Fujitsu-Siemens D1387: Far From Exemplary
The Fujitsu-Siemens D1387 retail packaging exudes functionality.
The Fujitsu-Siemens D1387 came up short in the tests.
The complete Fujitsu-Siemens package.
Motherboards made by German-based Fujitsu-Siemens have a very good reputation among German OEM manufacturers, thanks mainly to Siemens' highly automated production techniques, which are unmatched by the competition in Asia. The work performed exclusively by machines in Augsburg, Germany, is entrusted to a human workface by smaller manufacturers in the Far East. So we were all the more surprised by the D1387 sent to us for testing. We had barely begun when the first error occurred: the latest Siemens BIOS identified the Pentium 4/2533 as a Celeron 2533. Then, the benchmark tests revealed that the manufacturer had developed the board for conservative consumers with little interest in high performance. We conducted testing in silent mode, but just before the CPU cooler started up automatically, the processor switched to throttling mode.
The D1387 disappointed in the tests, identifying the Pentium 4/2533 as a Celeron, despite the latest BIOS.
The 'Enhanced Cooling' option in the D1387 BIOS resulted in the Pentium 4 continuously switching to throttling mode when under a heavy workload.
This error message appeared just as we were about to install the enclosed 'Systemguard' tool.
To sum up: during performance tests, the silent mode has to be deactivated. We suggest adjusting the automatic CPU fan to cut in about 5 degrees earlier to prevent the loss of performance that occurs when the processor switches to throttling mode too soon. To overcome this problem, we turned to the enclosed 'Systemguard' tool. However, attempts to install the tool were cut short with the message, "No thermal control hardware available Systemguard not possible." Although the Fujitsu-Siemens is equipped with the Intel 845G chipset and could therefore support DDR333 RAM, the manufacturer has chosen to stick to the letter of Intel's validation guidelines. This limits the maximum memory clock to 133 MHz, for DDR266, with the predictable result that the D1387 came in a resounding last out of 16 in the benchmark tests. Since the board is strictly for sale to OEM clients only, there is no retail price. All in all, it was a less than glorious entry from one of Germany's top manufacturers.
Assembly is nevertheless second to none - Fujitsu-Siemens's Spartan board is perfectly put together.
Still a rarity - SMD transistors in the controller.
