Board Features

FIC AU11 Chameleon

Common roots

If you’re a real expert on nForce2 motherboards, you’re probably scratching your head right now -- “Why does the AU11 Chameleon look just like the EPoX EP-8RDA+?” you’re thinking. That’s because FIC and EPoX worked together on the design of their respective nForce2 products. The AU11 Chameleon that you’re looking at today is nearly the exact same motherboard EPoX sells as the EP-8RDA+. The greatest design difference is the diagnostic LED display, the EPoX board has it, but for some reason FIC chose to omit it.

3-Phase power

Northern half of the motherboard

This makes a lot of sense to co-design nForce2 with EPoX. Development costs are shared and as long as the engineers get along, development time is reduced. In fact, EPoX’s EP-8RDA+ was one of the first nForce2 motherboards to hit the market. In our opinion, it’s great to see a company with strong OEM roots like FIC partnering with an enthusiast motherboard manufacturer like EPoX. While we’ve only looked at a handful of EPoX products, we’ve always thought highly of them. They’re considered to be right up there with ABIT among many enthusiasts. FIC’s products have traditionally been a little on the conservative side, but as you’ll see over the next few pages they’ve opened up quite a bit with the AU11 Chameleon.

NVIDIA's MCP-T is under the shiny sticker

Back plate of the AU11

MCP-T Audio

First off, the motherboard supports NVIDIA’s six-channel audio via the MCP-T chip (which acts as a DSP). Realtek’s ALC-650E AC’97 CODEC handles the sound output. This is the same CODEC we’ve seen on quite a few nForce2 motherboards, including the excellent ASUS A7N8X Deluxe. FIC goes one step short of officially supporting NVIDIA’s SoundStorm audio, as the board doesn’t ship with the SoundStorm ACR riser card for digital/analog 5.1-channel output nor is a S/PDIF output provided on the back plane of the motherboard (and for that matter, there isn’t an external header).

Firewire and Networking

NVIDIA’s MCP-T also brings FireWire and 10/100 Ethernet, for these duties FIC has gone with the Realtek RTL8801B while the Realtek RTL8801BL acts as the physical layer for networking duties. FIC did not include a second PHY to take advantage of the integrated 3Com MAC so DualNet networking support is out