Fig. 3. Motherboard Shuttle AV40 Basic elements

Considering features of design of motherboard Shuttle AV40, it is necessary to consider the architecture of such products substantially it is defined by the existing standards of buses providing a high-speed information transfer between high-powered units. Thus it is necessary not only to consider layout of buses and to minimise their extent, but even to make certain efforts on alignment of length of separate explorers. It concerns and FSB (100 MHz of clock rate, 400 MHz at data transfer, 200 MHz by address transmission), and memory buses (100/133 MHz of clock rate, 200/266 MHz at data transfer), and the interface between chip set chips (266 MHz at data transfer), and other buses. All it, of course, does not simplify operation to implementators of the motherboards, forced to consider is frequent raznorechivyh requirements of design and maintenance of the separate units making a basis of the architecture of motherboards much.

Fig. 4. A fragment of bus FSB jointing the processor and chip North Bridge of chip set VIA P4X266

It is known, that the chip sets released recently, on complexity of the architecture are already commensurable with processors. Especially it concerns chips North Bridge. Their functional complexity and presence of the big number of tightly packed semiconducting units demands the adequate resources of cooling presented by usually appropriate heat sinks. Engineers Shuttle have gone further and have added cooling fan to the heat sink, that on a plan of implementators, should raise stability and dependability of system. Usage of 16 capacitors in size 1500uF, kernels of the processor used in supply circuits is the same purpose. Being guided by experience of testing of various motherboards, it is necessary to underline, that designers are right, when use the specified resources of rise of stability and dependability of system operation.

Fig. 5. Coolers on the processor and chip North Bridge of chip set VIA P4X266 AV40

To rise of consumer properties of card Shuttle AV40 is also the whole six ports USB, two of them are output traditionally on a card backboard, and additional four demand special laths with ports. Their presence depends on a complete set.

It is necessary to mark, that there is an expanded variant of motherboard Shuttle AV40 — Shuttle AV40R. The main difference of the given variant is that in the card architecture specialised chip Promise 20265R IDE Controller uses. It has allowed to realise for the given variant of the motherboard of possibility RAID. As is known, RAID gives possibility to raise speed of operation and-or dependability of data storage on hard disks. For the same who is not gathered to use RAID, chip Promise 20265R IDE Controller allows to expand number of hooked up IDE-arrangements in comparison with a low variant of motherboard AV40.

Fig. 6. Motherboard Shuttle AV40R fragment

Unfortunately, the specified cards and from lacks are not free. Necessity of allocation of a considerable quantity of components on the card of the small size has resulted, for example, to that FDD plug as it is visible in the presented photos, is in an inconvenient place. Same concerns also IDE plugs concerning the RAID-controller for variant Shuttle AV40R. It is impossible to name very convenient and layout of outputs Audio connectors. At usage of some videoadapters sated with additional functions and outputs, usage of the specified outputs can be inconvenient. However, both such videoadapters, and necessity of usage Audio connectors and furthermore together, arise rather infrequently.
Estimating possibilities of the architecture of motherboard Shuttle AV40 and its expanded variant AV40R, it is necessary to mark, that on the card it is possible to notice not unsoldered chip of controller USB 2.0 and appropriate plugs. Possibly, this chip and possibilities realised with its help will appear in later modifications of the given card, but, probably, given variant will carry other name.

BIOS it is grounded on the version 6.00PG from Award and it is standard enough for the cards which basis is made by chip set P4X266.

BIOS Setup contains a wide range of regulations of operation of memory and bus AGP, possibility of hand-held allocation of interruptions on PCI slots and allows to change as the power submitted on a chip set, memory and a processor kernel, and frequency FSB with step in 1 MHz. Power Vcore can be increased to 1,85 In with step 0,025 In, and powers submitted on a chip set and DIMM units – to 2,65 In with step 0,05 Century

The functional mode of memory modules DDR SDRAM can be or synchronous (100 MHz), or asynchronous (133 MHz).

Levels of powers, temperature and operation of fans of coolers resources hardware monitoring (http://rudteam.narod.ru/mb/monitoring/monitoring.html), providing, by the way, inspect computer turn off at excess of temperature of the processor of the marginal level installed in BIOS Setup.

Among customisations BIOS Setup imetsja and possibility of change of a multiplication factor of the processor, however, considering, that the multiplication factor of the processor for all serial samples is fixed, the given possibility is of interest only in the presence of engineering samples of processors.

As to high-speed performance, that, Shuttle AV40 is one of the most efficient cards created on the basis of a set of system logic VIA P4X266. Results of testing of this card and dispersal will be presented in a number of future articles to the near future.