Chipset

The heart of the mainboard is based on Intel (82845PE/82801ET) chipsets. Support for DDR-400 memory, ATA-133 and 400/533MHz FSB with excellent performance honestly are the keywords here. Even the new Intel Processors with HyperThreading are supported. I know, I'm currently testing the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz processor with hyperthreading enabled.

As stated this is a DDR400 compatible mainboard .. it's a little deceiving as it truly supports 333MHz out of the box. However in the BIOS (Phoenix by the way) you can find settings that enable your memory to work at 400 MHz. When you for example overclock the FSB (150 MHz) the memory frequency will rise along with it resulting in a higher clocked memory frequency. Combine that with a Turbo setting for memory and voilla .. exactly 400 MHz. Any Pentium 4 can take that FSB speed. If it can't you can set a maximum of 354 MHz without tampering with the FSB. The CPU we used was a Pentium 4 (533 MHz FSB model).

Layout wise not a lot can be improved. The space surrounding the CPU is good and the power connector is not blocking anything. Everything is on the right spot.

A very interesting function of the PX845PE Pro II is that is that it includes a "Bios Mirror" feature, which in all honesty is very similar to Gigabyte's "Dual Bios". "Bios Mirror" is always nice for the people that tweak their bios and like to flash it often, having a backup will save you the time you'd have to wait for your motherboard manufacturer to send you a new one. BIOS Mirror will always keep one copy of the BIOS image in the backup BIOS. In the event of Main BIOS failure, you can switch and boot up from backup BIOS. It works rather simple, if your BIOS somehow got corrupted you move a switch and your system boots from the backup BIOS. I actually prefer the switch over Gigabyte's solution which needs the system to post.

While installing the mainboard I decided to try out the VoiceGenie option. Have ever had a non-posting mainboard and then heard the annoying series of beeps. You never know what the beeps mean right ? Well, this is where VoiceGenie comes in. Voice Genie will tell you what is the problem during boot up, It can speak in 4 different languages. You can forget about the beeps as your computer will tell you what's going on. I installed the mainboard however did not insert any memory. Normally you'll here a series of 3 beeps. This is where VoiceGenie started doing it's work. A lovely lady started telling me in English 'Warning, your memory might have a problem'. This is so convenient. I've been told that even if your CPU has died then VoiceGenie will still inform you of the problem. I love this feature !

Integrated Dolby Digital 6-Channel sound
The mainboard has integrated sound through the6-Channel AC’97 Audio via the Realtek 6ch controller. 6 channel audio is design based on a Realtek ALC650, which is an 18-bit, full duplex AC'97 2.2 compatible stereo audio CODEC designed for PC multimedia systems. In all honestly, not bad at all. Sound was peachy fine and in games we heard no problems. It fully supports EAX, of course it's no Audigy 2 though.
 

Overclocking
Tweaking can be done at BIOS level. I must state that Albatron managed to do a good job here, yet the results where not amazing. Overclocking is easy and flexible. It lacks a few options for the hardcore overclocker yet it has convenient OC options are definitely available:

• CPU Voltage up to 1.850 Volts

• CPU Host Frequency (FSB) up to 248 MHz

• CPU:AGP clock ratios (1.5x, 2.0x, 2.5x), even better you can fix it at 66MHz for AGP and 33MHz for PCI bus.

• DDR:CPU Ratio (2.00x, 2.50x, 2.66x(turbo mode) and auto)

• AGP port voltage (1.5 and 1.6 Volts)

• DDR Voltage (2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 Volts)

As you can see there is plenty of room to play around with. Still, the Pentium 4 CPU has a reputation of being a good overclocker when pumping the FSB and it did just that. We where able to push the CPU towards a 155 MHz FSB frequency (x4 is 620 MHZ) with a 1,65 CPU core voltage and where able to get into windows to do our stuff perfectly. We settled for a 150 MHz FSB with DDR400 at 400 MHz though.

The BIOS is very configurable and more than sufficient for the average tweaker/overclocker. While overclocked the CPU temperature in idle was ~ 33C/91.4F which of course is nothing to be ashamed about, it never went over 55 degrees C with 100% utilization.