AOpen AX4C Max II

Review by Harry Lam on 12.16.03
Motherboard provided by AOpen

Overview:

A few months ago, when Intel officially released their Canterwood chipset, we took a look at one of the first Canterwood-based motherboards to hit the market, the AOpen AX4SC Max.  In the time since then, the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets have become the performance chipsets of choice for the Pentium 4 platform.

AOpen has recently released a second revision to their high-end Springdale motherboard, the AX4C Max II.  This motherboard only offers a few extra features over it's predecessor, but remains indicative of the innovation in AOpen's premium offerings.

Intel Canterwood Chipset (i875P):

The Canterwood is Intel's current high-end chipset, which primarily offers some performance improvements over the its other flagship chipset, the Springdale.  The Canterwood has faster memory access, ECC memory support, and PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology).  Essentially, the Canterwood is designed for not only the entry-level workstationmarket, but also the performance/mainstream PC markets.  Unlike certain versions of the Springdale, the Canterwood does not come with an integrated Graphics chipset.  Additionally, the Springdale does not officially support 400MHz CPUs.