Shuttle HOT-681 BX Socket-370

The Bad

The HOT-681's 4/3/1 expansion slot configuration could very well be considered a poor quality of the HOT-681, another reason Shuttle's BX based 681 will probably turn out to be second or third out of Shuttle's Socket-370 boards in sales.  Even if the 4/3/1 configuration doesn't bother you, the last ISA slot is positioned in such a manner that it is placed virtually flush against the front panel I/O block, making installing the reset switch and HDD LED an unnecessarily difficult task.  Also surrounding the last ISA slot is the clear CMOS jumper, which was carefully positioned in an extremely hard to pull area, placed flush against that last ISA slot.  It looks like the 3rd ISA slot is the place to be on this motherboard.

The placement of the first two fan connectors on the board was ideal, however the trend did not carry over into the placement of the third connector, which made its way between the last two PCI slots, a very difficult place to plug a fan into unless you've got any and all surrounding cards out of the way. 

Although the 681 detects the clock multiplier and the core voltage (not too big of a deal from a motherboard manufacturer's standpoint with the new clock-locked Celeron processors), it fails to do the same for the FSB frequency.  Instead of offering users the option of manually setting up the FSB frequency for overclocking purposes and auto-detecting it for those that aren't interested in overclocking, the HOT-681 simply fails to auto-detect the FSB.  If you're going to go with a jumperless setup, you might as well go all the way.  Just make sure that if you do happen to come across a HOT-681, that the proper jumper is capped for the FSB setting as very few Socket-370 Celeron 366's will work at 100 x 5.5.  Also, the absence of a core voltage manipulation setting in the BIOS or even on the motherboard is a disappointment, especially to those users that may have processors with a potential to be overclocked with a little voltage kick.

In spite of the ease of use the Installation's Guide provides, beginners will find that the guide fails to address the process of installing a motherboard to any great detail, a definite flaw with Shuttle's otherwise excellent documentation.

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 Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: 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.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 98 & 3D Winbench 98 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• Quake 2 tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color in Software Rendering Mode