Chaintech V945P: Solid
Board-Revision: 101
BIOS-Version: 02.08.2005
Chaintech sent us its V945P, which is the company's base model for the Intel world. It is capable of running all Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors except for the 840 models and the Extreme Edition, due to a voltage regulator that features three phases only.
The Gigabit Ethernet chip is from Marvell, Realtek chipped in their PHY for the 7.1 HDA sound system. Chaintech included a two-channel UltraATA/133 ITE controller in order to add storage interface capabilities to the pruned Intel chipset. As seen with some other boards already, the floppy interface is placed a bit awkwardly.
There are two x1 PCIe slots and three 32 bit PCI slots available for upgrading the system. What we missed, though, were color-coded connectors. These would not have been much more expensive to include, and they would be a help for the user in putting together components and cables.
Chaintech's board has overclocking features that offer flexibility that is comparable to the bigger motherboard companies. However, there is no Windows software that makes these features easier to use and more accessible.
Lastly we have to report a small bug that was found when fine-tuning the memory timings: setting TRAS results in four clock rates more latency than chosen. We had to select TRAS 4 in order to get an 8-cycle setting. A BIOS update should easily fix this.
