AOpen AX6BC Slot 1 Motherboard
    Reviewed by Jereme Wong Jong Siang (06/08/98)

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

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Introduction

When Intel unveiled its latest BX Chipset a few months ago, hardware freaks who had the cash to spare were busily flocking to town to get the first wave of BX motherboards. Officially supporting the 100mhz setting for the Deschutes chips, many hungry users were more than eager to lay their hands on this new technology. AOpen, one of the big time mainboard manufacturers released their first version of BX motherboard, the AX6B, which earned many good accolades and ratings. Months later, AOpen with its unrelentless pursue in fine-tuning its mainboards took the market's attention once again with the revised AX6BC, which included 5 PCI slots.

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The Good

The AOpen AX6BC is very much like its brother board, the AX6B. By adding an additional PCI slot and taking away an ISA slot, the 5/2/1 expansion slot configuration (PCI/ISA/AGP) is designed to meet the increasing demand for the PCI peripherals users. With the sudden boom of PCI sound cards in the market, users will be pleased to know that they will have more room for expansion in the future for their network cards or add-on video capture cards. In a way, by limiting the number of ISA slots on the AX6BC, AOpen is seen as taking the first step of transition to the Microsoft PC-99 standard.

Typical of many AOpen mainboards, the familiar green PCB has an organised and uncluttered design. Populated with a row of high quality Sanyo Electrolytic capacitors, it is no wonder that AOpen’s mainboards perform with rock-solid stability. Even at higher bus speeds like 100mhz, 103mhz or 112mhz, the AX6BC’s stable performance really makes it a big selling point for this board. A point to note is that fitted snuggly on the 440BX Chipset, is a green colour heatsink which AOpen included with the purpose of dissipating heat from the 440BX chipset. For the "kiasu" users out there who believe that there should be a heatsink attached to every chip that emits heat, it will be nice to know that AOpen has already went that extra mile for you.

The setup/configuration of the AX6BC couldn't be made any easier with a simple and well documented Jumperless CPU Configuration Utility in the CMOS. This utility allows the user to select from a list of clock multipliers ranging from 1.5x - 8.0x. (YES!! It’s the first board that I’ve come across personally that allows multiplier setting to go all the way to 8.0x!!). A list of system bus speeds besides the usual 66MHz and the official supported 100MHz setting, includes 75, 83, 103, 112, and 133MHz bus speed. With this wide range of bus speed settings, its seems that AOpen is quietly encouraging end-users to push their chips to its limit.

In addition, the bios also feature an option "Save/Load EEPROM Default" which allows you to save your own settings into the EEPROM and later, reloading back the settings into the bios. This feature which I personally adore as an avid overclocker, allows me to restore back my own profile bios settings with the click of a button, instead of the usual way of going through all the bios settings again.

One more point to add is that the AX6BC implements EEPROM and special circuit that allows you to save your current CPU and CMOS Setup configurations without the need of an on-board CMOS battery. The RTC (real time clock) will continue to function as long as the power cord is plugged. If you happen to lose your CMOS data by accdident, you can just reload the CMOS configurations from EEPROM and the system will recover as usual.

To improve system performance, AOpen has also implemented a AGP Turbo setting jumper for the speed demons to synchronize their AGP cards with the CPU 100MHz (or above) external frequency. However, in order to overclock your AGP card, I recommend choosing a better AGP card as most of the cheaper AGP cards in the market cannot take the 100MHz bus frequency and may cause overclocking failure.

In all jumperless design, there is a "66/100" signal pin from CPU for the BX chipset to automatically identify the AGP clock. When a 66MHz Pentium II CPU is used, the north bridge will synchronize the CPU external frequency and the AGP bus frequency. Therefore, when you set the CPU external frequency to 100MHz, the AGP bus will also run at 100MHz. With 100MHz Pentium II CPU, the north bridge automatically set AGP frequency to 2/3 AGP frequency. In other words, the AGP card will still run at 66MHz while the CPU is running at 100MHz external frequency.

Below is a table for better understanding:

The Test

With only the PII 266 CPU available at our test labs, I couldn't really push the board to its fullest potential. Also, the PC100 Samsung ram which I used was the -GL series, which did not allow me to push the board to its 133mhz setting. As for the 112mhz setting, the system refused to boot up into Windows 98 after clearing POST. However, I did get pretty decent and stable results on the PII 266 chip @ 100x3.5 setting.

Wintune 98 Result for Intel Pentium II 266 Mhz @ 4 x 66 Mhz

Wintune 98 Result for Intel Pentium II 266 Mhz @ 3 x 100 Mhz

Wintune 98 Result for Intel Pentium II 266 Mhz @ 3.5 x 100 Mhz

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The Bad

The AX6BC would be a step closer to the ultimate overclocker's dream board if AOpen had designed a CPU voltage setting in its Jumperless design inside the CMOS setting. At the moment, the CPU core voltage is automatically detected using the Pentium II VID function. Also, the jumper for the clearing of CMOS data should be located in a more convenient place instead of squeezing between the PCI cards. This would greatly convenient overclockers who had trouble in rebooting the system after pushing the board over the limits. AOpen also took away one DIMM slot leaving a total of 3 slots when they constructed the AX6BC. For users with existing 4 pieces of 32mb DIMM rams, I'm afraid that you would have to reconsider your options before you purchase this board.

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Conclusion

The AX6BC is a clear winner among the BX motherboards available in the market. If you are looking around for a good BX motherboard that is both reliable and stable, and providing you 5 PCI slots for your peripherals, the AX6BC would be a good choice.

MOTHERBOARD RATING

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