AOpen AX63 Apollo Pro Plus Slot-1

The Bad

On the part of AOpen, the placement of the floppy drive interface connector at the top of the AX63's PCB is a definite problem as it requires the user to stretch the floppy cable over the processor in order to reach the motherboard.  The lack of an adjustable core voltage completes the faults that AOpen introduced into the AX63, however there have been rumors that AOpen may be including that setting in a future BIOS release.  We'll have to wait and see about that, but for now, the flaw stands as is. 

The stability of the AX63 is considerably lower than that of the AX6BC, the test system crashed numerous times during AnandTech's stability tests, including at times when the AX6BC emerged victorious without a mark in the failures column.  Although compatibility with AGP cards has been improved tremendously over the first releases of VIA's competing chipsets, there is still room for improvement in terms of performance as the Quake 2 benchmarks show.  Even with VIA's AGP GART driver installed, the Quake 2 scores were consistently lower than those of most BX boards.  The bottom line is that the Apollo Pro Plus, even on AOpen's well made AX63 still isn't a great enough competitor to that of the BX chipset to make it a viable alternative for die hard gamers.  

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: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 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