Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/331
Chaintech 6AIA VIA Apollo Pro Plus microATX Socket-370
by Mike Andrawes on June 26, 1999 12:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
It's been over a year since AnandTech looked at a Chaintech motherboard, the last being their 6BTM based on the i440BX chipset. Back then, we were impressed by Chaintech's "highly overclockable nature, rock solid stability, and not to mention their first class quality and extreme attention to detail." But a year is a long time - have things changed since then? Fortunately, no, but their latest board, the 6AIA is interesting in its own right.
New Anand Tech Report Card Rating 84/B-
Do not compare newer ratings to older ones, the newer ratings are much more aggressive
CPU Interface | Socket-370 |
Chipset | VIA Apollo Pro Plus |
L2 Cache | N/A (on-chip) |
Form Factor | microATX |
Bus Speeds |
66 / 75 / 83 |
Clock Multipliers | 1.5x - 8x |
Voltages Supported | Auto Detect |
Memory Slots | 2 168pin DIMM Slots |
Expansion Slots |
0 AMR Slots |
BIOS | Award 4.51PG |
The Good
Chaintech's 6AIA is a Socket-370 VIA Apollo Pro Plus solution. The Apollo Pro Plus offers pin compatibility with Intel's i440BX/ZX/LX, and as such has become a popular solution for motherboard vendors looking to stray outside the Intel lines. Therefore, it's no surprise that Chaintech also makes the 6ZIA, an identical board with the i440ZX chipset.
The 6AIA pretty much follows all the rules for a microATX board. The layout is excellent, with all FDD/HDD, ATX power, and front panel connectors right at the front of the board so that none of these cables need to run over your CPU and/or memory. The CD audio connectors are, however, at the back of the board, so you will have one small cable running in that area. Those front panel connectors are placed right in front of the HDD connectors, meaning that they won't block any of the expansion slots - a good thing with the limited space on a microATX motherboard. The board uses a standard microATX mounting format and should fit just fine in any microATX or ATX case.
Two DIMM, 3 PCI, 1 ISA (shared), and 1 AGP slot round out the expansion capabilities of the board. Atop the VIA north bridge is the classic green heatsink found on nearly every motherboard these days, but this time it's got the Chaintech logo silk screened on top. Fourteen 1000uF capacitors surround the CPU socket, but still provide room for a normal sized heatsink to be attached easily. Two 3 pin fan connectors are available near the CPU socket.
Onboard PCI sound is provided courtesy of the ESS Solo-1 chipset, which does a good job of providing basic audio functionality. As expected, CPU utilization is low thanks to the PCI interface. The Solo-1 can easily be disabled by toggling an option in the BIOS. Chaintech also wisely made the sound only take up one IRQ to handle DOS compatibility issues, unlike some other solutions featuring the same chip that take two - one for the actual card and one for DOS emulation.
Stability in both overclocked and non-overclocked situations was well above average. However, performance was below average, even for a VIA Apollo Pro Plus board, which we've documented before as somewhat below that of similar i440BX/ZX configurations.
Despite the Apollo Pro Plus's official support for 100MHz FSB, the 6AIA only claims support for 66, 75, and 83MHz FSB settings. All are available through Chaintech's own jumperless CPU setup, known as SeePU. Clock multipliers are also adjusted in the SeePU section of the BIOS. Generally most Socket-370 Celerons won't be able to make the jump to bus speeds 100MHz and above, so it's not a big deal for most users at this point in time. However, Celerons that officially support 100MHz FSB speeds are coming down the pipes soon from Intel. At that point, the lack of 100MHz FSB settings may limit upgrade options. Of course, support is in the chipset, so it may just take a BIOS upgrade to enable those speeds. In fact, a jumper is labeled in the manual for bus speed selection, but no additional information is given. Our Celeron 366 would not boot with that jumper at it's alternate position, but this is not surprising since it never runs at 550MHz.
That BIOS is the standard Award 4.51PG with the addition of Chaintech's SeePU jumperless CPU configuration. Complete power management is supported, including ACPI, wake on LAN, wake on ring, wake on alarm, and keyboard power on. Noticeably absent is a hardware monitoring option, most likely to lower the cost further in the highly cost conscious microATX market.
These days, many manufacturers are included quick start guides with full manuals on CD instead of a complete paper manual. Fortunately, Chaintech is not one of those companies and includes their standard manual that does a pretty good job of covering all the boards features. There's even some information for first time installers, but probably not enough to make the novice comfortable.
The CD includes ESS Solo-1 drivers, VIA chipset drivers and patches, and a pretty nice software bundle that you can actually use. Chaintech calls this their "AIRBAG" which stands for "AntiVirus, Instant Recovery & Busmaster Application Group." When you actually get is full versions of Norton AntiVirus, Norton Ghost, Trend PCCillin 98, and X Store Pro busmastering software. Ghost is the most novel addition and the item least likely to be included by other manufacturers. It is, however, quite possibly the most useful to any user performing an upgrade. Ghost is a great program that allows the exact cloning or imaging of a hard drive and is extremely fast at the task.
The Bad
We've shown before that VIA Apollo Pro Plus based boards are slower than their Intel counterparts. However, the 6AIA is not even up to par with other Apollo Pro Plus boards. There is also the issue of VIA's AGP compatibility, which was one of the biggest problems with their MVP3 chipset. While things have improved considerably with the Apollo Pro Plus, the question of what will happen in the future remains. Will VIA have to constantly write a new AGP GART driver as new video cards are released? Only time will tell.
Since this board is also intended to harbor the i440ZX chipset, only 2 DIMM slots are available and memory expansion could become an issue. Make sure you buy as much RAM as you can the first time - you'll only have one shot to upgrade without throwing away some old RAM.
Voltage tweaking is finally coming around from other manufacturers besides Abit. Unfortunately, that does not include Chaintech on the 6AIA.
As mentioned above, hardware monitoring is absent and not available on the 6AIA. This is fairly rare these days, but was most likely cut out to lower the cost just a bit further.
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: Mushkin SEC -GH
PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB PC100 SDRAM
Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com
Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com
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.
AnandTech Motherboard Testing Methodology
Test Configuration |
|
Processor(s): | Intel Celeron 366 OEM |
RAM: | 1 - 64MB Memory Man SEC PC100 SDRAM DIMM |
Hard Drive(s): | Western Digital Caviar AC28400 - UltraATA |
Video Card(s): | Matrox Millennium G200 (8MB SGRAM - AGP) |
Bus Master Drivers: | Microsoft Win98 DMA Drivers |
Video Drivers: | Matrox Millennium G200 Release 1677-411 |
Operation System(s): | Windows 98 SE |
Motherboard Revision: | Chaintech 6AIA Revision 1.0 |
Windows 98 Performance |
||||
Business Winstone 99 | Quake 2 demo1.dm2 | |||
Intel Celeron 366 (5.5 x 66MHz) | 17 |
11.6 |
||
Intel Celeron 458 (5.5 x 83MHz) | 19.4 |
16.6 |
||
The Final Decision
The 6AIA follows in traditional Chaintech tradition and is still just as overclockable and stable as past Chaintech boards. The attention to detail has not been left out either for this low cost market segment and just about every feature is accounted for and carefully planned. For just $75 with onboard sound, the 6AIA is certainly a good deal on a fairly well executed board. Unfortunately, it is hampered by performance that's low compared to other Apollo Pro Plus board, which are already lower than their Intel counterparts. For just a few dollars more, an Intel board without VIA's performance/compatibility issues can be had. Chaintech's own i440ZX based 6ZIA is such a board in that category and is identical to the 6AIA except for the chipset.
AnandTech Motherboard Rating |
|
Business | |
Performance | 70% |
Price | 84% |
Ease of Use | 90% |
Overclocked Stability | 88% |
General Stability | 87% |
Quality | 86% |
Documentation | 85% |
Reliability | 84% |
Overall Rating | 84% |
Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology