Shuttle’s SN41G2 & SK41G: Two Athlon Small Form Factor PCs

Shuttle has done astoundingly well with their XPC line of small form factor PCs; comprising well over half of their revenue, XPC sales have been strong and continue to grow. What’s truly impressive is that Shuttle has been able to maintain such incredible sales while producing primarily Intel-only solutions.

When it comes to XPCs outfitted with an AGP slot, the only two entries have been the SS51G and SB51G – both Pentium 4 based solutions. If you ask any XPC vendor however, one of their biggest requests is for an Athlon XP based small form factor (SFF) PC with an AGP slot.

Companies like MSI are already working on SFF designs based around AMD’s Athlon 64, which should boast a noticeably cooler operating temperature. But keeping in mind that 2003 will still be the year of the Athlon XP for AMD, there’s focus and demand for SFF Athlon XP solutions. Waiting a handful of months for Athlon 64 to hit isn’t an appropriate answer, so the market once again turns to Shuttle to do what they’ve done so well lately – build a capable XPC.

We’ve already established that there’s demand out there for Athlon XP based SFF PCs, and we’ve made the point that waiting for Athlon 64 (Hammer) isn’t really an option but one question remains – why does the demand exist?

The biggest factor driving demand for Athlon XP SFF PCs is the idea of delivering a lower cost platform. Athlon XPs are still more cost effective than Pentium 4s, while still able to offer competitive performance. Keeping that in mind, it’s not a surprise that Shuttle’s first AMD based XPC with an AGP slot was based around VIA’s KM266 chipset; a very affordable solution, the SK41G made many happy but Shuttle would not stop there.

NVIDIA’s nForce2 would make a perfect candidate for a Shuttle XPC; a highly integrated chipset, with a powerful integrated GPU and the fastest overall platform for the Athlon XP. Shuttle hasn’t kept their nForce2 based XPC a big secret as we’ve reported on the SN41G2 countless times since the chipset’s official launch. Delays in the shipment of the IGP version of nForce2 put a wrench in Shuttle’s plans but today the SN41G2 is finally ready for public consumption, and we’re here to bring you a look at the most highly anticipated additions to Shuttle’s XPC line since the first AGP enabled XPC.

Because of the close proximity of the two AMD based XPC releases, we’re covering both solutions in this review – the KM266 based SK41G and the new nForce2 based SN41G2.