ALBATRON - Albatron KX18D Pro II (nForce2 Ultra 400 + MCP-T) Review

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.

…If you looked at all the charts close enough you can tell by the numbers alone that Albatron has built a stellar nForce2 motherboard. It has all the latest available options that you can think of today for the AMD Athlon XP line of processors. Of course with the introduction of the Athlon64 a couple of days ago, this board can now be classified as a budget board. Don’t let that fool you though. For the price of this board and the low price of the Athlon XP Barton processors, this board has plenty of power to last you a very long time. I have run a lot of motherboards this past year and the Gigabyte has been one of the best I have used, but Albatron has changed that with the introduction of the KX18D Pro II motherboard. This thing is super speedy and highly stable. After pushing this board hard for the past two weeks, it has not let me down once.