Elitegroup P6BXT-A+ Motherboard

Elitegroup P6BXT-A+ Mainboard Specifications
Form Factor		ATX	Features
CPU Support		Pentium III, Pentium II, Celeron PPGA, Celeron	The P6BXT-A+ is a full-sized ATX board measuring 305x220mm and using 4-layer printed circuit board. The P6BXT-A+ has a special design feature so that it includes a Slot-1 processor slot and a PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) Celeron Socket-PGA370 processor socket. This feature means that you can install the mainboard with either a Pentium-III cartridge, a Pentium-II cartridge, the SEPP (Single Edge Processor Package) Celeron cartridge, or one of the new generation PPGA Celeron cartridges. In addition, the mainboard supports a 66 MHz memory bus, or a 100 MHz memory bus, so you can use inexpensive 66MHz memory chips, or higher-performance PC-100 memory chips. The board is installed with an integrated PCI-3D sound system and has a full suite of I/O ports. Seven expansion slots are available for system development and hardware monitoring is supported. This board allows complete flexibility. System integrators can choose the high-performance Slot -1 processor or the inexpensive PPGA Celeron processor according to the system requirements and the price/performance comparison of the two kinds of processor.
Chipset		Intel 440 BX
Bios Vendor		Award
L2 Cache	PBSRAM	N/A
Memory	DIMM	3
	SIMM	0
	Max. Memory	768 MB
			IO Interface
	Support*	Yes
VGA	Chip	N/A	Supports Plug and Play function One - EPP/ECP mode parallel port Two - 16550 high-speed serial I/O ports (2 connectors) Supports 360K~2.88M Byte, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120 Dual PCI IDE interfaces - supports four IDE devices (PIO mode 4, DMA Mode 2, Ultra DMA 33) PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors ATX Power Supply Connector Audio Ports(Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, CD-in and game port) Two sets of USB connector Other ports IrDA ASKIR Header. Green, HDD, Power indicator LED Connectors CPU Fan and Chassis Fan Headers LAN Card Wake Up/Internal Modem Ring Wake-Up Headers
	Memory	N/A
	Max Memory	N/A
Power Connector		ATX
RTC & Battery		Intel 82371EB (PIIX4E) included 256 bytes CMOS SRAM
Regulator		Switching
AGP		Slot
Audio	Interface	Yes
	Chip	Elite PCI Audio -CMI8338

  Now thats what I call FULLY LOADED!

A closer look at the Elitegroup P6BXT-A+ Motherboard

 

A schematic view of the P6BXT-A+

 

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The Good

Versatility and Power

Well this mainboard just about covers all aspects of mainboard features, doesn't it? From the dual CPU capability to the build-in audio, this mainboard is ideal for many users who are looking for something which will last longer than the average system nowadays.

Installation was a breeze, plug plug plug and turn it on. The CMOS was set at default to detect Primary Master/Slave and Secondary Master/Slave, after the standard tweaks to the BIOs, I installed Win98.. a breeze.. faster than my ol'LX board by a significantly noticeable amount. Let me clear something up before emails start pouring in. I am a firm DIS-believer of the overclocking phenomenon. If Intel wanted this processor to run faster than it should, they would have done so and sold it to the consumers at a higher price.

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The Bad

Well, there's not many bad things I can say about the P6BXT-A+, at first I thought that there was no way to disable the on-board audio, but after reading the manual (highly suggested) I found that there is a jumper available on the board which disables the on board Elite audio chip, so this board should not be passed over by all you Diamond Monster Sound and Creative Live! users.

One bad thing about this product is the CD-ROM, although it contains the drivers and updates for the sound chip and mainboard chipset in pretty easily locatable directories, the manufacturer could have made a more user-friendly auto-run menu. Right now what you can do is only browse (ala Windows Explorer style) the directories in the CD-ROM, which to many laymen users, will be quite difficult.

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Conclusion

A seemingly stable mainboard with a lot of features, the power-on using keyboard feature is very cool and really utilizes the ATX technology. I actually found the audio provided by the board passable (as compared to my MX300). The CD-ROM should be improved upon. Oh, and you CANNOT use both the Slot 1 and the PPGA slots at the same time. The manual says as much and after testing I found it to be true. :) All in all this is a pretty good mainboard and I recommend it to people who do not have the excess cash for the more expensive ASUS, Tyan and MSI mainboards.

PERIPHERAL RATING

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Last updated March 30, 1999.