ABIT VP6

Company: ABIT
Product: VP6 Dual Intel Motherboard
Street Price: ~ $165
Complete Motherboard Spec's: ABIT-USA Spec's
Date Reviewed: May 27, 2001
Reviewed By: Jason

Getting Down To Specifics:

Now that I have told you about everything you can see, it's time to talk about everything that you can't see. First up is the BIOS, which utilizes ABIT's SoftMenu III. The SoftMenu III gives you every tweaking option right in the BIOS, which is why the board has no need for jumpers or dip switches. One of the menu choices I would like to focus on is the SoftMenu III Setup. You can manually choose a FSB speed ranging from 66MHz to 150MHz in various increments, but there is also another choice to add anywhere from 0 to 28 more MHz in 1MHz steppings to your first speed setting, thus allowing you to fine tune your speed. So the theoretical max would be 178MHz FSB for this board, which is pretty extreme for any Intel CPU, not to mention a dual setup. There is a choice for the multiplier, but since Intel CPU's are multiplier locked you just choose your CPU's and leave it at that. Voltage adjustment is also done in this menu, which you can adjust up to .2v higher than what your CPU runs stock. For example, my CPU's run stock at 1.7v, so I could adjust them up to 1.9v. You can also adjust the IO voltage up to 3.6v.

The rest of the menu's have the usual ABIT plethora of settings, including the full memory timings, AGP adjustments, and such. One thing I did notice is that there is only one readout for CPU voltage (and only one adjustment for that matter), however there are two CPU temperature probes to monitor each CPU's core temp.

System Setup & Overclocking:

Once I got the board, my first concern was choosing the right CPU's for it. I contacted Humphrey at PCNut to see what they had in stock, and he told me they have some really sweet P3-700 cC0's in stock that overclock real well at low voltages. Sounded perfect for my VP6! When they arrived I took a look at the testing sheet and the first things I noticed were, "Matched Pair", "150FSB", and "1.8v", then I looked at the CPU's and noticed they were sequential serial numbers!

PCNut includes a sheet for the consumer which states the entire test system setup, voltage required for the CPU, overclocked speed, heat sinks used, and tests that were ran. I have never had any problems with any CPU's I have received from PCNut, and generally I can overclock them a little higher than what they tested them at.

To keep these CPU's cool I contacted Heatsink Factory and obtained a pair of FOP-38's, which fit like a charm on the board. However once I flipped the switch the whine of the delta's lasted for about 5 seconds before I turned the power off and swapped them out for YS-Tech fans instead. The YS-Techs are so much quieter compared to those darned deltas. Thankfully these cC0 P3's don't generate as much heat as an Athlon. I'll talk more about CPU temperature in the paragraph's below where I talk about voltages.

I also used a pair of the non-conductive shims from CrazyPC just for an added safety measure, and to make sure the heat sinks would sit flush on the CPU core since Intel doesn't have little feet on their CPU's like AMD does.

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