Intel officially launched the i810 chipset and the Celeron-466 on the 26th of April. That same day, DFI announced a new series of i810-based motherboards and they were the first and only one to do so. Now, some of you may ask how is that possible for DFI to be the only one. The simple reason is, both Intel and DFI co-developed the i810 chipset and as such, DFI has a lead in manufacturing and marketing their boards based on the i810 chipset. Surprisingly, even the sample boards for Intel are made by DFI. Hmm... Usually, we see Asus, Abit or a few other big-board makers coming out with new boards first but it looks like DFI caught up this round due to it's keen interest.

For those who aren't familiar with the i810 chipset, it's somewhat resembles the ZX core with built in Video and Audio (with help of an AC97 codec chip). So it's a more integrated version of the ZX motherboards with a main aim in a more cost-effective system for majority of office PC's as well as simpler budget home PC's. It has the same crippled memory capacity of the ZX chipset (256mb) but it has 5 PCI slots and 1 AMR slot. And the big catch is that it has no AGP slot!! The chipset has an integrated i752 graphics engine with an internal Direct-AGP connection to the system ram.

You must have noticed and wondering what the hell is an AMR slot and where is our favorite AGP slot?? AMR stands for Audio & Modem Riser card. It does just as what it says, gives Audio and Modem functionality on the cheap. Basically this and all i810 boards are AC'97 ready meaning, it only requires en external audio or modem codec which helps the CPU to 'emulate' a real sound-card or modem. This means some of your CPU power is taken away to do this work but the big advantage is that these codecs are very cheap and it's able to give a typical Celeron-system (low-mid range home and business users) the needed functions without taking a big toll in CPU power. After all, isn't this the market where Intel is catering for with this chipset? This board is already equipped with an Audio codec by a tiny Analogue Digital AD1881-XST chip, so the modem functionality can be added in by a cheap AMR-based modem card (which is not manufactured by anyone yet but as more i810 motherboards sell, AMR expansion cards will roll in).

We are all very used to see the North and South Bridge chipsets handling all the motherboards functions but from now, Intel will use the new 3-chipset based Accelerated Hub Architecture (AHA) which allows for direct communication between the memory/CPU and HDDs, peripherals and the graphics adapter (because it's built into the chipset). The chipsets are Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (GMCH), I/O Controller Hub (ICH) and the Firmware Hub (FWH). The two most important chipsets are the GMC and ICH which connect to the majority of the devices and hence between the two, there is a bus that has bandwidth of 266mb/s which more than the old PCI bus that only has a 133mb/s bandwidth to serve many devices. Now you know why it's called Accelerated?

The GMC as the name suggests contains the graphics and memory controllers. The graphics part is handled by an integrated i752 core basically a spruced up i740. As for the memory bus, it is locked at 100mhz, while the FSB can be 66/100Mhz (the official ones but there are the usual un-official ones of course!). This means even if you intend to overclock the system by changing the FSB, the memory-bus is still at 100mhz, hence any standard PC100 rams will do the job without you needing to hunt for those faster and expensive rams. But you can't use your older PC-66 rams unless they do happen to be of good quality and are happy to run at 100Mhz. Please refer to my i810 chipset review for complete details of the chipset. Do take note that the motherboard pictures provided in this review are all sample versions and the actual one is a little different, e.g. PC-99 compliant coloured connectors and more. Meanwhile, check this picture out for getting to know the various new components and special items:

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The Good

This board I have here is the DFI PW65-D and I think the D stands for Deluxe as DFI told me this is the best board they have at hand now. They will be manufacturing and marketing this board first before making simplified versions of it later. The overall look of the board does give a good impression because every bit of space is used thoughtfully and the positioning of the components on this compact board is near excellent.

As this is the Deluxe version, the motherboard is fitted with the i82810-DC100 GMC and an i82801AA ICH which means the motherboard is fit with a 4MB 100Mhz Display Cache, support U-ATA66 HDDs and up to 6 PCI-Slots (refer to the i810 chipset review for more details). Due to the cost of manufacturing and designing a 6-PCI based motherboard, PW65-D comes with 5 PCI slots and 1 AMR slot. All 5 slots can utilize full-length PCI boards if needed. All the casing connect connectors are located in a neat row on the front edge of the board, in front of the PCI-slots, which is an excellent place location because the chances of your PC occupying all the PCI slots isn't high, hence the connectors can be easily reached. It is unlike many boards that place it in front of the IDE connectors or place it in the far corner of the board. Furthermore, the Casing connectors are not standing up as usual but are angled horizontally. There are 2 advantages in angled connectors; The 1st is to allow full-length PCI boards to be installed without hitting the connectors and secondly, it is so much easier to reach and manipulate the connectors. The only other board that I've seen these friendly angled connectors are in my old DFI-P5XV3 board and I wonder why they've not used this in their other boards until now.

So much for casing connectors! The IDE, Floppy and 2 DIMM slots are well placed in the front along with the FWH which is 4Mbit in size which accommodates the system and video bios. The ATX connector is place in the front, right-edge, next to the slot-1 connector. This motherboard and many new ones are placing the connector as I've just mentioned after realising how much air-flow is blocked by placing the ATX-connector behind the slot-1. This is even better than placing the connector in front of the memory slots. There are 3 well positioned red-coloured fan connectors.

It's nearly a jumperless motherboard but there a few items that DFI thinks it should controlled by jumpers which I'll explain one after another. The System-Beep-Message-Output selection jumper gives the option of out-putting the beeps through the casing speaker or your external speakers. If I were you, I would leave it to the default setting of casing speaker to be on the safe side (you might forget to connect the speakers or switch them on). CPU-FSB jumper selects between Auto, 66Mhz and 100Mhz bus-based CPU. Selecting 66Mhz bus allows access in the Bios for 66,75,83 and 95Mhz bus speeds. Selecting 100Mhz bus allows access in Bios for 100,112,117,124,133,138,140,150Mhz bus speeds. The FSB range isn't like the DFI's older BX and ZX board offerings where there are 103,105,107,110Mhz bus and many more. I wonder if the bus-speed generator used in those boards are not compatible with this new chipset? Or could it be the board I received is just an early one with a simpler FSB generator? I'll have to ask DFI soon. Oh, By the way, this board has a maximum of 7.5x multiplier recognized.

The other useful jumpers are the Clear-CMOS and a setting for the Wake-On-KB/Mouse. But before you use the latter function, you must make sure that your 5VSB power source of your Power-Supply can support > 720mA, else you won't be able to start your system! This board also has support for Suspend-To-Ram (STR). If you can recall Suspend-To-HDD, it works in a similar function, except now, all your applications, open programs and windows contents are dumped to your system ram before windows goes to 'off' state. It would look like your system has shutdown but there are 2 Led indicators on the motherboard to inform you that power is supplied to sustain the component's operation. The 1st led is the PCI-Standby Led (in front of PCI slots) which will always be lighted-up when power is supplied to the board to indicate the board is receiving power and to tell us that the PCI buses are ready to receive signals to operate the whole PC from PCI-Ethernet adapters or PCI-Modem cards through enabling the respective functions in the Bios. The 2nd led is the DIMM Standby Power Led (next to DIMM connectors) which will be lit when the PC is in operation and when it is using the STR mode. But when it is shutdown, this led will be off. Pretty neat feature! But if your going to use the STR feature, be sure to that your 5VSB power source of your Power-Supply can support > 1.2A. OUCH! That's quite high! I tried using it on my 800mA 5VSB source and it worked fine but maybe I was just lucky? To be on the safe side when using this feature, please follow the 1.2A minimum guide-line.

Other notable connectors on-board are the Chassis-Open, IrDA, Thermal-Connector and the3 different CD-Audio-in connectors (Mitsumi and 2 Sony). Usual ATX motherboards have 2 com-ports on the ATX-deck but since this board has built-in video, there is now 1 com-port and 1 VGA connectors. Don't worry! The 2nd com-port is still available but it is on blanking plate with a connection to the motherboard. So if you have only a need to use 1 com-port, you don't have to connect the 2nd com-port! There are 2 jumper blocks called Normal and Safe mode, these are for internal testing only and is best left untouched.

The Slot-1 Universal Retention Mechanism (URM) is already fixed on to the motherboard and it is the best type of URM I've seen to date. It uses a kind of slider on both sides to lock and free the processor. Therefore, removing processors from this board is as easy as removing a PCI card with almost no force unlike the vast majority of the other boards. All external power connectors such as Com-port, LPT port, USB ports, PS/2 ports, sound and game connectors are all PC-99 colour-spec compliant.

Installation of the board is very much the same as other boards. when you enter the bios, you'll find that it's changed quite a bit from all these years. It's a change for the better and it provides far more options than the normal bios we've seen to-date. The boot-up for this board is the fastest of any I've see to date and I really mean it! I guess it's because of the new Bios and especially the 4Mbit FWH, which holds the bios for both the system and the video. Installing the drivers to use the built-in video and integrated Audio codec + updating the inf. file to let windows recognize the i810 chipset is a cinch! Just pop the CD in, Auto-start menu will appear and just click on the needed items to update windows with new drivers. That's all! I was worried in the beginning but there's no problem at all. The given CD also comes with the Hardware Doctor monitoring utility and the Yamaha play-center, mixer and soft-synthesizer. The sound is very similar to that of an SB16 which is OK because of the intended market this board is selling to. Here are a few screen-shots:

Under the Sound Properties, you'll find a new column for Stereo-Wide. Depending on the user, he may or may not like the effect but you can mute it if you don't want that option. The picture on the Hardware-Doctor only show's that it's tracking the chassis fan. But I also had the CPU fan and another fan connected to the motherboard but they were only 2-pinned connectors, hence I can't track their status.

The Manual has all the info on each jumper and connector assignment and it's purpose. So the installation part is of no problem. The section where it explains the Bios features is a bit lacking, in terms of completeness. Overall, the manual is Ok. The sticker of settings to be pasted in your casing is really helpful. No referring to the manual needed. Just open the PC-case cover and you'll find all settings information printed. Now that's something unique to DFI. And the package also contains a floppy cable and the currently expensive U-ATA66 cable. Yep, that's right! An Ultra-ATA66 cable!