Second Look at VP6

Second Look at the VP6
by: MTP

Over-Clocking!! What it is really all about.

Abit earned its reputation as a company who builds a board by listening to its users. From the BP6 to the VP6, Abit has incorporated multiple over-clocking tools into this new board. Soft Menu III, gives you the ability to ramp up the fsb to a maximum of 178mhz in 1mhz increments. Voltage increases from 1.5V to 1.9V, V I/O from 3.3V to 3.6V. Memory tweaking with the 4 way interleave and Cas settings.

I loaded all my software at stock cpu settings of 700. Once that was done the juice was turned up. I went to 933 (fsb of 133) with no problems. Tried 1050mhz (fsb of 150), again no problems. I switched over to water-cooling and ran my system at dual 1050 (fsb of 150) for just over 3 months 24/7 under a full load. It never failed due to problems with the motherboard. I did run into a problem for week of multiple reboots and lock ups, but that was from my ASUS 6800 blowing a memory chip.
Using the water-cooling I was able to get the dual 700 to 1.1G (fsb of 157) and run for a few days. My cooling system couldn't handle the heat from the CPUs very well, and lets face it; 700E at 1.1G. That's just a little out of spec!

Now compared to my old Tiger100 with the same CPUs at 933, the BX chipset still out performed the VIA chipset, but I believe this to be flaw in the VIA and not Abit. As mentioned Abit has incorporated several bios tweaks to cut that 90 degree curve down to a slight bend, but it is still there.

This board was build to over-clock and handles it very well.

Conclusion:
The biggest complaints that still exists with this board that I can think are:
1. The surface mount components next to the cpu sockets. Many have had to replace their motherboard due to knocking off one of those components while changing or even just installing a heat-sink. The most common seeming to come from using the G-Orbs, and that was due to their locking clamp.
2. The lack of voltage regulators circuits per CPU socket. The ability to have each CPU voltage controlled by its own vrm would allow for easier over-clocking and stability control through bios. The BP6 has this feature, so I do not understand why Abit chose to stray from it with this motherboard.

I haven't test the Raid setup so my second review is still incomplete. There have been issues with the AGP setup and having to slow down the data speed of the AGP slot by changing the data register in bios. I did this when I was having problems due to the ASUS card, but when I realized it was the card, I switch the registers back and have never needed to mess with them.
The issue of the ECC ram has finally been resolved with the newest beta bios, as also the booting off a scsi cd.
The fact the there have been only a few bios updates tells me that Abit put allot of time into this board before releasing it onto the market (unlike a board I recently had, that threw out a new bios almost weekly the first few months it was out).

The zip drive issue I mentioned is not just related to the VIA chipset like I thought. I happened to also have a promise Ultra66 board in another machine that used an Intel GX chipset. The exact same thing happened to it. So I'm guessing it is a UDMA issue.

Now for over-clocking, this board is just plan ready. Given the higher amp fan headers to the bios soft menu III. I believe this board fits the bill for a stable over-clocking able motherboard. It is simple enough to setup for a novice, but with the tweaking in it for a advance user. With the Raid support this makes for a good entry level server in my opinion. Which is where it is ending up in my home Lan.

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