Shuttle AB60/RS (865PE) Motherboard

Company: Shuttle
Product: AB60/RS
Street Price: Unknown
Date Reviewed: June 30, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Conclusions and Final Thoughts:

Overall, the Shuttle AB60/RS is a good motherboard. It has a lot of features that should easily please the feature loving enthusiasts. The Serial ATA support is important because SATA is becoming the latest standard for drives and let's not forget this board also has SATA RAID support. Six USB ports should be enough for most end-users and the chipset supports eight so you could always add two more. The only feature that the board really lacked that we felt should have been included is onboard LAN. We are aware that there are three different versions of the AB60 series. The RS (the one we have) just happens to be the only one that does not have onboard LAN.

Here are the specs for the AB60 series motherboards:

• AB60R- 800MHz FSB CPU support, dual-channel DDR 400 memory support, HyperThreading, 8X AGP, Serial ATA w/ RAID, Gigabit LAN (10/100/1000 Mbps) FireWire, 6-channel audio

• AB60RS- 800MHz FSB CPU support, dual-channel DDR 400 memory support, HyperThreading, 8X AGP, Serial ATA w/ RAID, FireWire, (no LAN), 6-channel audio

• AB60N- 800MHz FSB CPU support, dual-channel DDR 400 memory support, HyperThreading, 8X AGP, Serial ATA, 10/100 LAN, 6-channel audio

The system was fast and stable. The performance was a little low compared to the other boards we have reviewed based on the 865PE chipset but we think that the BIOS may be a little premature. This would also explain the issues that we had when the FSB was raised. We are almost positive that a new BIOS will fix the overclocking problems and it may even increase performance. While we are on the topic of overclocking, this board lacks good overclocking options. FSB up to 233 is not enough for most enthusiasts, especially if you own a 2.4C processor, since they generally can overclock into the 270's. The CPU voltage is also very weak only allowing up to 1.5875V considering most board we have look at go beyond 1.65V and the ABIT going over 1.9V.

Other than a few BIOS options and the few problems we did encounter, we would recommend this motherboard to the average user. The Dual Channel support and 800 MHz FSB support gives really good performance. This would be a good motherboard for a low level workstations, schools, government offices, etc. We do not have a price quote on this motherboard at this time, so we can't comment on the performance & feature/price ratio.

Shuttle's support is very good. You can go directly to their support page and find many FAQs, downloads (manuals, drivers, BIOSes), or email a the tech support team directly. Shuttle is a well known manufacturer in the industry and they have done well because of their quality control and support. Hopefully, we will get a chance to update this review with a new BIOS but we still feel that this is a good motherboard but not for the overclockers.

Overall Score: 7.5/10