Well, judging by the present day situation, we can say that VIA with its latest chipset for Pentium III, Apollo Pro133A,keeps strengthening its positions in the market. According to the recent info, even such well-known mainboard manufacturersas ASUS, Gigabyte or FIC are currently suffering serious problems trying to sell their i820 based mainboards. First of all,they should blame the chipset, which is rich in various drawbacks and defects. Besides, the systems built on i820 are quiteexpensive, which also doesn't belong to their advantages. As a result, i820 based mainboards make under 10% of all the boardsavailable in the market today. That's why VIA Apollo Pro133A based mainboards by different manufacturers keep multiplying, whilethe amount of boards on i820 grows very slowly.

Today we are going to review one more mainboard on VIA Apollo Pro133A - AOpen AX64 Pro. AOpen is one of the world's largestmainboard manufacturers, which has achieved so much mostly due to close contacts with OEM. As for the retail boards designed bythis company, they won public respect and love thanks to their fine and extraordinary design. The best example here will be avery fashionable AX6BC Pro II Millennium Edition with a black PCB and a platinum-plated heatsink. Of course, these mainboardscost a bit more than all the rest, but their brilliant features easily make up for high price. Well, let's take a closer lookat AOpen AX64 Pro.

Specification

• CPU
  • Slot 1 Intel Pentium II/III and Intel Celeron (via Slot 1-to-Socket 370 converter)
  • Supports clock frequency multipliers from 2.5x to 8x
• Chipset
  • VIA Apollo Pro133A (VT82C694X+VT82C686A)
• System Memory
  • 3 x 168-pin DIMM slots supporting to 1.25GB PC100/PC133 SDRAM with 3.3V voltage
  • 8/16/32/64/128/256/512MB memory modules
  • Supports ECC and parity
  • Supports Virtual Channel Memory (VCM)
• AGP
  • AGP slot supporting 4x mode
• Slots
  • 4 PCI, 1 ISA and 1 AMR slots
• Integrated sound
  • AC'97 sound with Analog Devices AD1881 codec
• I/O ports
  • 4 USB ports
  • 2 serial ports and 1 parallel port supporting ECP and EPP
  • PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse
  • MIDI/Game port, speakers out, line and microphone ins
• Integrated UltraDMA/66 IDE controller
  • 2 UltraDMA/66 Bus Master IDE channels (supporting up to 4 ATAPI-devices)
  • Supports DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and LS-120
• BIOS
  • 2Mbit Flash EEPROM
  • Award Plug and Play BIOS
  • Jumperfree design
  • DIE-HARD BIOS technology
• Other
  • Wake on modem, mouse, keyboard, LAN and timer
  • Hardware monitoring
• Board Dimensions
  • ATX Form Factor, 20.2cm x 30.5cm

The mainboard is supplied in an original box containing a user's manual, a CD-disk, one FDD cable, one UltraDMA/33and one UltraDMA/66 cable and a cable with a bracket with two additional USB ports, which is set into the case rear side.On the CD-disk supplied together with the board you can find a standard set of drivers and utilities and Norton Antivirus5.0. By the way, all the previously tested mainboards, which were supplied with Norton Antivirus, came only with the fourthversion of this utility. The user's manual is also designed in a unique way and looks like a poster of A2 format telling onlythe basic things about the board installation. As for the full manual, you can find it only on the CD-disk in pdf-format, whichis, of course, not that convenient at all, because you will be able to use it only after your system is already installed andworks properly.

Closer Look

AOpen AX64 Pro mainboard is equipped with Slot 1. In fact, we all know that Intel was planning to cease developing itsSlot 1 family by April already, that is why AOpen's decision to provide its new product with Slot 1 may strike as reallystrange and illogical. However, our concerns are absolutely ungrounded, because Intel's plans remained nothing but plans.For some unknown (marketing and manufacturing) reasons the lifetime of poor Slot 1 was prolonged up to the end of the year.Nevertheless, SECC2 processors will appear in retail a bit later than their Socket 370 counterparts and will cost a bit moreand new Celeron processors are also very likely to be made mostly in FC-PGA package. Besides, you should also keep in mind thatthere are a lot of Slot 1-to-Socket 370 converters in the market right now, so that using FC-PGA CPUs in Slot 1 is no longera problem.

Since AOpen AX64 Pro is built on a new VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset supporting 133MHz system bus, PC133 SDRAM and AGP 4x, itcan boast all the modern features. The only exception is probably RDRAM memory typical of i820 based systems, however, this ishardly a serious drawback. Now RDRAM is extremely expensive and its advantages compared to SDRAM are quite doubtful. As you know,the systems on i440BX can sometimes prove faster than those on VIA Apollo Pro133A if their system bus is overclocked to 133MHzand AGP to 89MHz (33% higher than the nominal AGP frequency, because i440BX doesn't have 1/2 AGP frequency divider, unlike VIAApollo Pro133A). However, this success is very delusive, because of many problems. First, you should be very careful whenassembling your i440BX based system, because not any combination of the components can allow overclocking that much, whichin the first place concerns the graphics card you use. Second, overclocking like that will reduce the service time andreliability of your graphics subsystem. As for VIA Apollo Pro133A based mainboards, such as AOpen AX64 Pro, no problemslike that ever occur: 133MHz FSB is a nominal feature and AGP frequency in this case remains at 66MHz.

There are three DIMM slots on the mainboard, which allow using up to 1.5GB memory on AOpen AX64 Pro. Like any othermainboard on VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset, AOpen AX64 Pro supports PC100 as well as PC133 SDRAM. Since the chipset has anasynchronous memory bus, which can work at CPU frequency and at some other frequency 33MHz higher or lower than that, itis not necessary to use PC133 if your CPU requires 133MHz FSB: PC100 SDRAM will fit, no problem. And vice versa: if yourCPU requires a 100MHz system bus, you can still clock the memory bus to 133MHz, which increases slightly your systemperformance. Although you cannot increase the memory bus frequency by another 33MHz if the system bus is already workingat 133MHz, as you could probably do with some other mainboards, it is hardly a bad disadvantage of AOpen AX64 Pro. In fact,only Enhanced HSDRAM, not so widely spread in the market today, can function properly at such frequency. Speaking about thememory we should also mention that this mainboard supports an exotic VCM SDRAM, which is none other but a bufferedmultichannel version of good old PC133, now manufactured only by NEC.

AOpen AX64 Pro is equipped with a usual universal AGP slot supporting 3.3V AGP 1x/2x graphics cards as well as 1.5VAGP 4x ones. As for PCI slots, we have to upset you really: there are only four of them on AOpen AX64 Pro mainboard. Onthe one hand, each PCI slot has its own IRQ in this case and hence there are fewer problems occurring when you assembleyour system. However, on the other hand, we can't regard it as an optimal solution, because the slots may simply turn outinsufficient. Moreover, as you have probably noticed, almost all the today's ATX mainboard manufacturers equip their productswith five or even six PCI slots. AOpen also has one ISA slot (shared with the last PCI slot) and one AMR slot, but this canhardly make up for so few PCI slots. Especially taking into account that the devices with these buses are not that popular nowand besides, the use of an ISA-device will deprive you of the fourth PCI slot. Full-size cards can be installed into any PCIslots, however, not into ISA: it doesn't fit for large cards.

As a South Bridge, AOpen AX64 Pro uses VIA VT82C686A chip, which is richer in different features than the usually used 586B.For example, it allows AC'97 software codec integrated into the chip to produce sound. Although the realization of this featureoccupies about 10% of the CPU resources, the system on this board still appears much cheaper due to no need in any separate soundcards. And Analog Devices AD1881 chip with the basic features serves as DAC. The integrated sound can be disabled on the hardwarelevel with the jumpers or via software - through BIOS Setup.

AOpen AX64 Pro has a rather clever design, although the power supply connector is situated in the wrong place according to ATXspecification. Frankly speaking, we don't think that the chosen location is a bad one. The power supply unit is put at the boardedge between DIMM slots and Slot 1, which allows placing the power supply cable very conveniently inside the case. And as far asthe connector for the additional USB ports is concerned, here AOpen engineers seem to have brought their eggs to a bad market.This connector is situated at the front edge of the board, while the bracket with the port should be installed into the rear sideof the case. So, the cable from this bracket will go through the whole case to the very front.

AX64 Pro has 11 capacitors 2200uF each providing high stability of the mainboard. By the way, these capacitors are even largerthan those we saw on ASUS P3V4X. AX64 Pro is relatively narrow, which allows placing this mainboard practically in any ATX casewithout much effort.

We would like to particularly dwell on the look of this board. Besides, high quality mounting of all the components thereis one very extraordinary thing, which undoubtedly catches your eye. It is the chipset heatsink gilded with 24K pure gold. Thiscontributes not only to the general appearance of the board but also makes the chipset cooling more efficient than on the othermainboards. However, this also tells tangibly on the cost of this product, which is quite high. In fact, we have already seen thewhole bunch of VIA Apollo Pro133A based mainboards working perfectly without any heatsinks at all that is why a gilded heatsinkwill hardly have any serious influence on the consumer features of AOpen AX64 Pro.

BIOS of AX64 Pro also has a couple of remarkable peculiarities. This mainboard can boast an analogue of DualBIOS system,which gets more and more popular. It's Die-Hard BIOS. The main idea of this system is almost the same as by other mainboardsfeaturing the same technology. The mainboard is provided with two BIOS chips, so that in case one of them gets spoilt, theother one comes to rescue and allows booting the system and restoring the first microchip. To switch between ROM microchips,you should use a special jumper. This cool technology protects against failures during BIOS flashing and against such virusesas CIH, for instance.

The BIOS installed is Award ver. 4.60PGA, which is a slightly enhanced ver. 4.51PG. In the first place they made it possibleto save the current settings in EEPROM and then to load them from there upon the user's request if necessary. As for BIOSsettings, we are quite satisfied with them. As usual, mainboards on VIA chipsets feature a lot of options for memory, PCIand AGP timings configuring. Besides, like all other AOpen mainboards, AX64 Pro supports assigning of IRQs to PCI slots. Theonly thing we wish we could see in BIOS Setup is the possibility to use AGP Fast Writes (disabled as default), which lets theCPU transfer the data directly to the graphics bus avoiding the system memory bus.

Hardware monitoring of AOpen AX64 Pro uses the chipset South Bridge in full: two temperatures, rotations of two coolers(there are two connectors for them on the board) and five voltages. A relatively small amount of sensors used is restrictedby the chipset itself, which could monitor only one more thermal sensor. The CPU temperature is taken in the today's most exactway - with a thermal diode built into the processor core.

AOpen AX64 Pro mainboard is supplied preinstalled with a universal processor retention mechanism. Besides, there is alsoa red LED signaling when DIMM slots are powered, so that to prevent the user from replacing some component parts with thepower on.

Overclocking

AOpen positions its AX64 Pro as overclocking friendly. And in fact, there is every reason for that. AOpen AX64 Pro allowschanging manually PCI and AGP frequency dividers with the help of the corresponding jumpers. These two frequencies are actuallyconnected with each other (2 x PCI = AGP), however, we saw something similar only on ASUS P3V4X, and on all other mainboardson VIA Apollo Pro133A - nothing. So, this feature could have made AOpen AX64 Pro a Number 1 for extreme overclocking. But…

But unfortunately, the supported FSB frequencies don't impress us by their diversity. There are only 14 values: 66, 75,83, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124, 133, 140 and 150MHz. However, it is even more upsetting that there are only twopossibilities in the interval between 66 and 100MHz, which may be extremely bad for the owners of Intel Celeron processors,because the latter are intended for 66MHz FSB. Moreover, depending on the chosen PCI divider this group of frequencies mayturn even smaller. So, for instance, if the PCI divider is set to 1:2 (AGP - 1:1) you can choose from three values: 66, 75and 83MHz. As soon as you set the PCI divider to 1:3 (AGP - 2:3), the allowed range will move to 100-124MHz, and in case ofPCI divider - 1:4 (AGP - 1:2), it will be 124MHz and up only.

Besides, AOpen AX64 Pro allows changing processor Vcore, which can be made through BIOS Setup. However, there is onesignificant disadvantage: the user can set any Vcore in the interval between 1.3V and 3.5V (from 1.3V to 2.1V - with step0.05V and from 2.1V to 3.5V - with step 0.1V) independent of the processor used. That is why if you don't feel like usingthe default setting for some reason you can easily burn your CPU by simply selecting a too high Vcore value. Only when youreplace your CPU with a new one, the correct voltage will be set automatically.

And what do we get in practice? Well, we tried to overclock Intel Pentium III 500 FC-PGA on our AOpen AX64 Pro. Theresults proved up to our expectations: the CPU got easily overclocked to 750MHz (5x150MHz) like on many other mainboardswith the allowed FSB frequencies below 150MHz. We failed to increase further the FSB frequency because the clock generatorused on AX64 Pro was unable to provide any frequency higher than 150MHz. So, this mainboard seems to be not the best choicefor extreme overclocking of FC-PGA processors famous for their high overclocking potential.

Performance

Our test system was configured as follows:

• Intel Pentium III 600EB (4.5x133) CPU
• Creative 3DBlaster Annihilator graphics card
• Creative Sound Blaster Live! sound card
• IBM DJNA 372200 HDD
• 128MB PC133 SDRAM by Micron

For our tests we used VIA Service Pack ver. 4.20. When we carried out the benchmarks for ASUS P3V4X, we had to enable FastWrites mode, because only in this mode with 1003 BIOS version this mainboard showed acceptable performance in 3D applications.

High speed is not the most important parameter, which tips the balance for this or that board on the same chipset. In fact,the performance differences are so insignificant that we can't be guided by the benchmarks results only when deciding on a board.It is also very important to consider all the other mainboard features. As for AOpen AX64 Pro, it turned out the slowest mainboardon VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset of all tested in our testlab. However, we have to admit that it was incredibly stable and reliable atwork.

Conclusions

The major advantage of AOpen AX64 Pro appeared its highly fashionable outlook mostly due to the gilded heatsink. But wedoubt that it will really matter as soon as you put it into the case, and what you will really need, it's stability andreliability. So, as a result AOpen AX64 Pro turns nothing particularly special although for a bit higher price.

Highs:

• Supports Coppermine, 133MHz FSB, AGP 4x mode
• High stability and reliability
• Allows manual assigning of IRQs to PCI slots
• Cool outlook

Lows:

• Low performance
• Very few PCI slots (4)
• High cost