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Albatron’s KI51PV-754 motherboard

Geoff Gasior
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Manufacturer Albatron
Model KI51PV-754
Price (Street) $310
Availability Now

THE MINI-ITX FORM FACTOR’S diminutive 17 cm x 17 cm dimensions allow it to squeeze into exotic, small chassis that make Shuttle’s XPC systems look portly, but this form factor hasn’t exactly caught on among PC enthusiasts. Processor horsepower has always been a problem, and while it would be unfair to expect the performance of a six-liter V8 from a two-door hatchback, you want more than a one-liter four banger under the hood.

Unfortunately, the Mini-ITX world is littered with four bangers, lawn mower engines, and even a few golf cart power plants. VIA’s EPIA boards dominate the scene, and they all sport relatively slow processors that can’t be upgraded or replaced. Mini-ITX boards with sockets that can accommodate real horsepower are few and far between, and often only available from industrial specialists that don’t cater to enthusiasts.

That is until Albatron stepped into the Mini-ITX market.

Albatron’s new KI51PV-754 uniquely blends GeForce graphics, nForce core logic, and support for Turion and Athlon 64 processors on a Mini-ITX motherboard. Read on to see if that combination makes this board a hot hatch like the Audi S3 or something that more closely resembles a Yugo.

The specs
Less than 300 square centimeters doesn’t leave much room for onboard components, but the KI51PV-754 still manages to host a decent array of integrated peripherals.

CPU support Socket 754-based Athlon 64, Turion 64, Sempron processors
North bridge Nvidia GeForce 6150
South bridge Nvidia nForce 430
Interconnect HyperTransport (6.4GB/s)
Expansion slots 1 32-bit/33MHz PCI
Memory 1 184-pin DIMM socket
Maximum of 1GB of DDR333/400 SDRAM
Storage I/O Floppy disk
2 channel ATA/133
4 channels Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 support
Audio 6-channel AC’97 audio via nForce 430 and Realtek ALC655 codec
Ports 1 PS/2 keyboard
1 PS/2 mouse
1 VGA output
1 DVI output
Header for 1 S-Video output

4 USB 2.0 with headers for 4 more
1 RJ45 10/100 via nForce 430
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 via Marvell 88E8056

1 analog front out
1 analog bass/center out
1 analog rear out
Header for 1 digital S/PDIF output
BIOS Award
Bus speeds FSB: 200-450MHz in 1MHz increments
DRAM: 100, 133, 166, 200, 216, 233, 250MHz
Bus multipliers NB to K8: 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x
NB to SB: 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x
Voltages None
Monitoring Voltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring
Fan speed control None

Most of those features come courtesy of Nvidia’s GeForce 6150 north bridge and nForce 430 south bridge combo. The 6150 includes an integrated graphics processor with two DirectX 9, Shader Model 3.0-compliant pixel pipelines running at 475MHz. That’s not a lot of pixel-pushing power, but it should be enough for casual gaming at very low resolutions with low in-game detail levels. For Mini-ITX applications, the GeForce 6150’s integrated TV encoder and ability to accelerate high definition MPEG2 and WMV9 playback are far more valuable.

Speaking of value, the KI51PV gets plenty of mileage out of its nForce 430 south bridge chip. The chip provides the board with four Serial ATA ports with support for 300MB/s transfer rates and RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 arrays. Unfortunately, though, Albatron cripples the nForce 430’s hardware-accelerated Gigabit Ethernet controller with a 10/100 Fast Ethernet PHY. This PHY chip throttles the Nvidia controller’s effective bandwidth to 100Mbps, and although that should be plenty for most folks’ Internet connections, it’s still wasteful.

What’s even more puzzling is that Albatron complements the nForce 430’s castrated Ethernet with a Gigabit chip from Marvell running at full speed. Notwithanding whether a Mini-ITX board even needs a secondary networking option, it doesn’t make sense to add a Gigabit chip to a board whose inherent GigE capabilities have already been crippled.

Confusion continues when we move to audio, where the nForce 430’s HD audio capabilities are bypassed in favor of basic AC’97. Albatron says its customers don’t require “Azalia” support, but they should, especially when it’s already included in the chipset.

 
The board
Even with a relatively modest number of onboard peripherals, the KI51PV is pretty packed.

That’s to be expected from a board that only measures 17 cm square. For comparison, full-size ATX boards can measure up to 30.5 cm tall and 24.4 cm wide, while Micro ATX measures 24.4 cm square. To put the KI51PV’s size into perspective, here’s how it compares to a standard audio CD case.

As far as motherboards go, the KI51PV is really, really small.

Much of the board’s real estate is monopolized by a 754-pin socket and its accompanying heatsink retention bracket. The socket is worth the space, though; it allows the board to work with a wide range of relatively affordable Sempron and Athlon 64 desktop chips, as well as 754-pin Turion 64 mobile processors.

Unfortunately, AMD doesn’t offer 754-pin chips with dual processor cores. Albatron says it’s working on Socket AM2 and LGA775 Mini-ITX boards that should support dual-core CPUs, but they’re not ready yet. Socket 754 also limits the KI51PV to a single memory channel, but the board doesn’t really have room for a second DIMM slot anyhow.

Heck, the board barely has room for a single memory module. There’s very little clearance between the CPU socket and DIMM slot, and only a basic AMD reference heatsink would fit alongside our taller Corsair DIMM.

Clearance is also tight between the socket and the board’s chipset cooler. Albatron should be applauded for using a passive chipset cooling solution here, but it does limit the number of compatible CPU coolers. Heatsinks that fan out from the retention bracket by even a few centimeters risk conflicting with the chipset cooler or DIMM slot.

The KI51PV is even picky when it comes to IDE cables; the board’s IDE ports have a full 40 pins, making them incompatible with ribbon cables that block off one pin. That’s not a huge problem, but 39 pins seems to be the new standard for IDE, so it’s a little annoying.

Fortunately, there are no issues with the board’s Serial ATA ports. All four are neatly organized near one corner of the board, making binding and routing multiple cables a snap.

Below the Serial ATA ports we find the KI51PV’s sole expansion option: a standard PCI port. That doesn’t give users much in the way of graphics upgrade options, but given the dearth of PCI Express peripherals, it makes more sense than a PCIe slot. Gaming is probably at the low end of the priority list for Mini-ITX systems, and a standard PCI slot can easily accommodate a decent audio card or TV tuner.

Despite its lack of expansion slots, the KI51PV doesn’t skimp on ports. The board has both VGA and DVI outputs, four USB ports, and a trio of analog audio ports. Headers for an additional four USB ports are also available on the board, and Albatron offers an optional audio bracket with digital S/PDIF audio ports. The bracket costs an extra $10, though; it should really be included at no extra charge.

At least Albatron includes an extra video output. The KI51PV’s I/O shield comes with an S-Video output that plugs right into the board.

 

BIOS and tweaking software
The Mini-ITX form factor doesn’t exactly scream overclocking, but Albatron has produced some decent enthusiast boards in the past, so we were curious to see how the KI51PV’s BIOS stacked up.

Surprisingly, overclocking options are included. Users can drop the CPU multiplier and select HyperTransport clock speeds between 200 and 450MHz. There are also a number of memory speed options between 100 and 250MHz, along with bus multipliers for the HyperTransport links between the north bridge and south bridge chips and between the north bridge and the processor.

Voltage control is really the only thing missing from the BIOS’s overclocking options. The ability to manipulate processor and memory voltages is essential for serious overclocking, but then, the KI51PV’s limited heatsink compatibility and lack of a PCI Express x16 slot will probably keep it off the radar of serious overclockers.

The BIOS does provide a decent amount of control over memory timings. We couldn’t get the board stable with a 1T command rate and Turion 64 processor, though.

Given the KI51PV’s suitability for small form factor systems, I was really hoping the board would offer robust fan speed control in the BIOS. Unfortunately, intelligent temperature-based fan speed control is nowhere to be found.

For those who are a little uncomfortable poking around in the BIOS, the KI51PV offers limited support for Nvidia’s nTune system utility.

nTune can be used to set a handful of memory timings, adjust HyperTransport clock speeds and bus multipliers, and even overclock the onboard graphics. However, the app’s voltage control options are all greyed out.

nTune also offers a hardware monitoring utility that tracks temperatures, fan speeds, and other variables. The KI51PV doesn’t report system voltages to the app, although it should be possible for Albatron to add more extensive nTune support with a future BIOS update.

 

Our testing methods
Apart from woefully underpowered EPIA motherboards, the KI51PV has few direct competitors. In fact, we couldn’t find any other Mini-ITX systems that support Athlon 64 processors.

Without direct competition, we’ve compared the KI51PV’s performance to that of a handful of full-size Socket AM2 boards. Obviously, the AM2 boards have the edge; they have dual memory channels, faster dual-core processors, more memory, and high-end graphics cards. However, we wanted to see just how close a reasonably well-equipped Mini-ITX board could come to the performance of a standard ATX system. The KI51PV shouldn’t be at a disadvantage in our peripheral performance tests, and it will have an ace in the hole when it comes time to test power consumption.

The KI51PV’s integrated GeForce 6150 was configured with a 128MB frame buffer for testing, leaving the system with a little less than 1GB of usable memory. Unfortunately, the KI51PV doesn’t support 2GB DIMMs.

All tests were run at least twice, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

Processor Turion 64 ML-40 2.2GHz Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6GHz
System bus HyperTransport 16-bit/800MHz HyperTransport 16-bit/1GHz
Motherboard Albatron KI51PV-754 Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H Shuttle XPC SN27P2 MSI K9N SLI Platinum ECS KA3 MVP MSI K9A Platinum
Bios revision KI51100 603 612W1P20 SN27S00S 1.20 demo2 A7280AMS
North bridge GeForce 6150 nForce 590 SLI SPP nForce 590 SLI SPP nForce 570 Ultra nForce 570 SLI CrossFire Xpress 3200 CrossFire Xpress 3200
South bridge nForce 430 nForce 590 SLI MCP nForce 590 SLI MCP SB600 SB600
Chipset drivers ForceWare 8.26 ForceWare 9.35 ForceWare 9.35 ForceWare 9.16 ForceWare 9.16 Catalyst 6.7 Catalyst 6.7
Memory size 1GB (1 DIMM) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 SDRAM at 742MHz
CAS latency (CL) 2 5 5 5 5 5 5
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 3 5 5 5 5 5 5
RAS precharge (tRP) 2 5 5 5 5 5 5
Cycle time (tRAS) 6 12 12 12 12 12 12
Command rate 2T 1T 1T 1T 1T 1T 1T
Audio codec Integrated nForce 430/ALC655 with Realtek 3.91 drivers Integrated nForce 590 SLI MCP/AD1988B with 6.0.0.61 drivers Integrated nForce 590 SLI/ALC882D with Realtek HD 1.39 drivers Integrated nForce 570 Ultra/ALC882 with Realtek HD 1.39 drivers Integrated nForce 570 SLI/ALC883 with Realtek HD 1.39 drivers Integrated SB600/ALC883 with Realtek HD 1.39 drivers Integrated SB600/ALC883 with Realtek HD 1.39 drivers
Graphics Integrated GeForce 6150 with ForceWare 91.31 drivers GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB PCI-E with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
Hard drive Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB
OS Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 2

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. 2GB of RAM seems to be the new standard for most folks, and Corsair hooked us up with some of its 1GB DIMMs for testing.

Also, all of our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the Medium detail image quality settings, with the exception that the resolution was set to 640×480 in 32-bit color.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

 

Memory performance

There’s a huge memory bandwidth gap between the KI51PV and today’s fastest Socket AM2 mobos, but that’s to be expected. The KI51PV has only a single memory channel, and some of its bandwidth is siphoned off by the GeForce 6150 integrated graphics.

Still, the KI51PV’s memory latency is remarkably snappy. AMD’s on-die memory controller is a marvel.

 

WorldBench

The KI51PV is well behind in WorldBench, but not as much as one might expect from a system with a slower single-core processor, half the number of memory channels and megabytes, and integrated graphics. A score of 98 puts the board just shy of WorldBench’s reference system, which scores an even 100 with an Athlon 64 FX-51 processor and GeForce FX 5950 Ultra graphics.

Gaming

GeForce 6150 graphics don’t cut it in our gaming tests, which are run at resolutions and detail levels that overwhelm onboard graphics. To the 6150’s credit, though, all the games rendered correctly without visual artifacts or obvious image quality issues. That’s more than we can say for most integrated graphics solutions. Dropping to extremely low resolutions and detail levels does produce playable frame rates, but you’d be much better off with even a PCI-based graphics card if you’re looking to play 3D games on the KI51PV.

 

Cinebench rendering

Our KI51PV’s Turion processor doesn’t have a second core, so it can’t take advantage of Cinebench’s multi-threaded rendering test. Still, the board turns in a respectable performance as long as you keep it away from OpenGL shading tests.

Sphinx speech recognition

Sphinx favors faster memory subsystems, so it’s no surprise to see the KI51PV lagging here.

 

Audio performance

Single-core processors have fewer CPU cycles to spare, so the KI51PV’s CPU utilization in our 3D audio tests is slightly higher than that of other boards equipped with Realtek codecs.

Audio quality
We used an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound card for recording in RightMark’s audio quality tests. Analog output ports were used on all systems. To keep things simple, I’ve translated RightMark’s word-based quality scale to numbers. Higher scores reflect better audio quality, and the scale tops out at 6, which corresponds to an “Excellent” rating in RightMark.

The KI51PV’s RightMark Audio Analyzer performance is a little disappointing, although it must be a nightmare trying to get a clean analog audio signal from a crowded Mini-ITX board. Albatron’s optional S/PDIF output bracket should help users avoid the perils of analog audio completely, or you could always opt for a decent PCI sound card.

 

ATA performance
ATA performance was tested with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ATA/133 hard drive using HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

The KI51PV’s ATA performance is slower than we expected. We’ve seen better from the nForce 430’s IDE controller on other motherboards, and there’s no reason for a Mini-ITX board to be dragging its feet here.

 

Serial ATA performance
Moving to Serial ATA, we tested performance with a Western Digital Raptor X SATA hard drive. Again, we used HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone test.

Serial ATA presents no problems for the KI51PV, whose higher CPU utilization can probably be traced back to the system’s single processor core.

 

USB performance
Our USB transfer speed tests were conducted with a USB 2.0/Firewire external hard drive enclosure connected to a 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 hard drive. We tested with HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

USB performance is a little slow on the KI51PV, and again, we’re not sure why. The nForce 430 is capable of faster USB transfer rates.

 

Ethernet performance
We evaluated Ethernet performance using the NTttcp tool from Microsoft’s Windows DDK. The docs say this program “provides the customer with a multi-threaded, asynchronous performance benchmark for measuring achievable data transfer rate.”

We used the following command line options on the server machine:

ntttcps -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

..and the same basic thing on each of our test systems acting as clients:

ntttcpr -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

Our server was a Windows XP Pro system based on Asus’ P5WD2 Premium motherboard with a Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition (800MHz front-side bus, Hyper-Threading enabled) and PCI Express-attached Gigabit Ethernet. A crossover CAT6 cable was used to connect the server to each system.

The boards were tested with jumbo frames disabled.

Situating the nForce 430’s Gigabit Ethernet controller behind a 10/100 PHY produces lower CPU utilization than any other system we’ve tested here, but at only one tenth the throughput of full GigE implementations. At least the KI51PV has a secondary Marvell Gigabit chip, but its CPU utilization is higher than we might have seen from the nForce 430’s hardware-accelerated GigE controller running at full speed.

 

Power consumption
We measured system power consumption, sans monitor and speakers, at the wall outlet using a Watts Up power meter. Power consumption was measured at idle and under a load consisting of a multi-threaded Cinebench 2003 render running in parallel with the “rthdribl” high dynamic range lighting demo.

Revenge is sweet for the KI51PV in our power consumption tests. With a smaller board, mobile Turion 64 processor, and no discrete graphics card, the KI51PV consumes half the power of our full-size ATX systems at idle and comparably even less under load.

 

Overclocking
Mini-ITX isn’t ideal for overclocking, but we couldn’t resist pushing the KI51PV’s limits. For our overclocking tests we switched to more relaxed 2.5-4-4-8 memory timings, dropped the memory bus divider, and lowered the CPU multiplier. Next, we started to crank up the HyperTransport clock.

It didn’t take us long to hit a wall with a 220MHz HT clock. At that speed, the board was stable looping Prime95 and the rthdribl High Dynamic Range lighting demo, but we couldn’t even get into Windows with a 230MHz HT clock. The board would post at that speed, though.

As always, overclocking success is never guaranteed. Your mileage may vary.

 

Conclusions
Albatron should be applauded for having the vision to build the KI51PV-754. Combining a 754-pin socket compatible with Turion 64 processors, GeForce 6150 integrated graphics, and nForce 430 core logic on a Mini-ITX platform is a fantastic idea, and one that could inject a much-needed spark into the small form factor world.

Unfortunately, that spark doesn’t shine as brightly as it should. The KI51PV is a great idea on paper, but Albatron’s execution is hampered by a handful of questionable design decisions and missing features. Albatron should be taking full advantage of the capabilities of the nForce 430 chipset, including its support for high definition “Azalia” audio and Gigabit Ethernet. There is no good reason to handicap the chipset’s GigE controller with a 10/100 Fast Ethernet PHY.

On the BIOS front, the KI51PV really needs temperature-based fan speed control. This feature is a must-have these days, and even more important for Mini-ITX boards destined for home theater PCs. The KI51PV should have performed better in our ATA and USB tests, too, although with a Turion 64, it held its own remarkably well against dual-core Socket AM2 systems.

The KI51PV’s niggling flaws aren’t show-stoppers, but they’re hard to forgive given the board’s $310 price tag. That price is in line with the cost of other Mini-ITX boards with real CPU sockets, so it isn’t necessarily exorbitant. Still, it’s tough to tolerate even the slightest indiscretion when you’re dropping three bills.

In the end, though, I can’t help marveling at the KI51PV. Despite its shortcomings, it may well be the most attractive Mini-ITX board on the market. At the very least, it’s a hot hatch—one with great gas mileage to boot. 

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