ECS P6BXT-A+ Rev. 1.2c ATX Motherboard
Reviewed by CPU-ZILLA  (26 May 99)

Motherboard Specifications
Processor	Intel Celeron® Processor 266MHz-400MHz (66Mhz). Intel Pentium® II Processor 233MHz-366MHz (66Mhz). Intel Pentium® II Processor 350MHz-450MHz (100Mhz). Intel Pentium® III Processor 450MHz-550MHz (100Mhz).
Chipset	Intel 440BX chipset
Cache memory	CPU Built-in 128KB/512KB L2 cache for Celeron/Pentium II/III Processor
System Memory	3 x 168-pin 3.3v DIMM sockets support  Supports 8/16/32/64/128/256 MB DIMM Module  Supports SDRAM PC66 & 100(Supports ECC, 1-bit Error Code Correct function)  Supports up to 768MB of memory size  Supports 66/75/83/100/103/112/133 MHz System Clock Speed Setting Supports 3.0-8.0 Multiplier Setting
PCI IDE	2 X PCI Bus Master UDMA/33 IDE ports (up to 4 ATAPI Devices)  Supports for PIO Mode 0-4, UDMA/33 IDE & ATAPI CD-ROM
I/O Interface	1x floppy port (360KB-2.88MB)  2x serial ports (16550 high-speed)  1x parallel port (SPP/EPP/ECP)  PS/2 Keyboard  PS/2 Mouse  2x USB  1 IrDA ASKIR header 1 Audio port (Line_Out, Line_In and Mic_In) and 1 MIDI/Game Port powered by the Elite PCI CMI 8338 3D audio chipset.
Expansion slot	4 x PCI 32-bit slots, PCI 2.2 compliant  2 x ISA 16-bit slots  1x AGP (1x & 2x Mode,66/133MHz) slot  Supports Creative PCI Sound Card SB-Link™.
Power Management	Power On by LAN, Modem, Keyboard & Soft-Power Switch  Power Off by Windows® 95/98 Shut down & Soft-Power Switch  ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) feature 3 level ACPI LED
Form Factor	ATX Form Factor : 30.5cm(L) x 22cm(W) x 4 layers PCB Fits into regular ATX Case  ATX Connector on Board
BIOS	2 Mbit (256KB) FLASH memory Award PCI BIOS with Green, PnP, DMI and Anti-Virus Functions  LS120, ZIP, ATAPI CD-ROM, IDE #1, #2, #3, #4 bootable

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

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Introduction

I am quite sure that a lot of you are getting pretty excited now as the wait for the opening of The Phantom Menace is growing shorter with each passing day. The wait for something new is always a common conversation piece among fans. In the same way, there has been much excitement and talk among some of us here in the Singapore Hardware Zone about which motherboard manufacturer would be next to jump into the overclocking arena. Yes, you may have guessed it right again, Elitegroup is indeed the next manufacturer to enter the overclocker's market.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) was founded in 1987 and has since been designing and manufacturing motherboard products for both the home consumer and OEM market. As with most top motherboard manufacturers, they do have their fair share of awards and certifications to boast about.

After their previous release of the P6BXT-A+ which gathered only fair reviews, ECS is back with an improved revision of the motherboard (Rev. 1.2c) which promises better features and stability. I am of course most impressed with the built-in audio chipset which features 3D positional audio that supports sound output to 4 loudspeakers. I suppose this is the first of its kind to have on-board 3D audio. In addition, the colourful I/O connectors do make this board look more feminine. The coloured I/O connectors are not for vanity purposes but it's actually part of the PC99 specifications. Although the board does not comply to PC99 yet, it is great to get a glimpse of what is to come in the next millenium. Imagine your spouse asking you which is the microphone jack, and instead of walking across the hallway to point it out, you can just shout across the room, "Darling, just insert it into the pink hole.". Heh, imagine what the neighbours would think when they hear this. Anyway, don't take me too seriously, it is just a dramatisation. Actual usage may vary.

The entire package comes with the FDD & HDD cables, a printed copy of the user's manual and a CD-ROM containing the drivers and motherboard specific softwares.

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The Good

The first thing that caught my eye was the design of the board. As most of you should know by now, this piece of equipment comes loaded with the ability to accept all kinds of Intel CPU available today, whether they are in Slot-1 or Socket 370 format. It may seem to some that it is a dual CPU motherboard, but it is not.

This dual processor socket feature is ideal for those who wants to get a Celeron processor now, and still have the option of upgrading to a costlier Slot-1 processor in the future. In addition, the board uses the Intel 440BX chipset which allows you to move on to 100MHz bus speed, unlike most Socket-370 only motherboards. At least, the board does not become obsolete the minute you purchase them. On the other hand, integrating the Socket 370 into the motherboard does help save the consumer time and additional cost in purchasing a Slotket for their Socket 370 PPGA processor, if their motherboard is in the Slot-1 format. Imagine purchasing a poorly designed Slotket, it would really be difficult to make your system run stable. Overclocking your PPGA Celeron would be difficult too, if the Slotket is poorly designed.

As mentioned earlier, the board comes with on-board audio. The built-in audio uses the Elite CMI 8338 3D audio chipset. To tell you the truth, I have not heard of this chipset before. However, this audio chip allows the use of 4 speaker output for realistic 3D positional sound. At first, I thought Jackie was kidding when he told me it could do 3D sound. I kept wondering where the rear speaker output was, as it was not written anywhere. After reading the electronic manual in the CD-ROM, I discovered that the Line In (the center blue coloured jack) could be used as the rear speaker output. All you need to do is to enable the 4 speaker mode.

I was quite impressed by the fact that it could do 3D positional audio. Moreover, this is only a single audio chip which could provide Sound Blaster 16-bit compatible audio, and the additional support for Microsoft's DirectSound 3D and Aureal 3D specifications. In addition, there are also connectors for SPDIF 24-bit digital sound input and output. Moreover, there's a jumper to allow the user to set the SPDIF output level to either 0.5V or 5V.

Another important feature is the overclockability of the motherboard. There's a jumper which allows you to override the 66Mhz FSB to 100MHz. This is almost a standard feature nowadays, so the days of covering the B21 pin is over. In addition, the BIOS also allows the setting of the core voltage. Yes, it is too good to be true, but it is! This makes Elitegroup the next to jump into the CPU core voltage tweaking business after Abit and Microstar. Most overclockers would be delighted to know that the CPU core voltage could actually be increased freely, meaning there's no limit to how much voltage you can set unlike the Microstar MS-6163, where the voltage setting would be limited to only 2.2V for a 2.0V CPU. In the case of the P6BXT-A+, the user can freely move on to unchartered waters by setting the voltage to 2.3V and above. Of course, this is solely done at the risk of the user. A minority would be delighted at the fact that the voltage could also be stepped down instead. Although I really do not see the logic, but some still argue that they only managed to overclock at 1.8V. This is the strangest I've heard so far. Anyway, this seems to be a very attractive feature, and most overclockers would surely want to use this baby to fry their chip.

Other than that, I find the layout of the motherboard very wide and spacious. There's a lot of room between the Slot-1 and DIMM slots. This is due to the extra space taken up by the ZIF Socket for the PPGA Celeron. This roomy feeling is good especially when you are using a large fan/heatsink combo, like the ever famous GlobalWin dual fan/heatsink combo. The FDD/HDD connectors are placed far away from the DIMM slots, which makes it really convenient and obstruction free to use the third DIMM slot.

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The Test

I was given a Celeron 443 to carry out tests for the Socket 370 configuration. For Slot-1 configuration, I used my Pentium-II 300 (the popular SL2YK). Overclocking was easy, just with a flick of the 66Mhz to 100MHz bus jumper. I was surprised to find my SL2YK to work at 2.0V on this board, although it actually need 2.05V to run stable. I guess I have an explanation for that, but for now, let's carry on with the test.

Test Configuration
Processor(s):	Pentium II - 300 Retail, batch=SL2YK, 2.0V, Malay
RAM:	1 x 128MB Samsung GH PC100 SDRAM DIMM
Hard Drive(s):	Quantum 800MB
Video Card(s):	Creative Graphics Blaster TNT 16MB
Bus Master Drivers:	Windows 98 Bus Mastering Drivers
Video Drivers:	Creative Riva TNT detonator drivers
Operation System(s):	Windows 98 Second Edition (build 4.10.2222A)

Ziff-Davis Benchmark Results

CPU Mark 32 (Winbench 99)	P6BXT-A+	MS-6163
PII 300MHz (66 x 4.5)	23.3	-
PII 450MHz (100 x 4.5)	35.0	34.9
Celeron 433MHz (66 x 6.5)	33.1	-
Celeron 487.5MHz (75 x 6.5)	37.0	-

FPU Winmark (Winbench 99)	P6BXT-A+	MS-6163
PII 300MHz (66 x 4.5)	1540	-
PII 450MHz (100 x 4.5)	2310	2310
Celeron 433MHz (66 x 6.5)	2320	-
Celeron 487.5MHz (75 x 6.5)	2600	-

Business Winstone (Winstone 99)	P6BXT-A+	MS-6163
PII 300MHz (66 x 4.5)	16.0	16.1
PII 450MHz (100 x 4.5)	20.1	20.3
Celeron 433MHz (66 x 6.5)	18.7	-
Celeron 487.5MHz (75 x 6.5)	19.6	-

Comparing the benchmark between the P6BXT-A+ and MS-6163, you can see that there's little difference in terms of performance, except that the Microstar 6163 scored a little higher in the Winstone99 scores. Anyway, it may not be a very fair comparison, since there was an application running in the background which I didn't manage to turn off. I believe it has to do with the audio driver. Also, I believe most of you should obtain higher Winstone scores since most will be using UDMA/33 for their harddisk. The test setup was fitted with an old Quantum 800MB hard disk which is quite slow, and this would have affected the Winstone scores. In addition, the Winstone scores for a PII-450 is higher than a Celeron clocked to 487.5 Mhz. This really shows that faster isn't always better. The lack of cache in the Celeron (four times less than a Pentium II) makes it perform slower.

The overclocked CPUs ran very smoothly without any hitch and voltage tweaking. The motherboard also ran without any stability problems. Overall, I'd say stability is not a problem. So, are there any problems at all? Read on...

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The Bad

This is the area where most people are concerned over. I would normally purchase a product even if it has bad points, only if I can tolerate them. I guess that in the case of the P6BXT-A+, the bad points are within tolerable limits for most people.

Firstly, let's talk about the design of the motherboard. The first thing I noticed was the fan connectors. There simply isn't enough to go around. Placing a Slot-1 CPU with a dual fan configuration is enough to gobble up both the connectors, leaving none for the casing fan. Although the casing fan could be plugged directly to the power supply, but it is not attractive anymore since that would require an additional purchase of overly priced cables.

Plugging the ATX power connector to the board posed to be a slight problem too. At first, I had difficulty plugging it in, until I noticed that one of the capacitors was actually built very close to the connector. It was actually obstructing the snap-lock lever on the connector. I had no other choice but to bend the capacitor in order to push the connector in. Now I'm wondering if I could pull it out easily.

The DIMM slots looked quite innocent at first, but after inserting the SDRAM, I find that it could still move. Placing a finger on the DIMM, I could sway it forward and backward. I really don't know how serious that is, but knowing that something isn't sitting properly makes me feel uneasy already. Besides that, there is also one PCI slot less, as it was already taken up by the on-board audio. Although the audio could be diasbled by a jumper, there is still one slot less, making it unattractive for those who own a multitude of PCI cards.

The voltage control in the BIOS is indeed a very useful utility for overclockers. However, the lack of voltage limiting cap is a bit dangerous. One could easily fry the CPU if one isn't careful during the voltage setup. I hope ECS would consider placing a cap of ±0.30V over the original CPU voltage to prevent any serious disaster. Also, I find the voltage reported by the hardware monitor to be surprisingly high. At the normal 2.0V settings, the hardware monitor reported the voltage to be 2.15V, as shown below. Perhaps this is the reason why my PII-300 SL2YK ran smoothly at 2.0V even though it needed 2.05V on the MS-6163. I do not know whether the hardware monitor is wrong or the board is actually supplying a higher voltage. However, I do believe the latter to be true since my CPU ran without any voltage tweaking. I did manage to put the voltage up to 2.30V in the BIOS and was really scared to see the Hardware monitor report the current core voltage to be about 2.40V. Heh, luckily I didn't fry my CPU.

On the other hand, I was also disappointed to see the lack of FSB settings. For example, Abit and Microstar have already moved on to provide a wide variety of bus speed settings. The ability to choose a wide range of bus speeds is extremely attractive when one is faced with a not-so-good CPU to overclock. At least, one can still salvage the very last bit of MHz left by changing the bus frequency. Thus, the P6BXT-A+ loses out in this aspect. However, one could still get the PII-350 to overclock by pushing the bus speed to its maximum speed of 133MHz (read my last review on the PII-350).

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Conclusion

I enjoyed reviewing this motherboard as much as the Microstar MS-6163 motherboard mainly because of its overclocking ability. On the other hand, I was expecting it to be unstable, but was surprised to find it untrue. Overall, I find this board very attractive in terms of design and innovation. This board is very suitable for those who want to invest in a Celeron now, and have the plans to upgrade to a more powerful Slot-1 processor in the future. The integrated design of the Slot-1/Socket 370 makes this an all-processor-in-one board which is the first ever in the world. The built-in audio solution is also very attractive when keeping the cost of a motherboard low is concerned. Moreover, it is the first built-on-board audio solution that provides 3D positional audio. I would definitely love to keep this motherboard as a reference motherboard. However, the lack of certain overclocking features made this a near miss to being a perfect board.

MOTHERBOARD RATING

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