[Bob The Junkie]

Review: Optronix OP-K9A200G-MLF motherboard
Reviewer: Jon ?Bob The Junkie? Aubrey
Reviewed on: 31/08/2005
Product cost: £80.00 (?116.95 - $144.20 USD)
Product provided by Optronix (www.optronix.co.uk)

Introduction:

Optronix is a company I bet you have never heard of. Set up in April 2002, they sell predominantly in the United Kingdom and produce a large range of computer equipment.

According to Optronix themselves ? they were set up in response to the ?appalling
service? offered to customers from manufacturers who only have offices in the
UK that are not really equipped to offer assistance down to the end user.

One of the many products Optronix make are motherboards ? and this review focuses on one of their motherboards for the AMD Socket 939 platform, the OP-K9A200G-MLF. Although there are many motherboards out for this platform now, the Optronix motherboard is interesting for two reasons. First ? it uses the rarely used ATI chipset compared to the much more common Nvidia Nforce chipset. Second ? it has onboard video.

Features:

The OP-K9A200G-MLF comes with the following features:

? ATi Xpress 200G (RS480) Northbridge chipset
? ATi IXP400 Southbridge chipset
? Bus Speed (FSB / BSB) 1000 MHz (2000 MT/s Upstream and Downstream)
? Memory 4 x Dual Channel DDR400 (up to 4 GB)
? IDE Controller 2 x ATA-133 (UDMA 33 / 66 / 100 / 133)
? Serial ATA Controller 4 x SATA-150 (Hardware RAID)
? RAID Controller RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0 + 1 (Silicon Image)
? Floppy Controller 1 x FDD
? 5 x PCI Slots
? PCI Express 16X Slot for Graphics Card
? PCI Express 1X Slot for Add-on Card
? Ethernet Realtek 81xx Series 10/100 Mbps LAN
? USB Port 8 x USB 2.0 (4 at rear panel and 4 via connector)
? FireWire 3 x IEEE1394 FireWire (VIA VT6307) (1 at rear panel and 2 via connector)
? Sound 5.1 Audio Realtek ALC 655 Chipset 6 channel 18 Bit 3D Sound (WHQL compliant - Full Duplex Direct Sound)
? System Protection Hardware Monitoring with CPU and System Overheat Protection
? Trend Micro ChipAway BIOS Virus Protection
? I/O Ports 1 x D-sub VGA Port
? 1 x ECP / EPP Parallel port / 1 x Serial Com ports
? 1 x PS/2 Mouse port / 1 x PS/2 Keyboard port
? 1 x Speaker / 1 x Line-in / 1 x Mic-in ports / 1 x SPDIF Out

The Onboard Graphics comes with the following features:

? ATi HyperMemory Technology
? VGA ATi Radeon X300 PCI Express Technology (9600 core)
? Full DirectX 9.0 Support (Vertex Shader v2.0 and Pixel Shader v2.0)
? Full precision floating point pixel pipeline
? Up to 4 Multiple-Render-Targets (MRTs)
? Support for up to 12-bit per pixel formats
? Supports resolution up to 2536x2536@32bpp
? Anti-Aliasing using multi-sampling algorithm with support for 2,4, and 6 samples
? Hidden surface removal using 16, 24, or 32-bit Z-Buffering
? TV-Out TV-Out via RCA / S-Video Port (cable included)
? NTSC / PAL - Support Dual Display (CRT + TV)

Packaging:

The OP-K9A200G-MLF comes in an attractive red and blue box, which shows a picture of a motherboard ? although which motherboard it is isn?t obvious as the board?s name isn?t featured on the front of the box.

The first impression you get from opening up the box is how well laid out it is. A cardboard separator keeps the motherboard separate from the peripherals, and a dual layer design keeps the manual and driver CD separate from everything else. The motherboard itself is wrapped in a static proof bag to protect it from static damage, and protected from knocks on the packaging by a thin foam layer.

Contained with the motherboard is everything you will need to connect your other components to the motherboard, including:


? A manual for the motherboard
? A driver CD containing drivers and utilities for the motherboard and PC-Cillin AV
? A floppy cable
? A Parallel ATA cable
? One Serial ATA cables
? A serial port back bracket extension
? A USB 2.0 back bracket extension with two USB 2.0 ports on it
? An EMI shield for the motherboard?s connectors to the case
? A TV out port back bracket extension

Motherboard design: (4.5 / 5)

When taken out of the packaging, the first thing that stands out about the board is that it is mounted on black PCB that has a textured finish. This gives it a ?futuristic? look, great if you wish to mount the board in a case with a side window.

Most of the connectors of the board are coloured with the same colour plastic ? which makes for a unified look over the board. Only the IDE connectors and the memory slots stand out from each other and so the board does not detract from the eye with garish clashing colours. This does mean however that computer novices may have trouble identifying different components on the board from each other.

The north bridge on the board is cooled by a large metallic passive heatsink, with the Optronix logo on it. Unfortunately this curls around on itself ? so fitting a fan to the heat sink later is not possible. The south bridge is passively cooled by a black small heat sink, ideal for a quiet board, and should help overclocking attempts.

The OP-K9A200G-MLF has four Serial ATA ports, and these are located on the bottom right of the board next to the IDE connectors, and so won?t get in the way of any of the other cabling.

The ATX power block connector is located on the far right of the board ? in between the floppy drive connector and the IDE drive connectors. This placement is interesting as it means the largest cable you will connect to your board is out of the way ? and in a good case the cable can be completely hidden out of sight. However we were a little worried that if you have a mini ATX case - or any case that the hard drive bays cover the right hand side of the board, you may have problems bending the ATX cable so that it does not interfere with the drives ? without snapping the connector off.

The ATX 12v connector is also placed in an interesting location on the board. Optronix have opted to place it at the very top of the board, between the I/O ports and the processor socket in the middle of a set of capacitors. This allows the cable to be hidden out of sight, and we give full marks to Optronix for this, as cable clutter is getting worse and worse in cases. Our only worry though is that if you are not careful when removing the cable from the connector, you may accidentally bend or snap one of the capacitors, which would render the board useless.

Overall most of this board is well laid out although we did have one slight concern that the large bank of capacitors next to the processor socket are quite tall and although they will not interfere with the standard AMD cooler, due to their height they may interfere with aftermarket coolers.

BIOS: (3 / 5)

The OP-K9A200G-MLF uses a Phoenix Award BIOS and is on the whole fairly well laid out. Options include the standard health checking, clock setting, power management, password protection and S.M.A.R.T monitoring. Although our test board did not come with Cool ?n? Quiet support, after searching through the Optronix forums we discovered a BIOS update that would enable both this and Dual Core X2 support.

One interesting feature in the BIOS is the option to set the onboard X300?s core speed in asynchronously from the main clock. This allows the X300 to be overclocked or set at a stable speed without having to adjust the rest of the system, a feature we felt was particularly useful.

Overclocking features:

If you?re looking for an overclocking board to push your processor to the maximum then this definitely isn?t the board for you. There are no options for adjusting the HTT (FSB), memory timings, memory voltages, processor voltages or AGP/PCI locks, in fact the only options we could find that you could consider ?overclocking? options is the setting which selects which speed the HyperTransport Link is running at, and being able to adjust the HTT upstream and downstream between 8bit and 16bit.

We checked the Optronix forums for other users overclocking their boards and found out that this is one of the most sort after features of Optronix motherboards. The general consensus of the support staff was that overclocking features would not be implemented in the current line up of boards, but should be in new motherboards. This means that any user buying the OP-K9A200G-MLF expecting overclocking features to be included in a future BIOS update will probably be disappointed.


Onboard graphics:

With the OP-K9A200G-MLF, Optronix have included an onboard graphics adaptor in the shape of ATI PCI-E X300 core. This uses ATI?s ?HyperMemory? feature which basically means that the graphics card can use system memory for itself. This reduces the cost of the motherboard, as additional RAM does not have to be included on the motherboard, but at the same time reduces the overall amount of system RAM available to the user. Although it is not as fast as its X800 brethren, the X300 runs at a 300 MHz core clock and does have full DirectX 9 support making it usable for low resolution gaming or multimedia applications.

One of the best things though about the onboard graphics is ATi?s ?Surroundview?. This allows the motherboard to enable both the onboard graphics and an external ATi graphics card together, to allow multi-monitor support. As our OP-K9A200G-MLF only had one onboard VGA output the maximum number of screens we could connect at one time was three (one to the onboard and two to our X850XT) but this extended our desktop onto yet another monitor, making web design, programming and other applications even easier to use.

Overclocking:

Due to the lack of BIOS options we had to resort to using Windows utilities to test the overclocking performance of this board. Using a windows utility called ?ClockGen? we were able to adjust the HTT speed to a maximum of 220 MHz from the stock 200 MHz. Unfortunately due to the limits of ClockGen and the ATI chipset used by the OP-K9A200G-MLF we were not able to up the HTT any higher, and although the board was stable enough for web surfing, we only managed one set of 3dMark05 tests before Windows crashed and rebooted, most probably due to the PCI/AGP busses being driven well above their default values.

We were able to test the overclocking potential of the onboard graphics using Tech PowerUp?s ATiTool. The tool was set to increase the core clock until artifacts started appearing. The core was then reduced in stages until no artefacts were detected for one hour. Due to the onboard graphics using some of the system?s memory, we were not able to overclock the memory used by the graphics chip, just the core clock.

Unfortunately overclocking attempts did not go well. At 360 MHz our system completely locked up, without ATiTool finding any artefacts. We reduced the core clock to 350 MHz and that was stable for around 20 minutes before the system locked up again. At this point we reached down to feel how hot the heat sink on the graphics chip was and it was literally finger burning. To avoid damaging the motherboard we turned off the machine for ten minutes before turning it back on again.

We eventually managed to get it stable at 330 MHz but the heat sink was still extremely hot. Due to Optronix?s design of the heatsink it is not possible to add a cooling fan to keep the graphics chip cool and we think that is where the problems are coming from. The board was quite happy at 360 MHz without any artifacts for a short period of time and with a better cooling solution it looks like it could clock even higher than that.

With the extra 30 MHz overclock the card did not produce any noticeable differences in benchmarking, and so due to the extra heat given out we decided to conduct all benchmarks using the stock 300Mhz core clock.

Performance: (4 / 5)

Unfortunately we were unable to install Windows Professional XP64 on our test machine. We tried multiple CDs in different configurations, changing hard drives, changing graphics adaptors, and we still could not get XP64 to install. The test machine would boot from the CD ? copy across the needed files, format the drive, install the necessary files and reboot without any problems. However when the machine rebooted it would come up with a message that there was a configuration problem with the hard drive and Windows could not continue to boot from it. Strangely enough Windows Professional XP32 installed without a hitch. In the end we tried our XP64 install CD on the same hard drive in another computer and that installed without any problems ? which leads us to believe it is a problem with Windows XP64 and the drive controller on the OP-K9A200G-MLF. However other users with this chipset have reported no problems with installs, and we did manage once to get Windows XP64 installed, although the promptly wiped it again thinking that we had solved the problems. Due to time constraints we did not have time to build another install CD with different drivers on them, and so all testing has been done in Windows XP32.

Test Machine Setup

AMD Athlon 3000+ Venice core processor running at 1.8 GHz
OCZ EL DDR PC-3500 Gold GX Dual Channel RAM running with 2-2-2-8 timings
Optronix OP-K9A200G-MLF motherboard
Maxtor DiamondMax 7200rpm 2MB cache PATA hard drive
Crucial ATi X850XT 256MB Graphics card
Enermax FMA EG465AX-VE 460W power supply
Enermax CS-718 Entry level server case
50x generic CD-ROM drive
Microsoft Windows XP 32 SP2

We used the 5.6 ATi Catalyst drivers when testing the X850XT and onboard video. When the onboard video was tested we allocated 128MB of the system RAM to it, as most gamers will not need more than this figure.

Results:

CPU testing:

To test the processing speed of the board we ran SuperPI on a 16M run and timed how long it would take. The result was twenty minutes and four seconds, which is quite a good time for a 1.8GHz Venice processor.

Network testing:

Unfortunately the onboard network adaptor is not gigabit compliant and will only transfer data at 10/100Mbps speeds. It is a stand-alone adaptor as it does not come with any type of firewall protection ? this would have to be provided by the end user. During testing we copied several large files over the network without issues or drop outs, the adaptor worked perfectly.

Audio testing:

After connecting up the speakers we ran a variety of music through the audio sub systems to try to detect and crackling or popping. Even with the volume up at its maximum settings, the OP-K9A200G-MLF produced excellent sounds and we could not detect any distortion during music play back or gaming.

HDTach Hard drive testing:

The OP-K9A200G-MLF produced some interesting results here. Although the burst speed was around average for this drive, the average read speed was much below the speed the drive should be performing at. We have a feeling though that this was not due to the OP-K9A200G-MLF but to our hard drive, which started making some very funny noises during the testing.

Application testing:

PCMark04:

Going from the X850XT to the onboard X300 we lost only 400 PCMarks in PCMark 04, and some of this was due to using up system memory to the graphics memory. Overall 400 PCmarks isn?t a lot, so users thinking that they will lose significant performance by using the onboard video are wrong, the computer will still be plenty fast enough for most applications.

PCMark05:

Going from the X850XT to the onboard X300 was a different matter in PCMark05 compared to PCMark04. There was a significant drop in score, nearly a thousand marks different, which just goes to show that PCMark05 is much more reliant on graphics power than PCMark04 was.

3DMark03:

The reason here is around average for a X850XT, and it beats the onboard X300 by around nine times the score.

3DMark05:

The X850XT completely destroys the onboard X300 here, beating it by about nine times the score. Although a score of 614 is nothing to brag about, it does mean that the onboard X300 will play older games very well, and even newer games with the details turned down low. The X850XT scores around average for its performance.

Unreal Tournament 2004:

The onboard X300 turned out a surprising result here. Not only was it only three and a half times slower than the X850XT, but Unreal Tournament 2004 was playable on it at 1024x768 resolution. As the occasional gamer is unlikely to need a higher resolution than this, the onboard X300 works perfectly on this game.

Price: (3.5/5)

At £80 the OP-K9A200G-MLF is cheaper than most of the other 939 motherboards out on the market with the same features. Bearing in mind that this comes with an included graphics card and the OP-K9A200G-MLF is a real bargain. However there are other motherboards that offer very similar features for much less money ? such as the Sapphire 200P which is based on the same chipsets and uses the same graphics chip as the OP-K9A200G-MLF.

Conclusion:

Although not a well known brand, Optronix have made a good impression with the OP-K9A200G-MLF. With 5.1 sound and graphics with TV out, the OP-K9A200G-MLF would make an ideal motherboard for being in a media centre, or for a first time computer user who occasionally plays games. With RAID 0 and a PCI-E 16x slot this board can be upgraded from a moderately powerful machine to a power beast with a few additional components, and being able to run memory in either single channel or dual channel means a RAM upgrade can bring significant performance boosts in the future. We were very disappointed at the lack of overclocking options on this board ? as this is the one thing that is holding it back from being a ?must have? board for the average user. As it is ? if you?re looking for a fairly cheap board for a second PC, or for building a cheap PC for a friend, check out the OP-K9A200G-MLF.

Final Scores

Motherboard design: 4.5/5
BIOS: 3/5
Performance: 4/5
Price: 3.5/5
Overall score: 15/20


Pros

? Powerful Onboard Graphics
? Cheaper than most 939 boards
? Good performance

Cons

? No overclocking options
? Graphics heat sink gets very hot under intensive gaming



We would like to thank Cindy Hallatt at Optronix for supplying this motherboard for review.

[danilloOc]

wow, impressive

[anguilla]

I have the sister board to this - the K9M200G-MLF and found that the technical support was not too good. First things - the board does support >1GB ECC memory (I ran 2x2GB chips but could not get it to see more than 3.25GB). It is lousy for overclocking but stable. However after a BIOS update the PC will see CD-Drive etc but not actually install an OS - ended up getting a DFI Lanparty @ £99 which is a lot more configurable - as they would not (or could not) give me the older BIOS which was taken down from the support website.

Also the utilities for the board do not work under XP x64 - which include temperature sensing!

My opinion is that if you get one of these boards then you should just stick with what's on the box and dont try and do anything fancy with it!

For another £20 you can get a top line socket 939 board and overclock to your heart's content!

[David_Heavey]

Great review Bob. Great work as always

[KitePlans]

nice review!!

[xtian]

I can just agree, very nice review. I reflected on one thing, if u look at other MB manufactures and if u look at the mobo with same specs the circuit board is absolutely full of components not a single space is left for other features. BUT if u look at this mobo that has almost everything u need there's PLENTY of space at the bottom for future developments... Seems like a great mobo. Well yes ofcourse i can be wrong but it's my opinion of a first eye-contact!

More of theese!

(Sorry for my bad english )

[Coltch]

I also have the uATX version of this board and it is stable at stock speeds.

XP Pro x64 installed without a hitch on my system, although there was a slight problem with the realtek audio driver.

With the latest BIOS you can change the multiplier and timings, although I haven't tried anything yet.

Nice review though

[djdynamite]

Hi, I have this motherboard, has anyone got the latest bios update for it? i have tried saphire, eSupport and ECS..... thanx!

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