Fujitsu-Siemens D1327
Board Revision:
BIOS Version: 1.02.1327
It's quite difficult to find out what key to press in order to enter the BIOS. The D1327 uses a PhoenixBIOS just like Asus, but the post message is only displayed for about one second. Press F2 if you want to enter the BIOS setup.
Fujitsu-Siemens' D1327 can be called one of the best manufacturers, in terms of quality. Still, they usually take the conservative route. As with many of its predecessors, the D1327 is the slowest motherboard in this review. That's not so tragic, as it is usually sold via OEM channels rather than directly to end users. Thus, it also comes with on-board 100 MBit LAN, AC97 sound with two line-ins and AGP card lock. At first glance, the design does not seem to be very smart, as one IDE connector is placed in front of the AGP and two of the six PCI slots. However, this motherboard gets by with the smallest number of components and jumpers; the board surface is cleaner than any other i845 motherboard. One very nice feature is Fujitsu-Siemens' advanced thermal management with automatic clock speed reduction and system monitoring.
Of course we measured the FSB speed, as we did with every motherboard. Surprisingly, the FSC does not allow the FSB to be determined exactly; WCPUID detected several values between 98.9 and 99.79 MHz. This may also be one of the reasons for the apparently below-average performance of this motherboard. The other reason could be the automatic acoustic management for ATA/100 IDE drives: if your hard drive supports it, the BIOS will automatically switch to silent mode, which is, of course, the slowest possible setting.
Fujitsu-Siemens includes a driver CD, an 80-pin IDE cable and a short manual (maybe a bit too short).
