Chaintech 6BTM Slot 1 Motherboard
Reviewed by Poh Leng Wee (02 Sep 98)
Motherboard Specifications |
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Processor |
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Chipset |
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Cache memory |
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System Memory |
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PCI IDE |
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I/O Interface |
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Expansion slot |
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Power Management |
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Form Factor |
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BIOS |
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<Introduction><The Good><The Bad><Conclusion><Rating>
Introduction
While shopping for a cheap BX or EX board for my Celeron chip, I came across the Chaintech 6BTM. It was selling at a very low price for a BX board (~$200) so I decided to buy it. And to my astonishment, this board is actually a pretty good one. That's the main reason why I have decided to write a review about it.
After reading though Chaintech portfolio, I realised that it is actually quite an establish brand in the States. However, it's still a pretty new brand in Singapore. There are only two shops in SLS that I know of that sells this board, MarketPlace (OEM version) and Unlimited Electronics (boxed version).
The Good
The Chaintech 6BTM is one of the few boards that allows a 66Mhz processor to be clock to 100Mhz (or even 133 MHz). To do so, you only need to download the overclocking bios to flash the bios. If overclocking is not on your mind, it is also advisable to download it's updated normal bios as Chaintech regularly updates it's bios to include new features and etc.
For such a low cost BX board, this board runs stability even on a Celeron 266 overclocked at 4 x 100 MHz. Hence, I can't seem to be able to find anything unstable about it.
Like the Abit BX6, this board is jumperless. It comes with their own SeePU technology which is essentially just the same as Abit's Softmenu. Basically, it allows user to manually set the multiplier and the cpu bus speed. An interesting feature of this board is that when the home key is depressed for 5 sec while switching on the system, the board will boot at it's lowest system speed. This is useful if the computer refuses to boot due to overclocking.
The bios also allows the user to view the cpu temperature, system temperature and other monitoring data. A Chaintech software called Shepherd can also be install to monitor the respectively data in Windows 95/98.
The Test
With only the Celeron 266 processor available, I was unable to test it on a PII. As the Celeron 266 processor is multiplier tied to 4, I can't get it to boot at 112 MHz (=448Mhz) and 133 MHz (=533!!!!). However, it was able to run at 100Mhz but too unstable in Windows 98 for 103Mhz. It's inability to change the VCore voltage could be one of the reason why it can't run at higher than 100Mhz. Anyway, below is the result that I have tested on the Celeron 266 processor.(NB. Wintune 98 detected the Celeron as a PII)
Test Configuration |
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Processor(s): | Intel Celeron - 266 Retail |
RAM: | 1 - 64MB Mitsubishi PC100 SDRAM DIMM |
Hard Drive(s): | IBM Deskstar 8 6.4Gb |
Video Card(s): | Diamond Viper V330 |
Operation System(s): | Windows 98 (build 4.10.1998) |
CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@266 MHz |
Video Board | Diamond Viper V330 (Nvidia Riva 128) |
Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
RAM | 64 MB |
OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
Area Tested | Value |
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CPU Integer | 750.4048 MIPS |
CPU Floating Point | 301.567 MFLOPS |
Video(2D) | 41.38317 MPixels/s |
Direct3D | 66.89258 MPixels/s |
OpenGL | 5.612191 MPixels/s |
Memory | 397.7792 MB/s |
Cached Disk | 33.60934 MB/s |
Uncached Disk | 1.976351 MB/s |
CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@333 MHz |
Video Board | Diamond Viper V330 (Nvidia Riva 128) |
Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
RAM | 64 MB |
OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
Area Tested | Value |
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CPU Integer | 937.5328 MIPS |
CPU Floating Point | 378.7183 MFLOPS |
Video(2D) | 54.69342 MPixels/s |
Direct3D | 74.89658 MPixels/s |
OpenGL | 7.112071 MPixels/s |
Memory | 498.5256 MB/s |
Cached Disk | 42.89826 MB/s |
Uncached Disk | 2.286448 MB/s |
CPU | (1) Intel Pentium II with MMX@400 MHz |
Video Board | Diamond Viper V330 (Nvidia Riva 128) |
Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
RAM | 64 MB |
OS | Windows 98 4.10.1998 |
Area Tested | Value |
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CPU Integer | 1134.788 MIPS |
CPU Floating Point | 451.7055 MFLOPS |
Video(2D) | 71.05754 MPixels/s |
Direct3D | 82.43731 MPixels/s |
OpenGL | 8.824936 MPixels/s |
Memory | 602.9561 MB/s |
Cached Disk | 52.17253 MB/s |
Uncached Disk | 2.308955 MB/s |
The 6BTM could have been as good as the Abit BX6 for overclocking if not for it's inability to change it's VCore voltage. Due to this, an overclocked CPU might not be as stable as it can be with an increased VCore.
Conclusion
In my personally opinion, I feel that the Chaintech 6BTM is a winner in almost all areas except losing out to the Abit BX6 in teams of overclocking capability. The most attractive being the price and it's availability of updated bios.
MOTHERBOARD RATING
Overall Rating (Out of a maximum of 5 Star) |
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Installation | **** |
Performance | **** |
Price | ***** |
Overclockability | **** |
Material Quality | ***** |
Stability | ***** |
Overall Rating | ****1/2 |
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