Shuttle HOT-675 BX Micro ATX Slot-1

The Bad

You can't really discount expansion as being a con to going with the HOT-675 since it was never intended to be an expansion-friendly motherboard, however you can criticize Shuttle's allocation of space on the motherboard.   The board features a generous 2/2/1 expansion slot configuration, however chances are, most users will want to have more PCI slots than ISA slots if you're going to be building a computer for long-term usage, in which case a 3/2/1 configuration would've been more desireable.  If that doesn't happen to be what you're looking for, then you're in luck, Shuttle must've read your mind.

The relatively sparse allocation of capacitors on the motherboard, especially around the BX chipset itself could bring long term reliability into question, however due to the relatively small size of the motherboard, the length of traces between critical components should already be short enough to allow for an average maintainance of capacitance during operation.  At the same time, the HOT-675 is no Tyan or Supermicro server board, so you can't expect reliability in do-or-die situations to be in the top 2% of motherboards.  These are just considerations to make when you think about applications for a system based on the 675.

The final bone to pick with the HOT-675 is the fact that only the clock multipliers can be configured in the BIOS, and the FSB settings still have to be manually selected making the initial setup a little more complicated than it should have been.  Looks like a quick lesson from ABIT would be helpful here.

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 (140MHz): LG Semiconductor PC100 SDRAM (7ns)
SDRAM Tested (140MHz): 1 x 64MB LGS PC100 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested (< 140MHz): 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