Albatron Technology announced today the availability of two new Athlon 64 motherboards. The K8Ultra-U and the K8Ultra-U Pro are both designed for the upcoming Windows XP 64-bit operating system. The motherboards use the ULi M1689 single-chip solution and a 754-pin socket that supports both the 32-bit Sempron and 64-bit Athlon 64 CPUs. The boards also support DDR 400 memory, two SATA connections that can provide 150MB/sec data transfer rates, eight USB 2.0 ports and a Realtek AC 97 6-Channel audio controller. However, the K8Ultra-U Pro is the only board to sport the built-in Realtek RTL8201CL 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN controller.

These motherboards have BIOS overclocking features that include CPU Host Frequency adjustments (200MHz to 333MHz), AGP voltage adjustments (1.5V to 1.7V), DDR voltage adjustments (2.75V, 2.8V, 2.85V) and CPU voltage adjustments (in increments of 5%, 10%, 15%).

With Microsoft’s Windows XP 64-bit edition expected to arrive sometime in the middle of 2005, the Albatron K8Ultra-U motherboard already provides a full range of hardware features and peripherals, all with 64-bit driver support. For graphics card driver support under the Windows XP 64-bit edition, Albatron suggests using cards based on the GeForce FX-5700 or FX-5900.

Mass production of the K8Ultra-U and K8Ultra-U Pro is slated to begin next week, said the company, adding that the K8Ultra-U Pro will have an ASP (average selling price) of around US$70.