Thursday, December 09, 1999

Introduction

AOpen, a prominent manufacturer of computer equipment, rarely misses a chance to distinguish itself. Soon after the release of a new chipset, you can expect AOpen to adopt it on newer versions of its motherboards. This is the case with the AOpen MX64 motherboard, which employs the VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset, recently released by VIA.

The MX64 is thus the second board to support AGP 4X that I've tested. Without further ado then, it's time to put this board under analysis.

The features

The AOpen MX64 expansion possibilities are ensured by 3 PCI slots, and 1 AGP port - no ISA slot is included. As well, 3 168-pin DIMM sockets allow for a maximum of 768MB of memory to be installed. This is an odd configuration that I've never before encountered. I would guess that there is some good logic behind this choice but I would tend to believe that the inclusion of one or two ISA slots, or at least an additional PCI slot, would have been a much better choice. The fact that the R&D team at AOpen chose not to indulge that option, leaves me a bit perplexed.

Configuration of the MX64's clock frequency, and clock multiplier is done from the "Chipset Features Setup" BIOS menu. Also, on the motherboard itself are two jumpers (JP23, and JP29) that permit the setting of the reference frequency that may be ranged from in the BIOS.

Available choices include: automatic adjustment by the system, 66Mhz to 83Mhz, 100Mhz to 124Mhz, and 133Mhz to 150Mhz. Also within the BIOS, it is possible to set the operating frequency of the memory bus equal to that of the system bus, with the option of adding or subtracting 33Mhz from that value.

No ability to adjust the processor's core voltage is provided.

Available clock frequencies, include: 66 - 75 - 83 - 100 - 105 - 110 - 112 - 115 - 120 - 124 - 133 - 140, and 150MHz. Clock multiplier are available from 1.5X to 8X in steps of .5X.

Next: Features (suite).