AOpen MX64 mobo review

Mike Andrawes van AnandTech schreef een review van de AOpen MX64 MicroATX mobo gebaseerd op de VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset. Met maar 3 PCI sloten is het moeilijk uitbreiden, maar de overklokbaarheid van dit plankie is wel erg goed te noemen.

Once again, we were able to push our testbed FC-PGA Pentium III 550E to 5.5 x 150 MHz = 825 MHz - faster than any production level Intel CPU at the time of publication. No core voltage adjustments were necessary for our CPU. For full details, read Part 1 and Part 2 of AnandTech's Overclocking the FC-PGA Coppermine article. At overclocked or non-overclocked speeds, the MX64 was rock solid, as we've come to expect from AOpen.

Like other Apollo Pro 133/133A boards, the MX64 supports an "asynchronous" memory clock, meaning that it can run at a different speed than the FSB. Options include FSB clock and FSB clock +/- 33 MHz. When using the 133 MHz bus, FSB + 33 MHz is not available, nor is FSB - 33MHz when using a 66MHz FSB. It should also be noted that the setting labeled +/- 33 MHz is actually adding or subtracting the PCI bus speed. So if you're running a 150 MHz FSB, with the memory clock set for FSB - 33 MHz, you're actually getting 150 - 37.5 = 112.5 MHz (FSB = 150 MHz, PCI clock = 150/4=37.5 MHz). This is also a function of the VIA chipset rather than something unique to AOpen.

The BIOS options may come as a bit of a surprise for those that have never used a VIA based board before, as there are a number of options not found on Intel chipset-based systems. The most obvious is the memory setting mentioned above. As with other VIA Apollo Pro 133A boards, the AOpen offers the ability to enable or disable AGP 4X support from the Chipset Features Setup. Interestingly enough, there was no option for enabling/disabling AGP Fast Writes.