Ars Technica heeft een review op zijn site geparkeerd van Abit's eerste moederbord met de Apollo Pro 133 chipset van VIA. Hoewel de performance niet spectaculair te noemen is biedt het plankje wel erg veel features voor zijn prijs, zoals 133MHz FSB, PC133 SDRAM, ATA/66 en AGP dividers lager dan 2/3. Hieronder een gedeelte:
I'm impressed by the quality and performance of the board for the price. At around $80, this is the perfect board to put into a friend's machine who wants to tweak some, but doesn't want to drop a lot of money. One of the reasons I'm excited about this board is related to timing; since this board was just released, in a month (or two) the price tag should seep down even further, perhaps closer to $60. Remembering that a first implementation BE-6 will cost you closer to $110, you can see why this board may be of value for the price-conscious buyer.But before I should like I'm doing price-apologetics, let's not forget that the VA6 had an admirable stability rating, and it it go handle more than the BE6 once the CuMine got involved. Put simply, I'm thrilled at the performance and compatibility of the board when running a 133MHz FSB CPU. Lotsa folks are having trouble getting these new fangled CPUs to work on mobos that are supposed to support them, and it's nice to find one that does, and does it well.
In the end, performance of this board is a bit more than behind the curve, but the stability of the board was quite good, and a look at the feature list shows you that you can get some impressive tech on a "low end" board (ATA66, 4 USB ports, onboard audio, etc). If ABIT continues to make these boards and produces one using the VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset, things could get downright interesting. For now, the Apollo Pro 133 chipset is looking up, and we're planning on snaggin' another one to work with here in a few weeks.
