The VH6 proved to be a very stable overclocker's motherboard. Even though it
lacks the Front Side Bus speed of Abit's Soft Menu III powered motherboard,
there was enough selection available to get some nice numbers out of our P3-550
and 700E CPUs. Our P3-550E can do 825Mhz using a Slot Kit but can only do 770Mhz
with VH6. This is because the highest voltage setting in the VH6 available for
the P3 is 1.8V and our Flip Chip 550E needs 1.9V to be stable at 825Mhz.
The VH6 was able to take our P3-700E all the way to 980Mhz (140x7). Going to
the next Front Side Bus speed of 150Mhz produced a blank screen. This CPU does
run at 1001Mhz (143x7) on a BX133-RAID but the VH6 lack such a bus speed which
is too bad.
If the VIA chipset has any weak points it would have to be in memory
performance. The above benchmark was made with the P3-550 running at stock speed
and everything is the BIOS left to factory defaults. As you can see, it's
mediocre at best. However, Abit has managed to put some nice tweaks into the
BIOS of the VH6 to great improve the memory performance.
Here is the same P3-550E after the memory tweaks. A big
difference huh? The CPU is still running at stock speed, but this time we turn
on 4-way interleaving, increased the RAM speed by 33Mhz, set the CAS to 2 and
RAM timing to "Turbo". These little tweaks available in the Abit BIOS allowed
for nearly double the memory performance.
Overall, the VH6 is a very nice motherboard. The only thing it
really needs is more Front Side Bus speed selection and maybe an on board
ATA-100 controller. The motherboard proved to be a very stable base for our
overclocked CPUs. It couldn't take our CPUs to its full potential because it
lacked the needed Front Side Bus to do it but it was 100% stable at the speeds
it did get them to. The inclusion of an on board sound card is also
questionable. It just doesn't sound good. They should have save themselves the
few dollars it added to the cost of the board.
Depending on your CPU, the VH6 may or may not be the best
motherboard to use for an overclock system. Our P3-550E needs 1.9V to do 815Mhz
but the VH6 doesn't go that high. Our P3-700E needs a 143Mhz Front Side Bus to
do 1000Mhz but that bus speed is not available. However, most P3-550E don't
require more voltage to do 825Mhz (our unit was an older unit). In that case a
VH6 would be an ideal motherboard. It's not expensive, very stable and the
memory tweaks Abit included allows you to double memory performance. All in all,
a very good product. Now if they would just add Soft Menu III.
The Goods
-
Very stable when overclocked
-
Can adjust RAM speed independent of Front Side Bus speed
-
1/2 AGP divider means the 150Mhz FSB is useable
-
Well thought out layout
The Bads
Rating: 8/10
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