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Freeway Design FWD-CUPA Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Sunday, September 16, 2001
Conclusion
Conclusion
I have always been skeptical of motherboards with lots of onboard features. In many cases poor performance
and limited expandability plagues these offerings. That's not an issue with the FWD-CUPA, this board has been pre-tuned at the
factory to provide exceptional performance and stability straight out of the box. Plus with a few tweaks in the bios you can
unleash additional performance never thought possible from a VIA chipset.
Some of the things that make this board stand out from the crowd is by far the additional multi-media features like CardBus, digital 5.1 audio, onboard Ethernet and IEEE 1394. Plus for the avid hardware guy like myself Freeway has provided a full set of PCI slots with plenty of room to expand, and each of the onboard features can be disabled with the flip of a jumper.
So what did I like about this board. Believe it or not I liked just about everything, the board is based around a stable SDRAM chipset that supports many of the latest standards like ATA100 and AGP 4x. There is also the addition of onboard Ethernet and High-Quality sound that are big pluses in the professional workstation arena. The last two additions to this motherboard I would have never expected to see on the desktop, those would be IEEE 1394 (Firewire), and PCIbus (Cardbus). This addition alone adds value and freedom to the end user that has a Macintosh and/or Laptop in their home or office.
Really the only concern I have about this motherboard is limited to an installation problem I had. You might have noticed the orientation of the ZIF-Socket in relation to the motherboard capacitors. One would need to be very careful while installing a heatsink and fan combo after this motherboard has been installed. I found myself getting dangerously close to breaking the capacitors while affixing the Alpha.
Once again I am very pleased with this Freeway product. This motherboard provides exceptional stability with a vast array of expandability options including those found onboard.
Some of the things that make this board stand out from the crowd is by far the additional multi-media features like CardBus, digital 5.1 audio, onboard Ethernet and IEEE 1394. Plus for the avid hardware guy like myself Freeway has provided a full set of PCI slots with plenty of room to expand, and each of the onboard features can be disabled with the flip of a jumper.
So what did I like about this board. Believe it or not I liked just about everything, the board is based around a stable SDRAM chipset that supports many of the latest standards like ATA100 and AGP 4x. There is also the addition of onboard Ethernet and High-Quality sound that are big pluses in the professional workstation arena. The last two additions to this motherboard I would have never expected to see on the desktop, those would be IEEE 1394 (Firewire), and PCIbus (Cardbus). This addition alone adds value and freedom to the end user that has a Macintosh and/or Laptop in their home or office.
Really the only concern I have about this motherboard is limited to an installation problem I had. You might have noticed the orientation of the ZIF-Socket in relation to the motherboard capacitors. One would need to be very careful while installing a heatsink and fan combo after this motherboard has been installed. I found myself getting dangerously close to breaking the capacitors while affixing the Alpha.
Once again I am very pleased with this Freeway product. This motherboard provides exceptional stability with a vast array of expandability options including those found onboard.
I would like to thank the people of Freeway for providing this motherboard.
You can see all of Freeway's product offerings at the following websites
http://www.freeway.co.jp (Japanese)
http://www.freeway.co.tw (Chinese)
and the Retail shop "TwoTop"
http://www.twotop.co.jp (Japanese)
Yes I realize that these sites are not in English. If you have any questions feel free to contact me and I will do my best to help.
http://www.freeway.co.jp (Japanese)
http://www.freeway.co.tw (Chinese)
and the Retail shop "TwoTop"
http://www.twotop.co.jp (Japanese)
Yes I realize that these sites are not in English. If you have any questions feel free to contact me and I will do my best to help.
