Product: Albatron KX400+ Pro
Manufacturer: Albatron
Author: Hilbert Hagedoorn

Guru3D.com will be doing some more mainboard reviews in the future and we will start it off with the latest and greatest from Albatron. Today we'll take a look at their all new KX400+ Pro mainboard which is based on VIA's KT333/8235 chipset. This little gem supports DDR 400, dual BIOS, USB 2.0 and is of course is targeted at AMD Athlon/AthlonXP/Duron Processors. The KT333 chipset is starting to show some age, and soon (actually as we speak) we will see the KT400 chipset from VIA surfacing, nevertheless .. this is the in-between solution for people who need to buy a mainboard now.

The mainboard supports a total of 3 Gigabyte of DDR SDRAM which can be placed in three sockets, optional you can overclock the memory towards DDR 400. Unfortunately the board does not support AGP8x yet, only 1X, 2X and 4X AGP are supported, not that big of deal right now to be honest, but if you plan to buy a Radeon 9700 or NVIDIA NV30 you might seek another alternative as you are going for maximum compatibility.

The KX400+ Pro sports 6 channel audio (5.1) through the AC'97 codec and furthermore you can hook up to 4 IDE devices to it by using the two IDE connectors, up to Ultra DMA 133 is supported, no extra RAID controller here though.

When we have a quick look at the board we notice that this Pro model has 1 AGP slot, 1 CNR/AMR slot and a luxury 6 PCI slots. The Pro version has more, USB 2.0, a Dual BIOS function and great IDE features up to Ultra DMA 133

The package
The package contents include a drivers disk, ATA-133 cable, USB bracket, Users manual, and of course the KX400+.

Let's take a closer look the specifications of the KX400+ Pro.

Features:

1. AMD AthlonTM/AthlonTMXP/DuronTM Processor

2. Socket 462 with FSB 200/266MHz

3. 3 DDR333/266/200 Memory Sockets

4. 6 channel AC 97 Audio

5. 2 ATA133 Channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE Devices

6. 6 USB 2.0/1.1 Ports (4 ports by optional cable)

7. Mirror BIOSTM

8. Voice Genie TM

Processor

Socket 462 AMD AthlonTM/AthlonTMXP/DuronTM Processor 500 MHz to 2200+

FSB

200/266MHz

Chipset

1. VIA KT333/8235

Memory

1. 3 DDR sockets

2. DDR333/266/DDR200 & DDR-400 Memory unbuffered ECC/none-ECC DDR SDRAM up to 3GB

Expansion Slots

1. 1 x AGP 4X slot (Supports AGP 1X/2X/4X)

2. 6 x PCI slots (PCI 2.2 compliant)

3. 1 x CNR slot (AMR Type)

IDE Ports

2 ATA133 channels, up to 4 ATA 133 IDE devices

Onboard I/O Connectors

1. 1 x Floppy Connector

2. 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 header (4 ports USB cable optional)

3. 1 x CD_IN header

4. 1 x S/PDIF in/out header (S/PDIF in/out cable optional)

5. 1 x CPU fan header with fan rotation detection function

6. 1 x System fan headers with fan rotation detection function

7. 1 x10 pin system panel header (Intel spec)

8. 1 x Front audio header (Intel spec)

9. 1 x IrDA header

10. 1 x Chassis intrusion detection header

11. 1 x Wake on LAN

Special Features

1. Mirror BIOS Protect BIOS by creating a mirror image of itself

2. Voice Genie TM Voice Troubleshooting system

3. Multi-Language BIOS

4. Zero Jumper Design

5. Adjustable CPU frequency by 1 MHz increment, Adjustable Vcore, VAGP, VMemory
Watch Dog Timer (Automatic reset the system when system lack up)