Motherboards in 2001 Preview: Part 1

AOpen's VIA Solutions

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AOpen will also have the AX37, a VIA Apollo Pro 266 board for Socket-370 processors with DDR SDRAM support. There will also be a micro-ATX version, called the MX37, and a "plus" version, called the AK37Plus. The "plus" model adds a Promise Ultra ATA 100 RAID controller, Die-Hard BIOS support, as well as the other tweaks we've come to see on the enhanced versions of AOpen boards.

The picture above is the AK73Pro, which is a KT133 motherboard for AMD processors, similar to the AK33 but with more FSB speed settings, a gold-plated heatsink on the North Bridge, and AOpen’s Die-Hard BIOS.  It should be hitting streets any time now.  Within the next month, AOpen will release another variation of this board, the AK73Pro-1394.  As the name suggests, they will be integrating IEEE 1394 Firewire, preparing it for high-end workstation applications.

Here we have the MX36, a Socket-370 micro-ATX board using the new VIA ProSavage PM133 chipset.  The PM133 chipset is similar to the VIA Apollo Pro 133A, but with integrated S3 Savage 4 video. Note that there is still an external AGP 4X slot for future graphics upgrades, just like on the i815.  However, also like the i815, a graphics card in the AGP slot disables the onboard video automatically.