Albatron KM18G Pro Mainboard

Manufacturer: Albatron
Supplied by: Albatron
Street Price: ~$100

By Brian Tiller (7/26/2003)

Introduction

Not too long ago we took our first look at a budget nForce2 motherboard and were properly impressed with it. When we got another one in to review, I immediately asked Dean if I could run it through its paces to see how it stands up. Based on the same chipset as the Chaintech 7NIF2, the nForce2 IGP, Albatron's offering into this market is the KM18G Pro. Once again the board not only boasts the much vaunted nForce2 chipset but also offers a wide array of extras which will impress any budget minded consumer. Chief among these is not only integrated audio but also the integrated video package inherent with the IGP version of the chipset. So without further ado, and with many thanks to the good people over at Albatron, let's jump right into this baby.

What you get

As you can see the motherboard is a micro-ATX jobber, which is cool because you can fit it in a smaller case. About the only sacrifice with this, is the number of PCI slots, but who really needs those anyway, especially with just about onboard everything. Bundled with the board are your standard extras including the manual, driver CD, and cables for the HDD drive and floppy too.

   

Plus, Albatron has also given you two USB ports in addition to the two that are integrated into the motherboard itself. And there is one more really cool thing they've got in the package, but I'm gonna save that for later. Let's move on and take a peek at the actual specs of the board, ok?

Specifications

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP, Duron, and Barton

• 200/266/333 FSB

• (1) 4x/8x AGP slot

• (3) PCI slots

• Chipset: nForce2 IGP Northbridge and nForce2 MCP Southbridge

• Winbond I/O controller

• 256-bit 2D and 3D integrated graphics

• AC '97 Codec for audio

• Onboard LAN

• 1394 Controller

• Supports up to DDR 333 with onboard VGA

• Support for DDR 400 with added VGA card

• Memory modules from 64MB to 1GB

• Total memory capacity of 3GB

• Phoenix Award BIOS

• Hardware and system monitor

• Support for USB 2.0

• Ultra ATA 133

• Over Temperature Protection

• Dimensions: 244mm x 244mm

Wow, that's a lot of stuff! Next we'll move on to the basic layout of the board as well as taking a quick look at the BIOS.
 

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