Page 1: Preface, Introduction, Features
<b>Preface</b>:
I want to begin by saying this: I will never, ever let a company control the view of this website. What does that mean? A number of sites on the net have this bias that is glaring because of the sponsors they have. While I know it is hard to keep a site running and they need these sponsors, but the sites should not say a company is great just because they give them money or products. This is just wrong, and if it is ever done here, I give you permission to find me and give me a virtual slap in the face. Anyway, enough of the ranting.
<b>Introduction</b>:
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/march02/l4s5mg/smallcpu.jpg">
What a nice CPU, tiny too</center>
Welcome to the first review at ASE Labs that I didn't pay for the products. Well, that's not entirely true, but I digress. ECS was kind enough to send me not one but two motherboards based on the Pentium 4 socket 478 cpu. The two motherboards I received were the P4IBMS and the L4S5MG, based on the i845 and the SiS 650 chipset respectively. Since this was the first Pentium 4 review, and will be my first Pentium 4 cpu, I'll be using this as the base for everything else. You will see the slew of benchmarks I've used and I hope you will give me comments on which I should include and exclude. I chose to buy the 1.6a Ghz Northwood. I paid around $150 for it. Anyway, the reason I bought this were two fold, the price and the overclocking. More on that later. I later decided to separate this into two reviews, and chose not give a score because I cannot compare it to other boards so my score would be messed up.
<b>Features</b>:
L4S5MG
PROCESSORS
Intel® Pentium® 4 processor (478 pins)
CHIPSET
SiS®650 & SiS®961 Chipset
SiS®650 Host/Memory controller with AGP4X North Bridge Single Chipset
Built-in High Quality 3D Accelerator
SiS®961 MuTIOL Media I/O
LPC I/O - IT8705F
System Hardware Monitor: Built-in IT8705F
LAN: RealTek 8100/B (Optional)
AC97 Audio Codec
Compliant with AC97 2.1 specification
MEMORY
Two 184-pin DDR DIMM sockets for 2.5V DDR SDRAM (DDR200, DDR266)
Maximum: 2GB
SYSTEM BIOS
Award 2MB Flash EEPROM
Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, AMP 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI
Full Support for ACPI revision 1.0 specification
I/O INTERFACE
Supports Plug and Play function
PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors
Dual USB Ports and LAN connectors
One - EPP/ECP mode parallel port
One - 16550 high-speed serial I/O ports
VGA Connector
Audio Ports (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, CD-in and game port)
Dual PCI IDE interfaces - support four IDE devices (PIO mode 4, DMA Mode 2, Ultra DMA 66/100)
Supports 360K~2.88M Byte, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120
ATX12V Power Supply Connectors
ports, Headers and Others:
IrDA header (STR)
Front Panel MIC/Line-out header
COM2 header
Four Extra USB header (LUSB1 and LUSB2)
Temperature read header
Smart Card Reader Header
Modem-In header
HDD LED, Reset Switch, Power Switch headers
CPU, Power and Case Fan headers
LAN Card Wake Up / Modem Ring Wake-Up Headers
RTC & BATTERY
SiS® 961 built-in 256 bytes of CMOS SRAM
With CMOS SRAM hardware clear jumper
EXPANSION SLOTS
3 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 1 CNR slot
FORM FACTOR
microATX (244mm*220mm), 4 Layers
I want to begin by saying this: I will never, ever let a company control the view of this website. What does that mean? A number of sites on the net have this bias that is glaring because of the sponsors they have. While I know it is hard to keep a site running and they need these sponsors, but the sites should not say a company is great just because they give them money or products. This is just wrong, and if it is ever done here, I give you permission to find me and give me a virtual slap in the face. Anyway, enough of the ranting.
<b>Introduction</b>:
<center><img src="http://www.aselabs.com/images/articles/march02/l4s5mg/smallcpu.jpg">
What a nice CPU, tiny too</center>
Welcome to the first review at ASE Labs that I didn't pay for the products. Well, that's not entirely true, but I digress. ECS was kind enough to send me not one but two motherboards based on the Pentium 4 socket 478 cpu. The two motherboards I received were the P4IBMS and the L4S5MG, based on the i845 and the SiS 650 chipset respectively. Since this was the first Pentium 4 review, and will be my first Pentium 4 cpu, I'll be using this as the base for everything else. You will see the slew of benchmarks I've used and I hope you will give me comments on which I should include and exclude. I chose to buy the 1.6a Ghz Northwood. I paid around $150 for it. Anyway, the reason I bought this were two fold, the price and the overclocking. More on that later. I later decided to separate this into two reviews, and chose not give a score because I cannot compare it to other boards so my score would be messed up.
<b>Features</b>:
L4S5MG
PROCESSORS
Intel® Pentium® 4 processor (478 pins)
CHIPSET
SiS®650 & SiS®961 Chipset
SiS®650 Host/Memory controller with AGP4X North Bridge Single Chipset
Built-in High Quality 3D Accelerator
SiS®961 MuTIOL Media I/O
LPC I/O - IT8705F
System Hardware Monitor: Built-in IT8705F
LAN: RealTek 8100/B (Optional)
AC97 Audio Codec
Compliant with AC97 2.1 specification
MEMORY
Two 184-pin DDR DIMM sockets for 2.5V DDR SDRAM (DDR200, DDR266)
Maximum: 2GB
SYSTEM BIOS
Award 2MB Flash EEPROM
Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, AMP 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI
Full Support for ACPI revision 1.0 specification
I/O INTERFACE
Supports Plug and Play function
PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors
Dual USB Ports and LAN connectors
One - EPP/ECP mode parallel port
One - 16550 high-speed serial I/O ports
VGA Connector
Audio Ports (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, CD-in and game port)
Dual PCI IDE interfaces - support four IDE devices (PIO mode 4, DMA Mode 2, Ultra DMA 66/100)
Supports 360K~2.88M Byte, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120
ATX12V Power Supply Connectors
ports, Headers and Others:
IrDA header (STR)
Front Panel MIC/Line-out header
COM2 header
Four Extra USB header (LUSB1 and LUSB2)
Temperature read header
Smart Card Reader Header
Modem-In header
HDD LED, Reset Switch, Power Switch headers
CPU, Power and Case Fan headers
LAN Card Wake Up / Modem Ring Wake-Up Headers
RTC & BATTERY
SiS® 961 built-in 256 bytes of CMOS SRAM
With CMOS SRAM hardware clear jumper
EXPANSION SLOTS
3 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 1 CNR slot
FORM FACTOR
microATX (244mm*220mm), 4 Layers