Like the SB65G2, It took minimal effort to get the SN85G4 up and running.  Once the drives, video card, RAM and CPU were inserted, it was only a matter a powering up the system, formatting the hard drive and installing the operating system.

Setup & Quality The New Case on the Block

At first glance, Shuttle's new G4 enclosure may seem like a radical departure from previous models, but the major changes were made only to the front face.  On the front of the system, the new 6-in-1 card reader replaces the external 3.5" drive bay found on the G2 based XPCs.  Along with the new card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, one mini-1394 port, three 1/8" audio connectors (Front, Rear and Center / Bass Out) and power and reset switches are mounted on the front of the system.  Things got even more interesting when we spun the SN85G4 around.  The rear of the system is equipped with three more 1/8" audio connectors (Front, Rear and Center / Bass Out), S/PDIF in and out, two USB 2.0 ports, a powered IEE1394 connector, a serial port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports and an RJ45 LAN port.  Something missing from recent XPCs, a parallel port, makes a return on the SN85G4.

Moving inside the system, we found the same jungle of wires for the externally mounted connectors, but unlike the SB65G2, the SN85G4's CMOS battery was mounted flush against the motherboard.  There were a couple of other differences as well.  With the SN85G4, the optical drive bay is not removable.  The hard drive mount, however, slides out from the side of the system which makes mounting the hard drive fairly easy.  The power supply in the SN85G4 has been upgraded to a 240 Watt unit, with a slightly larger (and quieter) exhaust fan.  Although this system is designed for AMD's 754 pin socket for the Athlon 64, it uses the same plastic mount and metal clip to secure the CPU heat-pipe in place.  The nForce 3 chipset powering the FN85 motherboard used in this system is cooled with a large passive heatsink, which should be adequate, as it hardly got warm throughout testing.   While we're talking about the motherboard, we should also mention that the DIMM slots have been moved to the edge of the board, which made installing an removing the RAM much easier.  Overall the FN85's layout is an improvement over previous generations.

The BIOS It's Got It All

We thought the SB65G2 was equipped with a very complete system BIOS, but with the SN85G4 Shuttle took things a step further.  Like the SB65G2, the SN85G4's BIOS is loaded with options.  Users have the ability to enable or disable all of the on-board components and even have full control over RAM and AGP clock speeds.  And also like the SB65G2, fan speeds can be dynamically controlled to limit speed or noise.

In the "Frequency / Voltage Control" section of the BIOS, we found all of the SN85G4 overclocking options.  From within this section of the BIOS, user's can raise the speed of the clock generator used to derive the CPU's frequency up to 250MHz, in 1MHz increments.  The AGP clock speed can also be set manually, all the way up to 100MHz.  There were also a slew of voltage adjustments available.  The CPU's voltage can be increased up to 1.7v in .025v or .05v increments.  DDR voltages range from 2.7v to 2.9v and the AGP voltage can be set to anything between 1.6v and 1.8v, in .1v increments.  Users can also alter the nForce3 chipset's voltage, from 1.7v to 1.9v in .1v increments.  Lastly, the Lightning Data Transfer (or HyperTransport) voltage can be set to 1.3v, 1.4v or 1.5v.  The LDT speed can also be set manually to 2x (400MHz) , 3x (600MHz) or 4x (800MHz), but the nForce 3 chipset supports a maximum speed of 600MHz (1200MHz DDR), so we'd advise against trying the 4x option.  When we did, the system's performance was abysmal.  We're surprised it even worked!

Overclocking Experience:

              
SANDRA CPU BENCHMARK                SANDRA CPU BENCHMARK
CPU @ 2.00GHZ                                    CPU @ 2.18GHZ

Even with the slew of available options, we had limited success overclocking our Athlon 64 3200+ with the SN85G4.  However, as the platform matures, we're sure this situation will change.  The maximum clock speed we were able to attain with our A64 3200+ powered SN85G4 was 2.18GHz, a modest increase of 180MHz over the CPU's default clock speed of 2.0GHz.  With the motherboard's clock generator set to anything higher than 218MHz, the system would no longer boot.  We had to clear the CMOS and start over.  We tried running with multiple memory speeds, and raised the CPU, RAM, AGP and chipset voltages, but didn't have much luck.

The Benchmarking Begins