AOpen AX6BC Slot-1 BX

The Bad

There isn't all too much that you can complain about when looking at the AX6BC, the only two problems AnandTech could really find with the board were mostly cosmetic and layout issues.  The placement of the floppy disk interface connector near the ATX back plane is a downside to the otherwise roomy layout of the AX6BC, it requires that you stretch the FDD cable over the Pentium II processor in order to plug it in, something that'll add a little frustration to any installation in a crowded ATX case. 

Secondly, the board is outfitted with only two fan connectors, which is a bit of a problem for those users with heavy duty cooling fans for their processors, often requiring two or three connectors themselves, prepare to get some y-splitters if you're going to be using any of the larger glacier fans on the AX6BC.

Although there wasn't much AOpen could do about this issue, the only real advantage the BH6 holds over the AX6BC is its ability to adjust the core voltage of any Pentium II CPU, and it looks like the BH6 will remain the ideal overclocker for at least a little while longer...ABIT does have that BX6 Revision II right around the corner...

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: LG Semiconductor PC100 SDRAM (7ns)
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB LGS PC100 SDRAM

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 98 & 3D Winbench 98 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• Quake 2 tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color in Software Rendering Mode