SINCE THE Zenith 9EJS1 first wowed me with its performance, peripherals, and bundled extras, I've been eagerly anticipating Chaintech's next wave of high-end, enthusiast-oriented motherboards. In the relatively short time since the Zenith 9EJS1 was released, new south bridge chips like Intel's ICH5R have made extra USB ports, Serial ATA support, and RAID available to all. The majority of
mobo makers have become hip to the bundle game, too. Extras like rounded IDE cables used to be a novelty, but now they're almost passe. And let's not forget that the performance difference between motherboards based on the same core-logic chipset continues to be largely negligible.
Chaintech's Zenith 9EJS1 was able to distance itself from the rest of the 845PE-based competition thanks to its complete complement of peripherals and its imaginative bundle. Now that nearly everybody is stacking boards with peripherals and bundled extras, Chaintech's new Canterwood-based Zenith 9CJS must raise the bar again. To stay ahead of the pack, the 9CJS must set a new standard for integrated peripherals, bundled extras, and it must continue to offer competitive performance—a tall order indeed.
To combat its high-end, enthusiast-oriented competition, Chaintech armed the Zenith 9CJS with VIA's 7.1-channel Envy24PT audio controller, a 5.25" drive bay port panel/card reader/remote control, and support for overclocked front-side bus speeds up to 1600MHz. Can this board and its slick package of extra goodies set the standard for Canterwood-based motherboards? We'll find out.
Read the full review at
Tech-Report.com
Jul 1, 2003, 12:29 PM
