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The
Elitegroup P6BXT-A+ |
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It's
two boards in one!
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The
poeple at ECS
really decided to do something different this time. They put their
Marketing Hats on and decided to bring the Reseller/Custom
Configurers and the End User community a board with a great deal of
flexibility! They let go of conventional design practices and really
thought "out of the box" with this board!
Take a look at the picture below. You aren't seeing things. This
board has both a Socket370 and a Slot 1 on it! Now, instead of being
limited to only one or the other of the two most recent Intel CPU
interfaces, you can choose which version best fits your
budget/performance curve. Here's the rest of the details. |
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Specs:
- Chipset:
Intel 440BX processor supports Celeron PPGA, Celeron, Pentium II
& Pentium III
- Bios Vendor:
Award
- Memory: 3
DIMM; Max 768MB
- Audio: Elite
PCI Audio - CMI8338
- Video: N/A
- Slot: 2 ISA,
4 PCI, 1 ISA/PCI shared and 1 AGP
- Form Factor:
ATX
- I/O
Interface: Supports Plug and Play function
- One - EPP/ECP
mode parallel port
- Two - 16550
high-speed serial I/O ports (2 connectors)
- Supports
360K~2.88M Byte, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120
- Dual PCI IDE
interfaces - supports four IDE devices (PIO mode 4, DMA Mode 2,
Ultra DMA 33)
- PS/2 keyboard
and PS/2 mouse connectors
- ATX Power
Supply Connector
- Audio
Ports(Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, CD-in and game port)
- Two sets of
USB connector
- Other ports
- IrDA ASKIR
Header.
- Green, HDD,
Power indicator LED Connectors
- CPU Fan and
Chassis Fan Headers
- LAN Card Wake
Up/Internal Modem Ring Wake-Up Headers
Special
Features:
- Dual
architecture supporting both slot 1 and socket 370
- PC 99 color
connector
- Universal
retention module support SECC, SECC 2
- Elite PCI
Aureal 3D sound on board, supports 4-way surround sound speakers
- AMD magic
packet header enables LAN/Modem power-on function
- System
hardware monitoring
- SB-LINK?
for legacy sound
- Magic
Jumperless
- Keyboard
power on
- Anti virus -
PC Cillin
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Another
great feature of this board is it's on board A3D Sounds System. It
is based on the A3D Version 1 chipset. We'll cover that a little
later. Also, this board comes equipped with a CPU Setup option in
its BIOS. One slightly limiting factor is the 4 PCI/2ISA slot
configuration. We would have liked to have seen 5 PCI slots.
On the other hand, you won't need a sound card so you'll have an
extra PCI or ISA slot free! Also, the position of the ATX Power
Connector is a notable improvement over most boards! The connector
is located out of the way of the CPU, just where it should be.
Speaking of connectors, the PC99 color connectors for the on board
IO and Sound Ports look cool too! |
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Our
Test System
Mid
Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Celeron 300a PPGA Overclocked to 450, ECS
P6BXT-A+ Motherboard,
Maxtor 17 Gig EIDE 5400 RPM Drive, 96 MB of PC100 CAS2 RAM, Skywell
Magic TNT w/ 16 MB, On board Elite A3D CMI 8338 PCI Audio, Memorex
48X CDROM, TNT Detonator Drivers and Win 98
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Overclocking
Although this
board does not have voltage adjusting capabilities, it was a very
competent "overclocker". We set up our Celeron 300a at 450
MHz. We also set our RAM up in a CAS2 configuration to acheive
optimal memory performance. This board was rock solid stable through
our battery of tests. The BIOS is easy to configure. Once you set a
jumper on the board to the 100 MHz. FSB setting, you can adjust the
speeds from 100-133 MHz. We also tried 112MHz. for a total of 504
with our C300a. The processor booted Win98 but locked shortly after.
With a little more creative cooling (we were using a stock Intel
boxed set up) we feel a stable 504 is within reach on this board. We
were very happy with this board in this area.
Here are the test stats...
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Benchmarks
WinTune
98
Offline
Test Results
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CPU
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(1)
Celeron 300a with MMX @ 450 MHz
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Video
Board
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NVidia
RIVA TNT
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Video
Mode
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1024X768@16bits/pixel
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RAM
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96
MB
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OS
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Windows
98 4.10.1998
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Area
Tested
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Value
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CPU
Integer
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1350.274
MIPS
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CPU
Floating Point
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539.1442
MFLOPS
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Video(2D)
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82.073
MPixels/s
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Direct3D
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130.4424
MPixels/s
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OpenGL
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71.36538
MPixels/s
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Memory
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820.4862
MB/s
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Cached
Disk
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78.73181
MB/s
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Uncached
Disk
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2.903789
MB/s
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are solid numbers. There is nothing too earth shattering either way
here. Once again, I want to emphasize the stability of this board.
We had our Celeron 300a PPGA Processor set at 150 MHz. over spec.
and at default voltage. These numbers are in the ballpark of a
P2-450. For a Motherboard and CPU combo that comes in at less than
$200, you can't beat this kind of performance! |
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| Let's
move on to a little more robust benchmark, shall we? |
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ZD
Winbench 99 Tests
| ECS
P6BXT-A+ |
| WinBench
99/Business Disk WinMark 99 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
1870 |
| WinBench
99/Business Graphics WinMark 99 |
148 |
| WinBench
99/CPUmark32 |
920 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/Bus:Overall (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
1870 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:AVS/Express 3.4 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
3830 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:FrontPage 98 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
24600 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:MicroStation SE (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
6500 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Overall (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
6580 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Photoshop 4.0 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
5270 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Premiere 4.2 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
5610 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Sound Forge 4.0 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
9260 |
| WinBench
99/Disk Playback/HE:Visual C++ 5.0 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
7550 |
| WinBench
99/FPU WinMark |
2460 |
| WinBench
99/GDI Playback/HE/AVS/Express 3.4 |
49.1 |
| WinBench
99/GDI Playback/HE/FrontPage 98 |
108 |
| WinBench
99/GDI Playback/HE/MicroStation SE |
15.1 |
| WinBench
99/GDI Playback/HE/Photoshop 4.0 |
62.5 |
| WinBench
99/GDI Playback/HE/Premiere 4.2 |
59.8 |
| WinBench
99/GDI Playback/HE/Sound Forge 4.0 |
132 |
| WinBench
99/GDI Playback/HE/Visual C++ 5.0 |
209 |
| WinBench
99/High-End Disk WinMark 99 (Thousand Bytes/Sec) |
6580 |
| WinBench
99/High-End Graphics WinMark 99 |
497 |
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Is that enough
data for you? These are excellent CPU numbers and the High End Disk
numbers look great too!
Audio
Performance
There is not
much that needs to be said really about this aspect of the board.
The quality of the on board audio is classic A3D technology. The 3D
positional effects are great and the fidelity more than adequate for
the average gamer. It may not be the most leading edge since A3D 2.0
is out now, but it comes basically for free with this board. It is
quite a value from any perspective.
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Overall
Impression
We really
enjoyed this great new innovation that ECS has brought to market
with the P6BXT-A+. It was a solid stable performer with the
flexibility to change to different CPU technologies depending on
your budget.
Many System
Integrators should take note of this board. Just think... one board
for all of your Celeron, Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 needs and throw in
free audio to go with it! Well done Elitegroup!
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The ECS
P6BXT-A+! Gets a Hot Hardware Temp-O-Meter Rating of....
87 !
-Davo
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