Intel i815 / i815E Motherboard Roundup - August 2000

6OJV

Chaintech 6OJV
CPU Interface	Socket-370
Chipset	Intel i815
Form Factor	ATX
Bus Speeds	66 / 100 / 133 / 140 / 144 / 147 / 150 / 157 / 160 / 165
Voltages Supported	Auto Detect
Memory Slots	3 168-pin DIMM Slots
Expansion Slots	1 AGP Slot 6 PCI Slots (5 Full Length) 1 CNR Slot (Shared) 0 ISA Slots
Onboard Audio	Cirrus Logic CrystalClearSoundFusion CS4299 AC'97 CODEC Creative Labs CT5880 PCI (optional)
BIOS	Award Modular BIOS 6.00PG Chaintech SeePU Jumperless CPU Setup Chaintech 3 BIOS (optional)

Like the AOpen AX3S Pro, the 6OJV/6OIV uses a mostly jumperless CPU setup, called SeePU Setup in the BIOS. The board detects the default FSB speed from the CPU and uses that information to determine the available FSB speeds and set the AGP ratio appropriately. Unfortunately, these jumpers appeared to be nonfunctional on our evaluation sample, meaning we could not force a 100 MHz CPU to use a 133 MHz FSB. Final production boards should have this little problem fixed. Unfortunately, that meant that we were only able to determine a small subset of the FSB speeds that are actually available since we only had a 133 MHz FSB CPU on hand for testing.

SDRAM speed is reported next to the FSB, which certainly helps to make the settings a bit more clear. Unfortunately, the available FSB speeds vary based on what you set your SDRAM clock to. For example, when set for PC100 with a 133 MHz CPU, 133/ 140 / 144 / 147 / 150 / 157 / 160 / 165 MHz FSB's were available. Using the same CPU and PC133 as the memory speed, 133 / 138 / 140 / 150 are the only options available. Most PC133 memory won't run above 150 MHz anyway, but we'd still like to see Chaintech give the user the user as many options as possible. No CPU core voltage tweaking is available with the 6OJV/6OIV.

Stability was pretty good on these Chaintech boards - not quite as good as the best boards in this roundup, but certainly respectable compared to other boards we've tested.

Gigabyte was the first company to produce a board with more than one BIOS and now Chaintech is getting in on the act as well. However, they've decided to one up Gigabyte and go with a "3 BIOS" solution. No, that does not mean that there are 3 BIOS chips for a double redundant backup, but rather Chaintech seems to have come up with a new way of counting the BIOS's.

There are two BIOS chips, one of which provides a backup - this is the first piece of the 3 BIOS technology. Next is the inclusion of the Award flash utility in the BIOS itself, which can come in handy when trying to fix a corrupt BIOS. The last piece of the puzzle is "Flash Safety," allowing you to write protect the BIOS to prevent any viruses from attacking your BIOS. This is not significantly different from what Gigabyte is offering and the name is a bit misleading, but some OEM's apparently love the feature so expect more and more motherboard manufacturers to start including it. Most boards available for retail sale won't include this optional feature and it's really not a big deal.

Chaintech is also one of the few manufacturers in this roundup to offer a hardware-based PCI sound solution on the motherboard. It's an option that won't be included on all boards, but the Creative Labs CT5880 PCI chip is a good sound chip for anything except 3D positional audio in games.

While Chaintech is using the same Winbond W83627HF I/O controller chip found on many other boards here, they are not taking full advantage of its hardware monitoring features by reading the CPU temperature from a thermistor in the CPU socket, rather than the CPU's on-die thermal diode.

The 6OJV and 6OIV only differ in terms of form factor and expansion slots. Chaintech also offers the i815E based 6OJV2 and 6OIV2, which maintain the same basic feature set as the boards we've reviewed, but add all the features of the ICH2.

Chaintech 6OIV

Chaintech 6OIV
CPU Interface	Socket-370
Chipset	Intel i815
Form Factor	microATX
Bus Speeds	66 / 100 / 133 / 140 / 144 / 147 / 150 / 157 / 160 / 165
Voltages Supported	Auto Detect
Memory Slots	2 168-pin DIMM Slots
Expansion Slots	1 AGP Slot 3 PCI Slots (2 Full Length) 1 CNR Slot (Shared) 0 ISA Slots
Onboard Audio	Cirrus Logic CrystalClearSoundFusion CS4299 AC'97 CODEC
BIOS	Award Modular BIOS 6.00PG Chaintech SeePU Jumperless CPU Setup