Shuttle AK31 (1)
Overclocker 3 July 2001

We have reviewed a number of KT266 boards from various manufacturers. In our early reviews of KT266 mainboards, we have seen flaws in design, and in some we rectified it by changing the location of resistors etc. In fact, we took a look at an early sample of Shuttle AK30 (DDR+SDR) and the results were quite disappointing. If you have seen our coverage on Computex 2001 at Taipei, we mentioned that VIA will be releasing a newer KT266 chipset (rumoured to be known as KT266pro). I have read forums elsewhere and there were discussions that the newer boards uses the KT266 new stepping. We were told that the new chipset is still at VIA and R&D of mainboard manufacturers haven't even seen it yet. So it's confirmed that Shuttle AK31 is using the same KT266 chipset as the rest of the mainboards currently available in the market.

The package comes with a thick manual, the supporting CDROM, 2 USB port extension and FDD,HDD cables. Every possible effort is done to make the manual concise and readable. Shuttle even segmented the manual with quick reference pages for DIY, Experienced DIY and System Integrator. This greatly reduces the time taken to get your system up and running.

I took a closer look at the revision number of the PCB. It is labelled as AK31V20.  I was told by Shuttle representative that this board performs very well. Well, let's take a look at the specifications on the next page before we proceed on with the details on the board and benchmarking of the system.

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