BX133-RAID
"This RAID isn't for cockroaches..."
Initial Observations:
If you take a stroll down memory lane and look at Abit's
history with the BX-based motherboards: BX6, BH6, BX6-r2, BE6-II, and the BF6.
You can clearly see a trend or connection between each board one evolving to the
next generation. Although Abit has had a couple great socket BX motherboards
(BM6 and BP6), they are both very different in layout and function because of
the PPGA socket and other features. The BX133-RAID seems to be a step off the
beaten path that Abit tread with the previous BX motherboards. Nonetheless,
although features may be a bit different, the physical layout of the motherboard
is somewhat similar to its older brothers.
At first glance you will immediately notice that the layout
is very similar to Abit's "Golden Boy" BX motherboard... The
BE6-II. The
BX133-RAID's FCPGA socket opposed to the BE6-II's Slot 1 is the only major
visible difference between the two boards. There are also a few other component
location changes that were necessary to accommodate the CPU Socket 370
interface. The similarities even extend to the Highpoint HPT370 ATA-100 hard
drive controller chip.
The newer BE6-II v1.2 also boasts this new chipset compared
to the HPT 366 ATA-66 chipset of old. I've seen many newsgroup and forum posts
with numerous and diverse incompatibility issues with the HPT 366 chipset and
I'm very curious if these issues have been resolved with the new chipset. We'll
see in the end if I had any issues. The board that I received had a couple
things jump out at me immediately... This may seem insignificant to some people,
but the LGH (Little Green Heatsink) that cools the BX chipset is bigger on this
motherboard. I removed it to take a closer look and found that the heatsink
contact area was actually machined flat and had a thermal interface material to
compensate for the imperfections on the BX chipset's surface.
I am fairly certain what I can expect in terms of performance
from the BX chipset. After all, it's certainly been around for awhile. But,
I'm excited about seeing how the RAID and ATA-100 functions will perform. Can
there really be that much of a difference in performance between ATA-66 and
ATA-100/ RAID? Well... The Hard Drive
Guys were cool enough to send me a couple of brand-spanking-new (Hehe... He
said "spanking!") 15.3 gig IBM ATA-100 hard drives so I can show you just how
much of a difference the new ATA-100 technology can make! Anyway... From
reading the manual and Abit press release, it seems like we're in for a treat.
Let's move on and get into some of the details...
Next page: Specs
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