AOpen i915GMm-HFS

Performance Summary:

When comparing the DDR versus DDR2 in real world performance, there is very little difference between the two because of the very limited Pentium M bus bandwidth. This will surprise some people, since there is theoretically over twice the memory bandwidth available between dual channel DDR2 at 533MHz and single channel DDR at 333MHz. As a result, don't worry too much if you can't afford a couple of sticks of DDR2 after you've forked out for the CPU.

General performance is very good considering the clock speed: the Pentium M's short pipeline and higher arithmetic FPU allows it to out perform a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 in Super PI - no mean feat considering the latter's 50% clockspeed advantage.

However, the Pentium M is hardly a true multimedia CPU, unlike the Pentium 4, it falls behind in all the digital encoding, transcoding and playback tests especially multitasking. The lack of hyper-threading, memory bandwidth or even an extra core really shows.

Gaming is a whole different matter. The clock speed gap plays a greater role at low detail, with the scores coming in slightly slower than a 3.4EE, but in a GPU limited, high detail setting there is literally no difference outside of acceptable experimental error.

Whilst the on-board video isn't bad it's about as tolerable as you can take. Don't even consider using it for 3D and even some 2D tasks are a little jerky but overall system performance is affected very little.

Final Thoughts...

We haven't wanted to sound too negative, as we do want to really like this board - it occupies a vacant niche market that is a growth area since the introduction of Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition. It would make a perfect Media Center PC with its multiple outputs, especially component for High Definition content - finding that on a PCI/PCI-Express card is like looking for unicorns.

AOpen are clearly focused on the media centre including extra SATA ports for more hard disks to store all your music and video on. There is also an extra gigabit Ethernet port so that you can stream media from two networks or plug one into your network and one into your Xbox/PS2/GameCube and a multitude of video and TV outputs.

Compared to VIA's EPIA platform they kick them into touch where processor ability is concerned and, as long as you can tolerate micro ATX over mini ITX, you will treat yourself to a platform that is faster in just about every conceivable manner - try playing High-Definition video feeds on a VIA EPIA and I assure you it'll fall over wheezing, begging you for the steroid inhaler.

Once you get it working how you want it to and providing you don't intend to overclock, fiddle with the heatsink, multitask or use the motherboards' onboard smart fan controller, it will prove to be an excellent Media Center solution. If you are looking towards the board as the basis for some Dothan overclocking we wouldn't recommend this board as there are boards that are much better suited to overclocking with the Pentium M.

If you are thinking of building a new main PC for yourself, we wouldn't recommend the Pentium M platform as a starting point. When the Pentium M is compared to a Pentium 4 it has somewhat poor general use performance compared to the hyper-threaded or dual cored desktop processors that Intel currently sells. It feels kind of a shame: the board is clearly designed for multimedia yet compared to a Pentium 4, the Pentium M's don't quite stand up to the competition. However, the platform is excellent for gaming if you're looking for a gaming PC with a difference.

Furthermore we just don't get the whole heatsink fiasco. It wouldn't matter so much if you were able to swap the included heatsink for something else - unfortunately you can't, unless you can find a heatsink that uses the same proprietary mounting system. Once it is damaged you literally cannot use it and, consequently, the motherboard anymore.

We can understand why AOpen have gone with their own mounting system and the inclusion of a heatsink, because Pentium M CPUs are OEM only and thus come without a heatsink. It would be seriously frustrating for the end user to have to RMA a perfectly good board simply because a required extra is damaged from normal wear and tear.

Buy this board if you are looking for a silent home theatre solution with Component Out, or possibly for a gaming system that is likely to not to change once the hardware has been installed. If you buy this board, don't fiddle with it because it's just too specialised for the niche market that AOpen have established. If you are on the look out for something that can be tweaked to your hearts content, we'd advise you to look at other options as this is unlikely to suit your requirements.