Good, but obsolete
Written: Sep 02 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: BX Chipset
Cons: No FCPGA compatibility
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| pilot1187's Full Review: Abit BP6 Motherboard |
I originally bought this board in late 1999 for a system I was building. There weren't a lot of Socket 370 boards on the market, and the BP6 was one of the only ones without integrated video. I bought it for the proven BX chipset and the onboard ATA66 controller, and have not even used the dual CPU feature. Apparently, Abit didn't have expansion in mind. While the the 440BX chipset works superbly with Intel Pentium III FCPGA processors, Abit chose not to release a BIOS update to make the BP6 compatible with FCPGA chips. There are only 2 or 3 pins with different functions on the FCPGA chips when compared to the PPGA chips, so most Socket 370 boards (even the old ones) are FCPGA compatible with a BIOS upgrade. I put in a Celeron 500 as I eagerly awaited the Pentium III in socket 370 format, but Intel spontaneously decided to make the Pentium III and Coppermine-128 Celerons incompatible with unaltered S370 PPGA boards. Instead of getting a fast PIII chip, the best PPGA chip the BP6 can support is a rather pokey 533mhz. My Celeron 500 is from a bad yield, so the overclocking results are rather disappointing (note that I'm blaming the chip, not the board). I also have a small problem with the layout of the board. I used the BP6 in a rather small ATX case, and I had a CD-RW and DVD drives. Now, you techies out there know that CD-RW drives tend to be a bit longer than CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drives, and in a small case like mine, that meant problems. The CD-RW drive could not fit in anything but the very top bay in the case because it would be up against a memory slot. In one of the lower bays, the drive was poking out about an eighth of an inch. I had to wedge the DVD on the bottom, and the CD-RW just cleared the memory socket on the top. The manual and drivers were of reasonable quality. The ATA66 controller I bought the board for turned out to be a problem. It was a pain to configure for use with a large hard disk. Otherwise, the board isn't bad. Plenty of expansion slots and the solid BX chipset make this one of the best Celeron boards in it's generation.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
pilot1187
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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