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ABIT VP6

Intro

Since the days of the BH6, ABIT has been known as the one and only board manufacturer who caters to the true enthusiast. ASUS, TYAN, MSI and all the others seemed to put tweak settings in the BIOS as an afterthought. ABIT takes us seriously.

The BP6 was the oddest motherboard ever imagined. Dual socket Celerons with ATA/66 onboard was just plain weird. No wonder it sold so well, far beyond what even ABIT expected.

Since the socketed P3s were introduced, users have been trying to get them to work in a dual configuration on the BP6. One seemed to be able to work, but dual never happened.

In the meantime, Intel released new chipsets and the P3 got a new FSB. ATA/66 and 100 were released and AGP4x has become the standard. It was clear that the BX chipset wasn't up to the task, and no true overclocker would ever use RAMBUS.

VIA finally announced its SMP version of the 686-series chipsets with the 694X. We waited, and waited, and waited, and got the Tiger133. Oh boy. More waiting yielded the MSI 6321/694D and the first truly dual socketed board with overclocking potential. It had its fair share of problems as well, with a confusing jumper setup and bizarre FSB limitations but including ATA100 and RAID as well as Firewire and SCSI options.

Months ago we had heard about the next dual ABIT board and waited patiently. It's hard trying to be on the top of everything, you know? Frustrating delay after delay finally culminated into a faux recall and it's subsequent panic. It seems the board was never really recalled, though some question as to whether it should have been (see Oddities).

Finally, a board with SoftMenuIII support, onboard RAID and just about every overclocking tweak we could ever ask for. Was it worth it? Read on.

How does it stack up against the EPoX D3VA?