abit LG-95C vs. ASUS P5E-V HDMI
Author:
Date: 26.01.2008
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Layout and Features
Both the motherboards are built on the Micro-ATX form factor, and therefore they are of compact size: ASUS - 244x244 mm, abit - 244x220 mm.
We had no special complaints about the PCB design of the board. Both the motherboards offer the integrated Intel's graphic core: in the ASUS' board it is GMA X3500, and in the abit board - GMA 950. Besides, the boards allow for using an external video card which is installed into the PCI Express x16 slot. On the abit LG-95C board, there are as many as two slots, one of which runs in the PCI Express x4 mode.
The configuration of the remaining ports is as follows: on the ASUS board, there are two PCI Express x1 slots, and a PCI slot; on the abit board - two PCI slots.
To cool the north bridge, both the motherboards use only aluminum radiators without fans. On the ASUS board, there is a really massive radiator, whereas the engineers at abit have confined with a small needle-type radiator.
As regards the memory subsystem, ASUS P5E-VM HDMI uses four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules, with the overall supported memory capacity being 8 GB.
The abit motherboard uses only two 240-pin DIMM (DDR2) slots, with the overall supported memory capacity being 2 GB. The i945GC chipset supports a dual-channel configuration, but the maximum memory frequency is 667 MHz.
On ASUS P5E-VM HDMI, there is a south bridge ICH9R. This chip supports six SerialATA II links, with the option to arrange a RAID-array of levels 0, 1, 0+1. But to support the ParallelATA, there is an additional JMB368 controller.
As regards the model abit LG-95C, it uses the ICH7 chip which provides support for four SerialATA II ports. This chip provides a native support for one ParallelATA link.
In the end, eight hard disks can be plugged in to the ASUS board (six SATA II and two PATA), while six hard disks (four SATA II and two PATA) to the abit board.
Then, the ASUS board supports 12 USB 2.0 ports, six of which are on the rear panel, with 6 more plugged in with brackets (missing in the package bundle). On the abit board, there are eight ports, half of which are on the rear panel, with the other half requires additional brackets (also missing in the bundle).
Note that ASUS P5E-VM HDMI uses a FireWire controller - a VT6308P chip made by VIA. This chip supports two Firewire ports: one integrated, with the other one additional (the bracket is missing in the bundle).
Both the motherboards implement the High Definition Audio subsystem, with similar ALC883 chips used as the codec.
Now a few words on the network support: the ASUS board uses a high-speed network controller (Gigabit Ethernet) Atheros, while the abit board - a 10/100 Mbit Realtek RTL8100C controller:
The board's rear panel is of the following configuration:
The trait of the rear panel of ASUS P5E-VM HDMI is in the complete lack of LPT and COM ports. Instead of them, there are VGA- and HDMI-outputs. The user can plug in a monitor via the DVI, for which a special adapter is used (available in the package bundle). Besides, on the panel there is a coaxial SP-DIF-output and a FireWire port. We also note that the ASUS board supports one COM port via a bracket (which is missing in the bundle). As regards the abit board, there is one of COM ports and a LPT port on the rear panel. In all the other respects, the configuration of the panel on abit board is fully standard.
Here is a schematical component layout diagram of the boards:
Now on to the BIOS settings.
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