Transcend TS-ASL3 Socket 370 Motherboard

Introduction

Even though at current times we know Transcend as one of the leading motherboard manufactures, not too long ago were they unheard of in this arena. They were only known as a very large memory manufacture, with a wide variety of memory types under their production.

Even though a latecomer to this industry, Transcend has produced some great motherboards in the past, which are capable of competing even with mainstream motherboard manufactures like ABIT and ASUS. Today they bring us the TS-ASL3 Socket 370 motherboard based on Intel’s i815E chipset.

Now in our review of the ASUS CULS2 motherboard we mentioned that Intel introduced this chipset as a replacement for the ever-popular 440BX chipset. This might be true in the years to come; however for now at least the 440BX chipset will remain in the picture. If we take our mind a few months to the past we could remember Intel’s announcement of their i820 chipset. However the i820 chipset failed at the same speed they came in due to the high price of RDRAM, and due to the fact that they didn’t offer any significant performance gains. In a desperate effort to promote the i820 chipset they offered it again with SDRAM support, which unfortunately failed again due to problems with the MTH. (Memory Translator Hub). Due to these factors the hearts and minds of manufactures as well as consumers didn’t stray away from the BX440 chipset since they offered great performance and reliability. Not to be out done by their failures, couple of months down the road after the introduction (& failure) of the i820, Intel announced the i815/i815E chipset. So far this is the only contender that could be placed next to the 440BX chipset since they offer the same amount of performance (or more), reliability and value. Due to this factor today we see a wide range of manufactures adopting the i815E chipset in their new board releases. One day they’ll supersede the 440BX chipset no doubt, but when that’ll happen cannot be easily determined.

That was just a brief history of how the i815E chipset came to be, so now lets get back to the TS-ASL3 Socket 370 motherboard. Before we go ahead and deal with the board and its features ,we`ll take a look at the boards specifications.
Specifications

The non-inclusion of an ISA slot may be reminiscent of modern times, nevertheless some users might still be hanging onto ISA modems or sound cards. If you’re such a user, be prepared to go ahead with a modem/soundcard upgrade as well, if you plan on buying this board.
The BIOS

The board uses the Award Modular BIOS 6.00PG. It features a Jumperless CPU setup utility, which is most common in today’s high-end boards. The FSB speed is determined by the CPU speed you’re running and vary accordingly. The following table will give you an understanding of the various FSB speeds available depending on your CPU clock.

This kind of limitation is a good feature to be included for all those budding overclockers, since you are restricted from pushing the processor too far away from the default FSB. However for a hardcore overclocker who wants to literally squeeze every ounce of power from his CPU, these restrictions can be a nightmare. Therefore in order not to disappoint these guys Transcend has included jumpers on the board, which allow you to manually set the FSB speed. Manual setting up gives you the option of choosing a wide range of FSB speeds from 66MHz to 166MHz in 1MHz increments, which gives all you overclocking enthusiasts a whole load of numbers to mess around with.