Motherboards in 2001 Preview: Part 1

FIC

FIC also showed us their DDR solutions as well as variations of some boards we have already seen.  So far they have one DDR solution for AMD processors and one for Intel processors.  FIC has not announced a board using the i850 chipset yet, but they told us that one should be ready early next year.

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Above is the AD11, FIC’s Socket-A DDR solution.  It uses the AMD 761 North Bridge and the VIA 686B South Bridge.  It supports 200/266 MHz FSB AMD processors and up to 2GB of DDR SDRAM.  Once again, that 2GB limit of the 761 North Bridge is going to be tough to reach with only 2 DIMM slots on the AD11.

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This is the FP11, FIC’s DDR solution for Socket-370 processors.  It uses the VIA Apollo Pro266 / chipset.  The board displayed is not the final version , which should add optional IDE RAID and an ACR slot.

FIC also has the AM33, using the VIA KM133 chipset. The Socket-370 equivalent of the AM33 is the FR31, which uses the VIA PM133.  Otherwise the AM33 and FR31 are more or less the same feature-wise, with both boards using the integrated Savage4 video of their respective chipsets from VIA and offering similar expansion options.

Final Words

Click here to read part 2 of our motherboards in 2001 preview.