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The 7njs Zenith Ultra is built around the nforce2 architecture. Seeing
as it’s been quite a strong performer in other recent systems, it’s
no surprise that Chaintech would choose this as their platform. Below
you can see the versatility and range of features the nforce2 provides,
from Dual Channel DDR400 support all the way down to 6 USB 2.0 ports.
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That’s quite a lot of functions to pack onto such a small area. As
you can see above though, they do quite a good job at distributing the space.
One thing I found quite strange is their decision to shorten its width.
If you look closely, the edge of the board falls just short of the third
row of motherboard mounts. This lack of support causes the board to flex
quite a bit when pushing in the Ram and IDE cables and could have easily
been avoided with another quarter inch of PCB. From this one issue alone
I can foresee quite a deal of returns and unexplainable problems. That brainfart
aside, let’s break down the architecture graph and see exactly where
they’ve put everything.
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Taking a look under that giant golden active cooler you will find the Nforce2
SPP (system
platform processor) or what is commonly known as the Northbridge. This handles
the AGP 8x, Duel DDR400 and FSB up to 400 MHz all on independent busses.
With the active cooling, this chip stays pretty cool to the touch even without
any thermal compound. In fact, I’m overclocked to 400FSB as I write
this and I’m having no stability issues what so ever. If you plan
to make use of the Dual DDR function, don’t forget to install one
of your two matching modules on bank 3, failing to do so won’t allow
the feature to work. This brings me to one of my minor annoyances on the
board. The location of the AGP slot and the DDR banks are so close to each
other that larger video cards can actually prevent you from operating the
latches. Although this doesn’t affect the performance of either, it
would be nice not to have to worry about it.
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Here we see the MCP-T, the Turbo version of the Media and Communications
Processor commonly known as the Southbridge. This little puppy handles the
ATA133, 6 USB 2.0 ports, Dual network controllers etc, all with a little
help from the following.
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The external LAN Controller, the ICS 1893Y-10 helps out with the 10/100
Ethernet functionality. One thing I was disappointed in was the fact that
Chaintech decided to drop one of the two onboard NICs. The MCP-T has the
ability to use both the nVidia LAN and the 3Com 10/100 Media Access Controllers.
For some odd reason the 3Com has been disabled. If you have the ability,
why drop it?
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