ABIT VA6 Apollo Pro 133 Slot-1 ATX

The Bad

The biggest and most inexcusable issue we had with the VA6 was its utter lack of stability. While all of the Apollo Pro 133 and 133A based boards we have tested, with the exception of a few notable entries (i.e. AOpen MX64), have been noticeably less reliable than the majority of BX motherboards we've reviewed, the VA6 we tested is definitely on the lower end of the stability scale. The board could not successfully complete any of our stability tests, and while they do require that the test system remain operational and stable for a full 24 hour period most motherboards in the past haven't had a problem making their way through our rigorous testing.

With the possibility that maybe our VA6 sample was flawed we proceeded to talk to other users that had purchased VA6 boards, and unfortunately our fears were confirmed when we hadn't received a single positive comment about the stability board from any of the VA6 owners we had talked to. Let's hope that the future revisions of the VA6 correct these stability problems, because as of now, the board isn't fit for sale.

From an overclocking standpoint, our FC-PGA 550E that had no problem running at 825MHz (150MHz FSB) on the Tyan Trinity 400, a competing Apollo Pro 133A based solution, wouldn't even boot at that speed on the VA6. There are definitely some major issues with the current revision of the VA6 that do require ABIT's attention if they expect this product to represent their company in a positive light.

There isn't much point in talking about other problems with the board, but it would have been nice (if they fixed the stability issues) for ABIT to port the SoftMenu III setup over to the VA6 to allow for a little more flexibility when overclocking. They should also provide a BIOS update that allows for the manual selection of the AGP clock ratio instead of it being dependent solely on FSB frequency.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• 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: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin PC133 SDRAM

Manufacturer: Corsair
Purchase Website: http://www.corsairmicro.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com