AOpen AX59PRO Super 7 Motherboard
Reviewed by Poh Leng Wee (08/08/98)

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

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Introduction

This is one of the first few board to use the VIA MVP3 AGPset. It comes in two L2 cache configuration, 512K and 1MB. The board that I'm testing is the 1MB version. With the addition of 512K of cache. The cacheable area of the main memory is doubled from 128MB to 256MB.

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The Good

The AOpen AX59PRO  mainboard layout is good.  Like any other Super 7 board, this board requires you to manually change the jumper setting for system clock speed, multiplier setting and the CPU core voltage. However, it's a breeze to change this settings. This is important for those users who like to overclock or test out different settings.

In comparison with other supper 7 board, this should be one of the most stable board running at 100Mhz that I have seen. The build in temperature and voltage monitor is also pretty cool. A monitoring program can be installed in Windows 95/98 to monitor both the temperature and the voltage. Hence, users could be warn if there's any overheating of the CPU and mainboard.

This board also supports a wide range of CPU core voltage which makes it a good investment for future CPU types. The vcore ranges from 1.30V to 2.10V in steps of 0.05V and 2.1V to 3.5V in steps of 0.1V

Beside catering for future upgrades, this board also cater to upgraders from old system. Old SIMMs or non-PC100 DIMMs memory can still be used even in 100 system clock setting. This is achieved by having two jumpers to set the memory speed to either CPU clock or AGP clock.

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The Test

The test was conducted with two AMD chips, the K6-200 and the K6-2 300. Both settings at 66Mhz and 100Mhz was tried using both this chip. However, I was unsuccessful in trying out the 112Mhz setting. This might be due to the PC100 ram not being able to run at that speed.

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 300 Mhz @ 3 x 100 Mhz

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 300 Mhz @ 4.5 x 66 Mhz

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6 200 Mhz @ 2 x 100 Mhz

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6 200 Mhz @ 3 x 66 Mhz

Next, I will list the all the combinations of setting that I have tried.

Brief Summary of Overclocking of K6-2 300 Mhz
(Using a normal heatsink/fan)

3.5 x 90 = 315 Mhz @ 2.2V

4 x 83 = 333 Mhz @ 2.2V

4.5 x 75 = 337 Mhz @ 2.2V  (recommended)

5 x 68 = 342 Mhz @ 2.3V

3.5 x 100= 350 can't startup at all
4.0 x 90 = 360 Mhz unable to finish loading Windows 98
5.5 x 66.6 = 366 Mhz unable to finish loading Windows 98

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The Bad

The AX59PRO is a board that is almost perfect. The only minor complaints that user might encounter is due to the cpu socket being too close to the DIMM slot 1. For user with ultra large heatsink, it's impossible to fix in the heat sink if the DIMM slot 1 is used.Another minor clitch is that at 112Mhz, it's not as stable as at 100Mhz. Hence, I would not really encourage users to set the bus speed to 112Mhz.

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Conclusion

It should be pretty clear now that the AOpen AX59PRO is one of the best super 7 board with the VIA MVP3 chipset. With well design mainboard and a large 1MB cache, it's one of the better performer in all the super 7 boards. It also cater to future CPU types.

MOTHERBOARD RATING

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