Tul AX480A-GF (ATI Xpress 200P)

Tul AX480A-GF
Chipset	Ati Xpress 200P
Processor	AMD Athlon 64/Sempron (fsb 200ÌÃö)
Memory	PC2100/PC2700/PC3200
HDD	2x UltraDMA/100 4x SerialATA(RAID)
Additional	Audio AC'92 v2.3 8 USB 2.0 2 Firewire 100Mbit LAN
Price:	na

Taiwanese company Tul is widely known as a manufacturer of video cards built on the base of ATI chips sold under the PowerColor brand and one of closest partners of this chip maker. That is why I was not much surprised by the fact of emergence of motherboards bearing the Tul mark, since almost the whole assortment of produce is base on chipsets of the ATI Xpress 200 series. By the way, ATI's major partner - Sapphire - produces motherboards in the same way.

For tests, we received the Tul AX480A-GF motherboard built on the Xpress 200P (or RX480) chipset, i.e. a version of the chipset without the integrated graphic core. As a result, the board offers support for one PCI Express x16, three PCI Express x1, eight USB2.0 ports, and four SerialATA channels. Clearly, at the expansion options this chip is inferior to nVidia nForce4 UltraSLI, but is adequate enough as a basis for the middle-end Xpress 200P system and is aimed at just this niche.

Tul AX480A-GF Specifications

Package

The board is packaged in a fairly well-made box of eye-catching design:

Inside the box, we found the following contents:

Package bundle

• 1x Motherboard;
• 1x software & drivers CD;
• 1x additional software CD;
• One rounded ATA-133 cable, one regular ATA-133 cable, and one rounded FDD cable;
• 2x SerialATA cables + a power adapter (2 connectors);
• User's Manual in English;
• 1x header for 2 additional USB 2.0 ports;
• 1x ATI logo sticker;
• A cap to the rear panel of the case.

The board's package bundle is practically standard and contains only the most required items:

Of special mention is the disk with third-party software which includes CyberLink DVD Solution: PowerDirector SE+ (for video editing), MediaShow SE (image viewing), PowerDVD (DVD player), PowerProducer DVD (creating DVD), and Power2Go (also for creating DVD).

The user's manual has nothing to complain about: all is written in detail and thoroughly. Therefore, the package bundle deserves a "4.5/5" mark.

Tul AX480A-GF Layout

The board's design in many ways resembles the PCB design of boards built on VIA chipsets. The ATI Xpress200 chipset is of dual-chip architecture, with separation into the north and south bridges. In the north bridge, there is the PCI Express bus controller (since the memory controller is integrated into the processor core), with the expansion options gathered in the south bridge.

The north bridge is of relatively small dimensions and has a respective radiator (which doesn't heat up much).

The board offers 2 power connectors: the main 24-pin connector (on the bottom end of the board), and the additional 4-pin one (in the upper right-hand corner of the board). While connecting the power supply cables is not an issue for the assembly operator, you'd have to be very careful while installing memory modules since the latches of DIMM slots are blocked by a video card.

There are four DIMM slots on the board, and the maximum memory capacity makes up 4 GB. Note that the board uses a red LED which lights up only once voltage is applied to the board (near the PCI2 slot). The scheme for setting the modules to the dual-channel mode is as follows: the DIMM slots related to one channel are of the same color. Therefore, to achieve maximum performance the memory modules should be installed into slots of different color.

Near the DIMM slots, there is a 3-pin connector for plugging in a processor cooler. Besides it, there is one more 3-pin connector (near the SATA connectors), as well as 2-pin connector near the north bridge.

As regards the processor socket, it is fully standard. On the reverse side of the board, there is a metal plate to prevent the board from bending while a cooler is installed.

Then, there is a PCI Express x16 slot onboard.

Besides it, Tul AX480A-GF uses two PCI and three PCI Express x1 slots:

Expansion options

As we have already said, the ATI Xpress 200 chipset is shipped with the south bridge IXP400. The latter offers integrated support for four SerialATA channels.

There are respective connectors near the chip. Therefore, 8 hard disks altogether can be plugged in to Tul AX480A-GF: four disks over the Parallel-ATA, with 4 over the SerialATA.

The board uses a RTL8110S LAN controller of 1Gbit/s bandwidth.

Unfortunately, engineers at Tul have used a scheme of the Gigabit controller connection via the regular PCI bus, which slows down the real data transmission speed. That seems somehow strange since in this configuration PCI Express one bus line remains inactivated (to which a Gigabit controller should have been fitted, which is logical).

Another oddity is related to support for the Firewire bus. In particular, there is an additional VIA VT6306 controller with support for three Firewire ports. However, wiring has been provided for only two ports: one on the rear panel, with the other connected with a brackets (missing in the package bundle).

Besides the Firewire, the board supports eight USB 2.0 ports, four of which are positioned on the rear panel, with 4 more plugged in via brackets (the board comes bundled with one bracket for 2 ports).

A few words on the integrated audio based on the ALC850 codec.

The user gets an 8-channel audio subsystem, with the SP-DIF input and output on the rear panel.

Note that SP-DIF connectors are positioned in the stead of one of the COM ports. That COM port has been implemented via a bracket (missing in the bundle), with the respective connector fitted near the battery.

Traditionally, a jumpers layout diagram:

The are four jumpers on Tul AX480A-GF: JP4 is used for clearing the CMOS settings (near the battery); JP1 - for tuning the feature for wake-up on PS2 keyboard and mouse, JP2 and JP3 - for wake-up on USB devices.

BIOS

The BIOS of Tul AX480A-GF is built on the AMI BIOS version.

The number of parameters for tuning the memory operation is enough to appeal to the PC enthusiast:

In that section, you can adjust the memory operating frequency:

Now move on to the section to do with the system monitoring.

This section is purely for information and does not allow the user to set up any emergency or overheat signaling features. Missing is also the feature for adjusting the rotation speed of the cooler depending on the processor temperature. Anyway, Tul is not a novice on the market of motherboards, and we'll not be too strict with it (in view of the fact that these features will appear in the forthcoming BIOS versions :).

There is another feature related to the processor temperature. This is Cool'n'Quiet, a technology that pushes down the processor clock speed (through reducing the multiplier) when small loads are applied to the processor (office tasks, web-surfing).

Overclocking and stability

As regards overclocking, I am repeating it again that the current version of the BIOS is somehow restricted in its capabilities. The user gets the feature for adjusting the multiplier (which works only towards the reduction, as we know).

the feature for selecting the HTT speed (or FSB).

The HTT adjustment range varies within 200 to 320 MHz. Besides, the user can raise voltage on the processor within 0.8V to 1.55V in 0.025V increments.

The board does not support features like adjustment of voltage on the memory, chipset, and the PCI Express bus. Nor there is a feature for adjusting the HyperTrasport bus speed, which somehow confused me. However, practical tests in overclocking have shown that we don't need to worry about - the board was running fine up to HTT = 274MHz.

Evidently, the HT multiplier is set up automatically (but it's quite probable that in future BIOS versions it will be there as a separate parameter).

A few words on the power supply module in Tul AX480A-GF which uses a 3-phase scheme and has six 3300 mkF and four 1500 mkF capacitors.

Performance

The nominal bus speed is set at some slight overstatement:

We'll be comparing the performance versus Gigabyte K8NXP-9 built on the nForce4 Ultra chipset as well as the reference board on the ATI Express200 chipset. In our test setup, we used the following hardware:

Let's first take a look at the results of synthetic benchmarks.

These are exclusively synthetic benchmarks which demonstrate the theoretical performance.

Now on to the gaming benchmarks.

Kb/s. the more the better

Tul AX480A-GF has demonstrated a superb performance level! Again, we should make allowance for the fact that the competitor board Gigabyte K8NXP-9 overstated the processor clock speed by 30MHz, whereas the reference board built on Xpress200 downstated it by 11MHz.

Final Words

To date, there is no data on the retail price for Tul AX480A-GF. Therefore, it is difficult to make a conclusion on the board's attraction in the buyer's viewpoint. In any case, we must admit the board is a very well-made and high-quality product aimed at the middle-end level. The user gets a complete set of expansion options, standard package bundle, and a very high performance.

From the overclocking viewpoint, the board is of no interest. It is able overclocking the processor clock speed by no more than 35% (a very good result, albeit depends on the particular specimen), but the lack of a feature for raising voltage on the memory makes it impossible to reach maximum result.

Conclusion

• Excellent performance level;
• Support for SerialATA (4 channels; RAID)
• Integrated 8-channel audio and Gigabit LAN controller;
• Support for USB2.0 (8 ports) and IEEE-1394 (2 ports)
• Support for the Cool'n'Quiet.

• Flaws in the BIOS.

• Poor overclocking features.

Join the conference with all your questions, remarks and suggestions.