Outclassed now, but a good board
Written: Dec 03 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Awesome performance at its time
Cons: Old now, lack of CPU upgrade options.
|
|
|
| Granto's Full Review: Abit BP6 Motherboard |
I bought this board in December of 1999, with two Celeron 366 MHz processors.
Several months before, I had helped my friend duplicate the original dual celeron hack , involving soldering wires and drilling tiny holes in two slot 1 celeron 300A's, and running them at 450 MHz on a board without any overclocking features other than a 100 MHz bus. That combo was not the most stable.
I was quite happy when it turned out my cheap, untested CPUs could accomplish the fairly common 50% overclock. The whole combo cost me $220 at the time. Abit is one of the most popular motherboards among overclockers, and this was by far the most popular motherboard for overclocking dual processors. You can even set the voltages differently for each CPU.
It is now one year later, and I'm still quite pleased. I started out running windows NT on it, but that OS lacked hardware support (USB) that I wanted, and wasn't very good for gaming. With the release of windows 2000, those features were available, and it's been great ever since.
Although there have been various issues with drivers and BIOS revisions, they're sorted out now.
It is unfortunate that Intel changed their CPU design, because the fastest CPUs that you are able to run on it are Celeron 533's. Although there are workarounds to use the newer chips, there is no way to run a dual cpu system with them. This is lame, since current Intel CPUs still overclock very well.
I also wanted to use the Thermaltake "Golden Orb" heatsink, as it was a good performing heatsink/fan combo, and popular among overclockers. Due to the capacitors near the CPU sockets, I had to use a dremel tool to cut parts of the heatsink off to allow it to attach properly. Some people just bend them away, but you would have had to bend them severely on mine (30 degree angle from motherboard!) to make it fit.
Although the board still works fine, and is still a decent bargain, most people would find another solution more optimal. Barely any applications can take advantage of SMP, and only a few Operating Systems. Gaming, for example, would be faster on a slightly faster uniprocessor machine.
If you are running a server, though, it performs fairly well.
It's still hard to beat the 1100 MHz of CPU speed I have in this thing. It's been running the distributed.net rc5 client (100% cpu load on both cpu's) almost nonstop for a year now, with maybe five hardware related lockups.
I just now overclocked a AMD duron 600 to 850 MHz, and it slightly outperforms the BP6 combo at rc5 cracking. Since it's a uniprocessor system, it is way better for games. The BP6 will soon become a server, after being an excellent workstation for a year.
I would not recommend this combo to most computer users, unless they find a good deal. With the continued drop in computer prices, the BP6 has been edged out now, mostly due to Intels CPU decisions. If you could run Celeron II or Pentium III chips in it, it would still be a winner. Technology has advanced, and there are better performers and better deals.
It actually costs more today for this combo than when I bought it last year.
Abit will soon release the VP6, which will allow use of the newer chips. That would be my recommendation, if you're wanting to use SMP.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Granto
|
|
Location: Bellingham, WA
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 5 members
About Me:
I don't write as many epinions as I used to, because they pay less now.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.