Reinforcements: 6 New Athlon Boards With VIA's KT133A

nmC 8TTX+

Board Revision: 0.3

BIOS Version: January 8, 2001

NMC also jumped onto the "overclocking train", giving the user a vast set of valuable options: Vcore adjustment, VI/O adjustment and several clock speeds between 124 and 166 MHz. The two USB hubs can be enabled or disabled separately.

On the motherboard you can find six PCI slots, one ISA, the AGP 4x slot with card lock, HighPoint IDE RAID controller chip plus VIA 686B IDE controller (both UltraATA/100), giving you a total of four channels for up to eight devices. Like Epox, NMC placed two digits on the motherboard to allow the user to check the system status while booting.

The layout of the 8TTX+ envisions a second flash BIOS chip, which has not been equipped on our sample. In the vicinity of the CPU socket you can see several big capacitors, which could cause problems with some CPU coolers. Talking about coolers, NMC decided to cool the VT8363A (North Bridge) chip with an active fan, which is the best decision if one wants to create a highly overclockable motherboard.

The placement of the IDE connectors and the ATX power connector is not ideal, as you have to run the cables over hot components like the graphics card or the CPU.

The sound system is AC97-compliant and provides three line-in connectors. Three fan headers have been placed on the motherboard, giving the user enough options to attach fans.

The box is quite complete: Besides the obligatory drivers CD you will get the required flat cables, manual, USB adapter cable to use the ports 3 & 4 and a CD containing Norton Ghost and Anti Virus.