CLOUD4

 
 Home

 Hardware

 Audio
 Controllers
 General
 Mainboards
 Memory
 Modems
 Monitors
 Portables
 Printers
 Processors
 Scanners
 Storage
 Video

 Games

 Reviews
 Previews
 Cheats & Hints

 News

 Current News
 Archives

 General Info

 About Us
 Advertising
 Awards
 Contact Us
 Hot Links
 

 Downloads
 

 Message Board
 
 

Enter your e-mail address below.

And we'll notify you when we publish new articles.

 

 

Transcend TS-ABX11

Manufacturer Transcend
Retail Price $110 

Expansion Slot : 5/2/1 

 

With a 5 PCI, 2 ISA (1 PCI/ISA shared), 1 AGP expansion slot configuration and bus speed support for more or less everything you can think of (6, 68, 75, 83, 100, 103, 112, 117, 124, 129, 133, 143, 148 and 153MHz), the Transcend TS-ABX11 makes a good first impression. The layout of the board has its plus and minus points… which spoils that good first impression a little but not much. On the plus side, the IDE and floppy connectors are located quite conveniently in front of the DIMM sockets, (of which there are only three) but the CMOS clearing jumper is stuck off in a corner (ah, the horror) behind the ISA slots. There are 10 capacitors, but the ones near the CPU Slot 1 connector are a wee bit too close to it, since the CPU bumps on the capacitors. Definitely puts a little tarnish on the good first impression.
 
 

Another big plus point for this board- hardware monitoring features are pretty good on the TS-ABX11, including the Winbond W83781D chipset. You get DIP switches for adjusting CPU clock ratios from 3.5x to 8x in 0.5 increments.

As with most new boards, the TS-ABX11 offers a jumperless setup. A particularly welcome feature is that the board allows you to set individual IRQs manually for PCI slots, which is one of those features that every board should have but doesn't. As for extras, the board comes with a fairly extensive manual and an installation CD.

What about overclocking? Well, it's rather disappointing… I experienced four crashes when benchmarking this board at 117MHz using PC-133 SDRAM, and the same problems occurred at 124MHz as well. Meaning this board is limited to 112MHz or so when overclocking.
 

Nowadays, this just doesn't cut it. Don't look to this board for overclocking. However, though hardcore overclockers don't always notice, there are plenty of people out there who have no intention in the world of overclocking their boards, as we've said before in this roundup, so non-overclockability does not by any means disqualify a motherboard. If you're not into overclocking, this is a pretty good board, the only problem being that "pretty good" is not quite good enough for a BX board at this late stage.

It's usually a question of picking the best now, not just picking a good one, so be mindful of other choices.


Table of contents  
Introduction Gigabyte BX2000
Points to look at before you buy Intel SE440BX
Side by side comparison MSI MS-6163
Abit BX6 rev 2.0 Shuttle HOT-661P
AOpen AX6BC Soyo SY-6BA+
AOpen AX6B Plus Supermicro P6SBA
ASUS P2B-F Transcend TS-ABX11
ASUS P2B-S Tyan S1846 Tsunami ATX
A-Trend ATC-6241 Performance
Chaintech 6BTM Tweaking & Overclocking
Elitegroup P6BXT-A+ Conclusion

 
 
 
COPYRIGHT © 1998-1999 - REVIEW ZONE - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

sqCLOUD4 sqCLOUD12