Asus M2A74-AM and AMD 7750 Athlon X2 Black Edition

A replacement for my MSI m/b with an Intel Celeron D
The "new torrent box"

Reviews for the Asus M2A74-AM motherboard seem to be non existant on the Internet. There are plenty of retailers that would like to sell you one but as far as a review you seem to be out of luck! My requirement was for an inexpensive m/b that could accomodate an AMD X2 processor and was current enough to have SATA support. I was initially concerned that that board was an old one, due mainly to its model number (M2A74-AM - as the Intel boards are P5Q etc) - this proved NOT to be the case in more ways that one. The operators manual for the M2A74-AM was dated April 2009 and seemed to be on it's first edition.

For a full review of the specifications then you can go to the Asus website or to one of the many retailer sites. You will not get any more information there, however.

The choice of the AMD 7750 was, again, for economic reasons. Only after the purchase did I find out that the processor was in fact a Quad Core chip with 2 of the cores disabled. There were even reports of users unlocking the other two cores and making a Quad out of a $70 processor.

Why the Com Port?

The M2A74-AM has a back panel mounted "d" connector Com port? - This is strange as I have not used a Com port for years. The last piece of hardware that I used with this on was the original Palm (US Robotics Pilot 5000). This was before they switched to a USB sync cable. External Modems (for the telephone!) used these ports - again, I have not used one for years!

No Express Gate but has EPU-4

The "splashtop" quick-start is not part of the utility suite. The Asus PC Probe II is included on the set-up DVD. Assumes that you have this hardware.

No HDMI but DVI Interface

Unlike the P5Q that has both, only a DVI in this case

Set-up Notes

Didn't want to boot from PATA drive that was used in the old "torrent-box" - A bit naive to think that it would!

(Re)Installed WindowsXP Pro from CD - see earlier note about expecting DVD-ROM. Drivers and setup performed later with a External USB DVD-ROM.

Had to phone Microsoft to get WinXP to activate.

Realtek RTL8112 PCIe Gigabit LAN

Drivers had to be installed from the setup DVD. No connection to the router was obtained until this was performed.

Some problems with the adapter loosing communication with the network that could only be resolved by a re-start. The attempt at "repair" were not successful and an IP a ddress was not obtained using this technique. Will try re-starting the router - i.e. flush the DHCP Cache and then maybe update (or re-install) the driver.

The Realtek 8111C on the P5Q-EM does not seem to have this problem, but it is not clear as that board is being run with a wireless-n NIC.