NVIDIA nForce2 chipset has been around for a long time now and VIA has yet to come up with a chipset that can run with the nForce2's chipset. Albatron has used this latest addition of the nForce2 chipset to build up its top of the line AMD motherboard the KX18D Pro II. The KX18D Pro II is based on the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset and includes almost every option available to the AMD processor family. The Southbridge is really the heart of this motherboard; MCP-T is the top of line chipset. The MCP-T incorporates the SoundStorm Technology which is arguably the best sound there is for a built on sound chip. MCP-T also supports NVIDIA's DualNet feature and FireWire. Albatron has used the MCP-T Southbridge chip because this really is the top of the line nForce2 motherboard. Part of the reason that the nForce2 chipset has dominated this past year is the use of dual channel DDR memory. Via has yet to come close to the performance of the nForce2, even the new KT600 chipset falls short.

The chipset also incorporates AMD Hyper-Transport technology which was designed as a high-speed, low latency, point to point link that can make integrated chipset and circuits possibly run 48 times faster than any thing out in the market place. By adding Hyper-Transport, Albatron is trying to add more bandwidth and reduce some of the bottlenecks with current motherboard designs.

As usual Albatron has chosen to stay away from the plain brown looking motherboards that still to this day some manufactures choose to use; Albatron used a nice blue color motherboard. Nothing ruins a custom case more than anything by looking in your case window and seeing a plain old brown motherboard. But looks are not everything though, you also have to back your looks up with a stable and highly tweakable board these days to get noticed. And this board gives everything the nForce2 chipset has to offer such as SATA, AGP 8X 6 USB 2.0 Ports, BIOS Mirror™, Voice Genie™ and 2 IEE 1394a (Fire wire) ports. This board is definitely aimed at the crowd that likes to tweak every option they're given, but it also has enough automatic settings for someone that wants a nice stable system that runs day and night without the need to tweak things.

Albatron has chosen to include 6 PCI slots on this motherboard design and 3 DDR memory slots. If you look at the picture of the PCI slots you can see that by adding that 6th slot they had to squeeze it real close to the AGP slot. And without any built on video you will have to install an AGP card making this top PCI slot almost completely worthless with today's video cards having huge fans on them for keeping the video cards GPU nice and cool. Most people are only going to use two of the memory slots to get the advantage of dual channel memory support, but Albatron chose to give you the third slot if you need more ram. Also notice how close the AGP slot is lined up to the bottom of the memory slots. When your AGP card is installed it makes taking memory in and out a little hard as most AGP cards are really long and run right across the bottom of the memory slots.

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Albatron has placed the ATA and floppy drive connectors close to the top of the motherboard. This is great placement for the ATA channels but by placing the floppy connector above the ATA channels, the cables have to cross each other making routing the cable a little difficult. The ATA channels are ATA133 and can support up to four ATA 133 devices, one master and one slave per channel.

Albatron has also included two Serial ATA 150 connectors that support RAID 0, 1 in software mode. A Silicon Image chip incorporated onto the motherboard controls the SATA 150 channels. The SATA BIOS comes up when booting the system and RAID mode can be set up there. Also included is a power connector adaptor that allows you to connect your 4 prong power connector to a SATA hard drive in case your power supply does not have the proper connectors for the new drives, which was the case with my power supply.

The Southbridge chip is the nForce2 MCP-T chip; MCP-T stands for Media and Communications Processor-Turbo. The MCP-T can handle both LAN/WAN and simultaneous streams of audio technology from Aureal. The MCP-T is the higher end Southbridge chip, as the standard uses the MCP Southbridge chip. It also supports IEE-1394 (Fire wire), USB 2.0 and also Ultra ATA 133 transfer protocol, NVIDIA says that the MCP-T is "The center of the digital media gateway".

The front header panel connectors are well marked on the board and a very good layout of the connector pins can be found in the owner's manual. The back I/O connectors are laid out pretty much in standard order but one thing you should notice is that there is only one com port available, which should be no big deal in today's world of USB 2.0 and IEE1394.

Well no great motherboard would be complete with out a good manual and lots of accessories. Albatron included their well detailed motherboard manual and a separate serial ATA manual. Included is a USB 2.0 header that gives you another 4 USB 2.0 ports for a grand total of 6 USB 2.0 ports. Also included is the 2 port IEE1394 (Fire wire) header to take care of your FireWire accessories you might own. There are 2 Parallel ATA133 cables, 1 floppy cable, and the SATA power supply adaptor that we mentioned earlier included as well.