number	PX925X Pro-R
Manufacturer	Albatron
Price Check	Find Best Price
Downloads	BIOS Drivers Manuals
Chipset	Intel 925X Express ICH6R
North Bridge	Intel 82925X MCH
Socket	LGA775 Socket
Processor Types	Pentium 4, Pentium 4 HT Extreme Ed.
Number of CPUs	1
Hyper-Threading Support	Yes
Front Side Bus	800MHz
Memory Type	DDR
Memory Channels	Dual
Maximum Memory	4GB
External Graphics	PCI Express x16
IGP	None
South Bridge	Intel 82801FR ICH6R
Audio	8-channel
IDE	100/66/33
SCSI	None
SATA	1.5 GB/s
RAID	0, 1, 0+1
LAN	10/100/1000
Firewire	None
USB	USB 2.0
Expansion Slots	3 x PCI 2 x PCI Express x1 1 x PCI Express x16
BIOS	AWARD
Form Factor	ATX

The 925X Pro-R is based upon Intel's 925X chipset and supports all of the LGA-775 CPUs on the market with the exception of the 1066MHz FSB CPUs. The 6xx 800MHz FSB CPUs are supported by this chipset, though they are not as of yet mentioned on Albatron's CPU list for this motherboard (neither are they mentioned on the 925XE chipset from Albatron's page.) I tested the 660 3.6GHz CPU on the board and it was identified correctly and booted just fine. Memory support on the board consists of four 240-pin DIMM (Dual In-line Memory Module) slots providing support for up to 4GB of unbuffered non-ECC or with ECC DDR2 memory of either 400MHz or 533MHz variety. Dual Channel memory is activated by installing like memory in color-coded pairs of slots.

Expansion options on this board are typical of Intel 925X motherboards today. The standard PCI Express x16 slot will work with any PCI Express video card, replacing the AGP standard, 2 PCI Express x1 slots and 3 PCI slots for users needing backwards compatibility with PCI slots. Few PCI Express x1 devices exist, making the inclusion of 3 PCI slots a good choice.

Drive support on the board is robust. Albatron provided an ITE IT8212F chip to support IDE RAID 0, 0+1 modes with 2 extra IDE connectors present on the board in addition to the single IDE connector for CD-ROM drives. SATA drive support is provided by four SATA ports with RAID modes 0 and 1 supported by Intel's ICH6R South Bridge. Some motherboards come with 8 or even 10 SATA ports, but honestly, that is overkill in my opinion.

A Realtek ALC880 CODEC provides on-board audio for the board. This complies with the Intel High Definition Audio standard. HDA replaced AC'97 as the standard for on-board audio in the middle of last year. The 880 supports 7.1 surround sound and is qualified by Intel for the HDA standard. One nice thing about Realtek's software is the clearly labeled audio ports that directly correspond to the ports present on the Albatron board.

The back panel on the board is typical of 925X motherboards on the market. Present are 4 USB 2.0 ports (you can install 4 more with a optional bracket), PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse Ports, a Parallel port for printers, COM1 and COM2 ports, and Line-in, Front Speaker-out, Mic-In, Surround Back Speaker-out, Center (L) /Subwoofer ® /Speaker-out ports for the audio on the board. LAN support is provided by a Broadcom BCM5789 Gigabit Ethernet controller and a VIA 6105 10/100 Fast Ethernet controller.

Discuss This Article