ASUS P2BF Slot 1 Motherboard
Reviewed by Anurax Lian (18/01/99)

<Introduction><The Good><The Bad><Conclusion><Rating>

Back to top

Introduction

ASUS regularly known as the Baskin Robin of motherboard has done it again. Coming right up is the 10^th flavor to its BX series of Pentium II motherboards the P2B-F. This time round ASUS has taken into much consideration to many users' requirements. The P2B-F is much like its younger brother the P2B. Featuring 4 DIMM slot (oppose to 3), a configuration of (5/2/1) PCI/ISA/AGP, (previously 4/3/1) and leaving the rest of the features generally much the same. With so many BX boards around let's venture on to see how this board stacks up.

The contents of the box include the following: 1 P2B motherboard, 1 packet of FDD & HDD cable, 1 foldable Stand for P2/Celeron CPU, 1 Drivers &Utility-CD, 1 sticker of settings, 1 motherboard-manual & 1 Guarantee Card. Lets take an in-depth look at its features & what it has to offer.

   Back to top

The Good

Generally most Intel BX based motherboards have relatively the same speed performance. (+- 3%) This really does not add up to much so I've decided to make a pass on speed comparison. The BX chipset having to be released for over 8 months the key factor to a top notch quality board is its stability and over-clock-ability.

The P2B-F is now equipped with a newer configuration of 5/3/1(PCI/ISA/AGP). This is pretty good cause most of the newer expansion cards are utilizing the PCI slot. While keeping a couple of ISA slots to unsure backward compatibility for some users with older ISA cards.

Many users will notice that the 1st PCI slot shares its IRQ with the AGP and the 4^th and 5^th PCI slot shares the same IRQ along with the USB. Users need not be alarmed, one good feature about the PCI slot is that it is capable of sharing IRQ, these 32bit cards are generally driver dependant and within an environment like Win95/Win98 they are capable of sharing the same IRQ.

A full system test was conducted to ensure that stability of the board.

The configuration:

AGP slot: Spectra 2500 2D/3D display adapter (11)

PCI slot 1: SMC 10/100Base network card (11)

PCI slot 2: Yamaha XG 192 sound card (10)

PCI slot 3: Realmagic Pro DVD decoder card (9)

PCI slot 4: Adaptec 2940U UltraSCSI PCI card (9)

PCI slot 5: PCI TV-tuner Decoder (9)

Note: (#) denodes the IRQ no.

The system ran all the hardware simultaneously and there was no hic-up at all. I managed to run my CDR by taking files from a Network Drive, Playback a DVD movie, watch TV and run Wintune Direct 3D (D3D) test. Of course CPU utilization was a it highest causing my PII 350 to scream, but what was pleasantly surprising was that the system never hang. I noticed that in some boards a network or SCSI sharing an IRQ with any peripheral would even fail to start Windows. Having this feature can really save a lot of time and headaches especially for new users wanting to upgrade.

Another new feature add to the P2B-F is the addition of one more DIMM slot, this allows users a wider option to upgrade their system memory. Furthermore the additional slot means going up to a whooping 1GB of RAM.

Please note that only Pentium II 333 and above/Celeron A series can cache up to 2GB of RAM previous generation of Pentium II could only cache up to 512MB of RAM.

Like many newer Pentium II motherboards, ASUS has outfitted this board with a foldable CPU holder. It fits both a regular Pentium II and a Celeron CPU.

The board includes a green-colored heatsink over the 440BX chipset. This helps to dissipate heat better & is even better if one is overclocking the board. Speaking of cooling, there are three 3-pin power connectors for CPU, Chassis & AGP fan installation. Should you need the SB-link connector for some PCI sound-cards, you'll be content to know that one is provided, although the Creative PCI sound-cards (which the SB-link was 1st intended for usage) are engineered in a different way that you don't require this connector to get full DOS sound support.

For setting the FSB speed & the multiplier control, they come in the form of the old fashioned jumpers. There are still some people out there that still like this kind of setting although those variables are easier to set through the Bios. These people fear that if the board or chip refuses to boot at the high speeds, clearing the CMOS might not work all the time. These days it's much safer. Asus did have a Bios controlled setup for their 1st revisions of their LX board, but was not functioning too well & Asus removed it. Till now they have shy away from the modern Bios controlled setup. Anyway Asus has printed the settings on the board for some convenience. ASUS has also included a nice feature to their BX boards. It supports PS2 keyboard power-up. For the real lazy bones who can't even bother to press their power button, now they can simply hit the space bar an "TA DA" your computer starts up. Please note that this feature requires an ATX power supply that can supply 300mA on the +5VSB lead. Having an inappropriate power supply can lead to the PC not being able to power up

The board even comes with an Anti-Boot Virus Bios by Trend-ChipAway, in case your struck with a nasty virus that threatens to corrupt the Bios.

The given CD comes with these software: Intel LANdesk Client Manager (LCM), PC-cillin Anti-Virus ver.3 & Asus PC Probe 1.2. The Intel LCM is more suited towards being used in a setup where there are many PCs that use Asus motherboards & this software helps to manage all of them from 1 place. The Asus PC Probe is diagnostic tool.

The Manual is of course the normal Asus standard that is well presented and is one of the best motherboard manuals. It has got more diagrams than most motherboard manuals do, thus simplifies understanding & gives a better view of the installation procedure.

The Test

This board performed almost identical to that of the P2B board so I have decided to post Vijay's test as a reference.

" The processor used for this test is a P2-300 (0.25 micron ver.) which is of the SL2YK batch & is very overclockable. Usually I'm limited in my processor speed choices as it is multiplier-locked at 4.5x & using the 75 or 83MHz FSB would hang on Windows boot-up, due to AGP card being overclocked by the faster AGP bus. But this time it worked, thanks to the high tolerance of the Hercules Beast. But I had troubles going faster by using the 112MHz FSB or above, either because that's the chip's limit or needs better cooling.

Test Configuration
Processor(s):	Pentium II - 300 Retail, batch=SL2YK, 2.0V, Malay
RAM:	1 - 64MB Fujitech PC100 SDRAM DIMM
Hard Drive(s):	Western Digital Cavier-AC24300 4.3Gb
Video Card(s):	Hercules Terminator Beast AGP, 8MB SDRAM
Bus Master Drivers:	Windows 98 Bus Mastering Drivers
Video Drivers:	Hercules Terminator Beast ver: 0.96
Operation System(s):	Windows 98 (build 4.10.1998)

Wintune 98 Results

Area Tested	P2-300 (66x4.5)	P2-337 (75x4.5)	P2-375 (83x4.5)	P2-450 (100x4.5)	P2-463 (103x4.5)
CPU Integer (MIPS)	837.4883	941.5198	1047.227	1260.664	1296.312
CPU Floating Point (MFLOPS)	325.6208	387.523	430.6945	518.511	530.1026
Video(2D) (MPixeles/s)	47.58947	51.53207	55.13824	61.69052	63.00744
Direct3D (MPixeles/s)	37.46977	38.4864	39.00971	39.52029	39.10863
OpenGL (MPixels/s)	32.30553	32.9989	33.23859	32.48426	32.80481
Memory (MB/s)	518.0432	581.1299	646.6536	778.0524	800.1172
Cached Disk (MB/s)	60.41603	56.94156	75.35524	83.81712	83.00611
Uncached Disk (MB/s)	2.111565	2.059714	2.187908	2.138225	2.381815

*Take note that the low 2D, 3D & OpenGL scores are due to the different architecture of the Savage3D chip on the Hercules Beast & it could also be that this board is not tuned to benchmarking because the frame rates I achieved in Quake-2 are fast. Please Check the Hercules Beast review for more details. "

Sisoft Sandra-98 & Norton SI

Back to top

The Bad

The ATX connector is at the back of the board behind the slot-1. This can cause some obstruction of the air flow as the ATX power line will pass over the P2-chip & it can mess up a clean looking interior. Also if you want to access some parts of the motherboard, you'll need to disconnect the ATX power-line & this will not be easy in a case where all the peripherals are inside & because of the P2 chip, you can hardly reach the back to unplug the cord!

Another complaint is the jumper setup. It's a bit old fashioned and they could have used a DIP-switch block instead of jumpers. On top of that, the jumpers are difficult to take out! Some motherboards use jumpers that have a handle to pluck them out easily. The Front-Side Bus jumpers are located above the IDE connectors. This makes modification/upgrading hell as most user would use a Medium Sized casing which would mean having to pull off the IDE cables and other obstructing cable before being able to reach them

This time round, ASUS have placed the floppy drive connector adjacent to the 1^st and 2^nd PCI slot (very un-ASUS standard). If the AGP card and PCI cards in those slot were full length cards (e.g. DPT Raid SCSI controller), it would take some acrobatic skills trying to connect to the floppy drive.

It comes with a motherboard temp sensor but no cpu temp sensor. Oddly, Asus, sells it separately. It's just a wire that activates the cpu-sensor but it ain't cheap! I hope they include this useful item in the future as their boards are slightly pricy and this sensor further adds to that cost.

The led connectors & others are bunched into one corner which is not easy to pull out & put back if the board & other parts are all fixed inside the case. Although it's labelled, it's hard to see them within the case in one small corner.

Back to top

Conclusion

Although it's not the fastest board that is tested by benchmarks at SHZ, it's still is fast. Overall it's a solid board by a very reliable manufacturer, ASUS. Too bad that it's bit more pricy than most boards on the market!

MOTHERBOARD RATING

Back to top

This Product is provided courtesy of,

Copyright © 1998 by Singapore Hardware Zone. All rights reserved.

None of the above shall be reproduced, copied and/or
modified without the permission of the WebMaster.