If there ever was a motherboard manufacturer that could release the most products in a single breath it would have to be Shuttle. Ever since the days of their one-hit-wonder TX board, the HOT-569, Shuttle has taken it upon themselves to build up a product line that would satisfy as many users as possible.

While the rest of the industry goes after ABIT, AOpen, and ASUS for the title of Best Motherboard Manufacturer, Shuttle quietly sits back and tailors to the needs of the rest of the population out there. Not everyone wants the most expensive gaming system, and not everyone wants to do hard core 3D rendering on their Windows NT powerhouses, so what do the users that simply want a computer for their aging child, internetless siblings or strictly analog parents do? They pay a visit to www.spacewalker.com and check out Shuttle's latest product offerings. The year of the sub $1000 PC is upon us, will Shuttle be the manufacturer to bring you that three digit PC your wallet can afford to use?

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
78/C+

Do not compare newer ratings to older ones, the newer ratings are much more aggressive

The Good

As with all Shuttle products, you can expect the HOT-675 to closely resemble its predecessors in one way or another, however what you may find as a surprise is that the HOT-675 is actually a trend-setter for the future Slot-1 Shuttle Mainboard line. The almost cute Micro ATX form factor the HOT-675 is built around will fit into any ATX case (for those of you that aren't familiar with Micro ATX, consider it an ATX version of the Baby AT form factor from a few years back) and allows for just about anything to be piled onto the motherboard without taking up too much space.

The form factor naturally has its own expansion constraints, however for those users that are interested in a low-cost secondary system with a very low expandability priority, a Micro ATX motherboard is the ideal choice over something like an integrated NLX solution (with on-board video, etc..., requiring a specially designed case).

The 2/2/1 (PCI/ISA/AGP) expansion slot configuration gives the impression that Shuttle made the HOT-675 to be a low-cost 440EX based solution, however in reality, the heart of the motherboard is none other than our loving friend, the 440BX chipset. Managing to squeeze a total of 3 DIMM slots on the motherboard in addition to the 2/2/1 expansion slot configuration, you're able to install an Ethernet card (for a shared modem connection), an AGP accelerator (for that gaming fun) and another PCI or ISA device depending on your needs. This is made possible by Shuttle's decision to include a Creative Labs ES1371 AC97 audio controller which happens to be virtually identical to the Creative Labs Ensoniq Audio PCI device. The quality of the sound is average for a PCI audio however since it is a PCI device the CPU utilization is much lower than your conventional ISA sound cards, not bad for a "low-cost" motherboard.

Just because the HOT-675, by definition, is a "low-cost" motherboard doesn't mean that it will be lacking any of the features you've come to expect from any BX based motherboard. Like most newer motherboards, the HOT-675 supports keyboard power-on, wake-on LAN, and a handful of the most common power management features. For those of you that invested in LS-120 drives, the HOT-675 supports a bootable LS-120 device in addition to your standard boot options. The HOT-675 comes bundled with Shuttle's standard Installations Guide, which is a well made and easy to read pamphlet containing all necessary jumper settings for the motherboard. Like most newer Shuttle mainboards, the HOT-675 is semi-jumperless in that the clock multiplier can be selected from within the Award BIOS Setup making the initial configuration of the motherboard quite simple.

As mentioned above, the HOT-675 is a trend setter for future Shuttle mainboards with its support for the 1/4 PCI clock divider for all overclocked FSB settings past 100MHz. What settings does that include? Shuttle took the route of most motherboard manufacturers by outfitting the HOT-675 with a 150MHz clock generator that supports the 115, 120, 140 and 150MHz FSB settings (all with an optional 1/4 PCI clock divider) in addition to the 66/75/83/100/103/112/133MHz settings. Like the AOpen AX6BC AnandTech Reviewed, the HOT-675 is operational at up to 140MHz, however anything above that puts too great of a strain on the AGP card and the memory to be considered a viable option for normal usage. A few key FSB features are the 115MHz and 120MHz FSB settings allowing those users with extremely FSB sensitive AGP cards and memory to pick a few "in-between" overclocked speeds instead of the usual 112MHz or 124/133MHz options.

The stability and reliability of the HOT-675 is definitely noteworthy as it breaks away from the "cheap" impression the Micro ATX form factor may give you and provides average stability as AnandTech's 24 hour burn in tests showed. The test system crashed a total of 2 times during continuous normal operation and 3 times during overclocked operation, which can be considered average for a motherboard. Of course, ideally, the system would be 100% stable but that isn't always possible.

The performance of the 675 is what everyone has come to expect from a well made BX motherboard, performance should be the last consideration you make when looking for a new BX motherboard.

The Bad

You can't really discount expansion as being a con to going with the HOT-675 since it was never intended to be an expansion-friendly motherboard, however you can criticize Shuttle's allocation of space on the motherboard.   The board features a generous 2/2/1 expansion slot configuration, however chances are, most users will want to have more PCI slots than ISA slots if you're going to be building a computer for long-term usage, in which case a 3/2/1 configuration would've been more desireable.  If that doesn't happen to be what you're looking for, then you're in luck, Shuttle must've read your mind.

The relatively sparse allocation of capacitors on the motherboard, especially around the BX chipset itself could bring long term reliability into question, however due to the relatively small size of the motherboard, the length of traces between critical components should already be short enough to allow for an average maintainance of capacitance during operation.  At the same time, the HOT-675 is no Tyan or Supermicro server board, so you can't expect reliability in do-or-die situations to be in the top 2% of motherboards.  These are just considerations to make when you think about applications for a system based on the 675.

The final bone to pick with the HOT-675 is the fact that only the clock multipliers can be configured in the BIOS, and the FSB settings still have to be manually selected making the initial setup a little more complicated than it should have been.  Looks like a quick lesson from ABIT would be helpful here.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM (140MHz): LG Semiconductor PC100 SDRAM (7ns)
SDRAM Tested (140MHz): 1 x 64MB LGS PC100 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested (< 140MHz): 1 x 64MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 98 & 3D Winbench 98 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• Quake 2 tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color in Software Rendering Mode

The Final Decision

Since the Pentium II and even the Celeron processors aren't priced low enough to be considered dirt-cheap solutions for a secondary system, the term "low-cost mainboard" should be used loosely when referring to any BX based Slot-1 motherboard.  In the case of the Shuttle HOT-675, the board is well designed, and priced low enough to be considered a good basis for a starter system with future upgrade opportunities (Pentium III, newer Celeron processors) and it does provide a good threat to the low cost argument from the Super7 market.  Shuttle's style and finesse is made clear with the HOT-675, unfortunately the motherboard is lacking the passion that would set it apart from the hundreds of other "low-cost" Micro ATX motherboards out there.  It's a good buy if the price is right.