After poor motherboard support for the AMD K6 series, the success of the Athlon was very dependent on the motherboard support it would be able to acquire. The initial prognosis looked good, with AMD's Fester reference board coming out of the gates strong. It was a very basic board, but was extremely solid and got the job done without a hiccup. When we got a hold of Athlon boards from Gigabyte and MSI, it was evident that they were heavily based on the AMD reference design with a few minor modifications. At the time, FIC's SD-11 looked to be the only board on the horizon that would deviate from the AMD reference design. As we found out, it was as different as you can possibly get and still be an Athlon motherboard.

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
85/B

The Good

The FIC SD-11 was the first board to stray from the AMD Fester reference design, and the changes are evident immediately. The board itself is physically much larger than any other Athlon motherboard to date, but this is not due to the addition of any special functionality. Rather, there is just a lot of space between all the components. While this does make it a little easier to work with the board, the increased trace lengths can reduce stability due to added capacitance or interference.

The SD-11 is also the first to use a hybrid AMD/VIA chipset. The Northbridge is the AMD 751, while the south bridge is the VIA VT82C686A "Super" South Bridge. Using the VT82C686A offers a few small advantages over the AMD 756 south bridge used on most Athlon boards. The Super South Bridge supports 4 USB ports, an AMR slot, and has built-in hardware monitoring. A small header offers support for the two extra USB ports, which can be run to an expansion slot cover or to the front of your case if it supports such a feature. Despite support in the 686A, there is no AMR slot, which is no big deal since we've found it to be pretty useless for most users. Expansion is rounded out by a unique 5/1/1 (PCI/ISA/AGP) slot configuration and the standard 3 DIMM slots.

As mentioned previously, the SD-11 is a very large board with a very unique layout. In fact, the SD-11's layout is nothing like that intended by the ATX specification. The IDE connectors are to the left of the DIMM slots, right in front of the AGP slot, which could pose a problem for a long AGP card. At the very least, it is annoying as the IDE cables will run right over the DIMM slots. Like the reference design, the ATX power connector is behind the DIMM slots. The ATX I/O panel is also not the typical double decker found on most motherboards and cases. Instead, the USB and PS/2 ports have switched positions and everything is shifted half an inch. Further, there is only one onboard serial port. Why FIC chose to implement such a strange ATX I/O panel is beyond us as it offers no advantages whatsoever. Fortunately, FIC has included an ATX 2.01 compliant I/O shield in the box, so it shouldn't cause a problem for most users.

It turns out that all this wackiness with the SD-11 is due to the fact that it is really an engineering sample that was never meant to be released to the public. But when the Athlon was released, FIC was caught with its pants down and without a motherboard ready to ship. The SD-11 was rushed to production and that is now what you can buy from your favorite FIC retailer. The upcoming SD-13 should be considered FIC's "real" Athlon solution.

Like the other Athlon motherboards that have found their way into the AnandTech lab, the SD-11 uses a voltage regulator setup very similar to AMD's reference design. Like many other Athlon motherboards, the SD-11 skimps on the voltage regulator. Although FIC went ahead and included the regulator heatsinks, they have only included half the regulators found on the reference design. The SD-11's PCB was designed with the complete regulator setup in mind, but production models simply do not have all the regulators installed. Like the reference design, there is one large 1000uF capacitor next to the Slot-A connector that tries its best to help keep things stable.

As with most other Athlon boards, the SD-11 features a pretty basic BIOS setup. FIC has chosen to use the AMI's text BIOS (i.e. not the AMI WinBIOS that everyone either loves or loves to hate), rather than the almost ubiquitous Award 4.51PG. Although FIC broke the mold with the core BIOS code, it is still a very minimal setup with virtually no tweaking options.

The SD-11 was the first Athlon motherboard to offer overclocked FSB speeds with 124 and 133 MHz settings, available via the BIOS setup. Unfortunately, AnandTech's testing has shown that the AMD 751 north bridge is currently not stable above 110 MHz, so these speeds are effectively useless. Fortunately, overclocking the Athlon can now be accomplished through manipulation of the multiplier using a "golden fingers" device.

When AnandTech first looked at the FIC SD-11 at the preproduction level, stability was terrible in all situations. We had trouble running Athlon's faster than 600 MHz on the board. Fortunately, with revision 1.8, FIC seems to have worked out all the bugs as the SD-11 was quite stable. This time, we had no trouble running CPU's up to 800 MHz, the fastest available from AMD. Rest assured that revision 1.8 or higher should be the only thing on the market at this point.

Power management consists of pretty much the standard stuff these days. Wake on LAN and wake on modem ring headers are available to allow the system to power on in the presence of network activity or incoming call. The BIOS can be set to turn on the system at a specific time. The CPU fan can be shut off when the system suspends to quiet things down a bit. Full ACPI support is included for additional power management options under an ACPI compliant OS, such as Windows 98 or 2000.

Although lacking details on installing a motherboard, the manual is otherwise decent for the experienced user and includes detailed information on all connector pin outs as well as the various BIOS settings. The software bundle includes Norton Ghost, AntiVirus, and Virtual Drive. FIC's own driver CD also includes all the VIA and AMD patches you'll need to get your system running properly. Rather than include the regular VIA bus mastering drivers, FIC decided to go with HiPoint XStore Pro busmastering drivers. We highly recommend that you just head over to the VIA website and grab the latest VIA 4-in-1 Service Pack.

Hardware monitoring is integrated into the VIA VT82C686A Super South Bridge. Along with standard system voltage and fan speed monitoring, the Super South Bridge supports external thermistors. Interestingly, FIC has chosen to place a thermistor behind the Slot-A connector, next to the voltage regulators. Apparently FIC felt it necessary to watch the temperature of the regulators, quite possibly another artifact of the SD-11 being an engineer sample. Two 3-pin fan headers are included on either side of the Slot-A connector.

The Bad

With revision 1.8, FIC has eliminated most of our original complaints about the SD-11. The following complaints, however, still stand:

While Athlon motherboards in general are extremely sensitive to the quality of the power supply used, thanks to the CPU's high current draw, the FIC SD-11 is extremely sensitive to the PSU used. While AMD has a recommended power supply list, FIC has had to trim this list considerably and produced their own list of power supplies compatible with the SD-11.

Since the board is quite large, it may not fit in smaller ATX cases.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• 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: 1 x 64MB Mushkin SEC Original PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man SEC Original PC100 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB Mushkin SEC Original PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Memory-Man SEC Original PC100 SDRAM

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

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: 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.

Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology.

The Final Decision

The FIC SD-11 is a very interesting motherboard for a number of reasons. Frankly, it was originally just an engineering sample that was never meant for public consumption. In order to get something out quickly, FIC went ahead and let the SD-11 go to market. After a few revisions, now up to 1.8, all the kinks seem to be worked out.

As such, the SD-11 is a reasonable motherboard choice for an Athlon system. It's wide availability could make it the only choice for many users. If that's the case, the SD-11 will serve you well. Otherwise the fact is that it does very little to differentiate itself from other Athlon boards and has a couple of short comings that could pose major problems for some users.

How it Rates

Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology.