Kyle van HardOCP heeft een preview geschreven over de Abit VP6, de opvolger van de alom geprezen BP6. De Abit VP6 is een dual FC-PGA plank en is gebouwd rond de Via 694 chipset. Verder zijn de layout en features ook heel erg oké met 5x PCI, 1x AGP en 4x DIMM sloten en een onboard High Point 370 controller voor RAID en ATA-100 functionaliteit. Ook qua overclockbaarheid stelt deze plank ons niet teleur, door middel van SoftMenu III konden de twee geteste CPU’s in dual mode even ver overgeclocked worden als ze konden op een normale plank. Volgens Kyle is deze plank een prima opvolger van de BP6, en als je een tweaker bent die graag dual wilt gaan is dit een plank die je niet mag laten liggen:
There are however a couple of issues I have with the board. First is the VIA 694 chipset. It is a bit clunky but has also proven to be very solid. ABIT has no control over this and I think they have done a good job at pushing it to its performance peak. Hopefully we will see them keep pushing forward with functional BIOS revisions that will allow for even better memory bandwidth in the future. The second and last issue I have with the board is the use of the High Point 370 controller chip. There have been bugs and quirks with the High Point chip from the get go. Mainly, we have recently seen incompatibility problems with Maxtor hard drives. ABIT has explained to me that these bugs are being worked on as we speak and all the kinks should be ironed out SOON. Sadly enough, if you own a Maxtor drive and anticipate putting it on this board, I don't advise it as things are now. Outside that, the ATA100 and RAID do work well on this board and you can come to expect the same results that we have seen from the High Point 370 chipset that we have seen in the past. When it works, it does work well.
ABIT has put together a mainboard that any BP6 owner would be proud to call their own. After shattering the market with the very unexpected and groundbreaking BP6, it was expected of ABIT to build another dual mainboard. The legacy of the BP6 provided them with a very tall order to fill. I have no problem suggesting that the ABIT VP6 has stepped up and fulfilled the wants and needs of the inexpensive but quality driven SMP mainboard market. I truly credit ABIT with being the first at bringing affordable SiMPy to the market and the VP6 carries on the tradition.
The overclocking features on this board are abundant and functional. I think any DIYer would be satisfied with the tweaks that are able to be applied through the SoftMenuIII and, as always, all of this is done with no jumpers to set. The stability of the memory bus with multiple brand modules is impressive too, as well as all of the tweaks that ABIT allows you to implement if your SDRam is up to it. If you plan on using this board, I would highly suggest you invest in some PC133 CAS2 SDRam from either Corsair or Crucial, as we know it works perfectly with the VP6 and has the ability to run at speeds up to 145MHz at the CAS2 setting. (We happen to be testing it now.)
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