A-Trend ATC-6254M BX Slot-1

The board is laid out in an interesting fashion, mostly because A-Trend had to accommodate the addition of the Voodoo3 on the PCB.  The layout features no AGP slot (the Voodoo3 is the integrated AGP device) and the expansion potential is provided courtesy of the 4 PCI and 2 ISA slots.   Of the four PCI slots, 3 of them are capable of accepting full length cards.   The last PCI slot has a capacitor placed very close to the edge of the slot which, depending on the particular card installed, may or may not prevent the installation of a full length PCI card.  Both ISA slots are hindered by the 3rd fan connector and the front panel connector block that seems to be an oh-so-common mistake for motherboard manufacturers when it comes to layouts. 

Aligned parallel to the PCI slots is the SC242 (Slot-1) connector which overlooks the 443BX North Bridge and the integrated Voodoo3.  The proximity of the SC242 connector to the Voodoo3 makes using a large heatsink/fan combo not a recommended option, the retail Intel heatsink/fan combo that ships standard on all Pentium II/III processors fits perfectly.  On the other side of the BX and Voodoo3 chips are the 4 DIMM slots that are bordered by the conveniently placed ATX power supply connector two 1500uF electrolytic capacitors

The setup and configuration of the 6254M is essentially jumperless as only the clock multipliers are controlled on the motherboard (via a dip switch block), with all the FSB settings able to be manipulated in the Award BIOS chipset features setup.  The available FSB settings are obviously geared towards towards the overclocking population, the clock generator provides support for the following settings: 66 / 75 / 78 / 81 / 83 / 90 / 95 / 100 105 / 110 / 112 / 113 / 115 / 117 / 118 / 120 122 / 124 / 126 / 133 / 135 / 137 / 138 140 / 142 / 144 / 150 and  155MHz.   The mouthful of settings rival those found on the newer ABIT boards which are definitely overclocking oriented.

Hardware monitoring on the 6254M is provided courtesy of the Winbond 83781D chip located on the opposite side of the SC242 connector.  The 83781D provides for the monitoring of up to three temperatures including the temperature of the chip itself with the other two temperatures supplied by the included thermistor headers on the board.  Two of the three fan headers are also monitored by the chip, and A-Trend conveniently bundled a CD-ROM that includes the Intel LANDesk Client Manager software for system monitoring as well as the Intel BM IDE drivers and all patches for the BX chipset.  A second CD is provided with all of the required drivers for the 3dfx Voodoo3, however for the most up to date drivers you'll want to pay a visit to www.3dfx.com.  

The performance of the board, along with the on-board Voodoo3 is on-par with that of your standard BX board + Voodoo3 2000 combo so there are no worries there.  As far as stability is concerned, the board exhibited average stability in our endurance tests and although it wasn't a top quality server-like solution, it is safe to say that most users will be fine with it.