SHUTTLE - Shuttle AN50R (nForce3 150) Motherboard Review

Geoff Gasior reviews Shuttle’s ATX-sized AN50R (nForce3 150) motherboard for Socket 754-based Athlon 64 processors:

As an alternative to its pint-sized XPC SN85G4 for 754-pin Athlon 64 processors, Shuttle is serving up the AN50R, a full-sized ATX board based on NVIDIA’s nForce3 chipset. The AN50R isn’t cute or cuddly, and it’s not the size of a breadbox. However, the board will fit in a wide variety of spacious, drive bay-rich ATX cases with plenty of room to spare. For enthusiasts unwilling to part with multiple PCI cards, hard disks, or optical drives, the AN50R has the potential to be a pretty sweet Athlon 64 platform. Does it deliver? Read on to find out.

…At the end of the day, the AN50R feels more like an entry-level workstation board than an enthusiast platform. For businesses looking to get in on Gigabit Ethernet and AMD64, the AN50R could be a great low-cost alternative to more expensive 940-pin Opteron platforms. Unfortunately, the fact that 754-pin Athlon 64 processors are currently only available in one expensive speed grade, the $400 3200+ model, puts a significant damper on the AN50R’s potential value.

I couldn’t find any AN50R’s for sale online, and I suspect that the board is suspended in limbo until AMD releases cheaper Athlon 64 speed grades. When that happens, the AN50R should be a pretty sweet platform for 64-bit business systems and low-end Socket 754 workstations, but it will probably never be a perfect platform for performance-hungry gamers or enthusiasts.