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Albatron KI690-AM2: A Mini-ITX Motherboard For The Masses
September 14, 2007 by Lawrence Lee
| Product |
Albatron KI690-AM2 motherboard |
| Manufacturer |
Albatron |
| Street Price |
US$250?? |
VIA developed the Mini-ITX platform in 2001 to take advantage of low power
C3 processors they had acquired from Cyrix. With boards measuring only 17cm
by 17cm and processors that could be cooled passively, VIA created a niche market
for compact, power efficient, and low noise systems. However, VIA's C3 (and
more recently the Eden and C7) processors were never powerful enough to entice
mainstream users, so Mini-ITX remained beloved by a small dedicated group of
users, and for the most part, it was ignored by the rest.
Albatron, a relatively small player as manufacturers go, previously attempted
to capitalize on and expand the Mini-ITX market with an AMD Socket 754 motherboard
powered by the Geforce 6150 chipset, the KI51PV-754.
While it piqued the interest of many, it came a little too late. With Socket
754 all but obsolete, the choice of CPUs was severely limited and underpowered.
Now Albatron has released the KI690-AM2, to bring high performance and Mini-ITX
together.
This is not the first attempt at such a marriage. There have been a number
of mini-ITX boards for Intel processors, including the AOpen
i945GTt-VFA m-ITX C2D motherboard that we reviewed some time ago. It
is the first AM2 platform for mini-ITX, however, and the first to take advantage
of the superior features of the AMD 690G/SB600 chipset, which include about the best
integrated graphics performance yet to be offered on any platform.
SPECIFICATIONS (from the Albatron
web site)
|
| CPU |
AMD K8 |
| Chipset |
AMD 690G/ SB600 |
| Socket |
AM2 |
| Form Factor |
Mini-ITX (170x170 mm) |
| FSB/Hyper Transport |
1000+ MHz |
| Memory |
2* DDRII SO-DIMM 667/533 (Dual Channel) |
| Int. GFX |
Y (ATI Radeon Xpress1250) |
| AGP |
N |
| PCI-E/PCI |
1* PCI Slot |
| USB |
8* USB 2.0/1.1 Ports (4 ports by optional
cable) |
| LAN |
Marvell Gbit LAN |
| Sound |
8 Channel High Definition Audio |
| South Bridge Speed |
1* ATA 133 channel |
| RAID |
SATA RAID 0, 1, 0+1 & JBOD |
| Serial ATA |
4* SATAII 3Gb/s Channels |
| IEEE 1394 |
2* IEEE1394 Channels (1 port by optional
cable) |
| BIOS Mirror |
N |
| Voice Genies |
N |
The KI690-AM2 combines the speed of AM2 Athlon 64 and X2 processors with formidable
high definition audio and video playback provided by AMD's Radeon X1250 integrated
graphics, all in one petite package. Interestingly, the board makes use of notebook
SODIMM memory, presumably to save space. Albatron includes almost every feature
one would need: gigabit ethernet, high definition audio, Firewire, even RAID
functionality. However with its size, comes limitations. There is only one PCI
expansion slot and two slots for memory, which is about the norm for mini-ITX.
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