FIC KW15 i810E Slot-1/Socket-370 ATX

The Good

The first noticeable difference of FIC's KW15 from most ATX boards is the option for either a Slot-1 or Socket 370 CPU. The board we reviewed is equipped with a 5/1/0/0 (PCI/AMR/AGP/ISA) expansion slot configuration, though the ISA slot was optional. Unfortunately, the front panel connectors block two of the slots and the fan connector would block any full-length ISA cards if the option were exercised. The board sports two DIMM slots, the maximum allowed by the i810E chipset. While having both Socket 370 and Slot-1 CPU interfaces was useful, it seemed superfluous on a low-end board.

The layout of the KW15 follows the ATX specification and almost all of the components were placed to minimize cable clutter. All hard drive and floppy connectors are optimally located at the front of the board so that no cables are forced to run over either the CPU or the memory. Fortunately, the ATX power connector is placed at the side of the board, next to the CPU slot. This placement is much better than the common behind-the-CPU location. FIC included the standard green heatsink aboard the i810E chip. To be PC99 compliant, the standard colored connectors are included on the backpanel.

Intel's 82801 ICH allows full Ultra DMA/66 support, but the 82810E GMCH has 4MB of display cache which runs at 133MHz -- the main advantage of the i810E over the i810. Despite 133 MHz FSB support, the i810E chipset only runs the SDRAM at 100MHz -- probably because of Intel's push towards the RAMBUS of i820 boards.

As for all i810Es, the advantage of on-board video and sound can also be disadvantageous for users that desire peak graphical performance or maximum CPU power. However, both can be disabled, optimizing CPU power and allowing the addition of a more powerful video card. For basic audio, the AC97 CODEC is fine, but it utilizes the CPU for processing power. If needed, the CODEC can be disabled by a jumper allowing the addition of a PCI soundcard preserving CPU power and a PCI video card can be substituted for the integrated video.

There are eight 1200uF capacitors above the CPU slot and one 1200uF capacitor next to the DIMM slots. Even with a decent amount of capacitors, poor design seems to have led to low stability. Performance numbers did not differ much from the other i810E's tested.