Shuttle HOT-681V Socket-370 Apollo Pro Plus

The Bad

Via's Apollo Pro Plus has typically not fared well in the AnandTech testing labs, with stability and performance being lower than that of boards that are identical except for the use of an Intel chipset. Another issue of the VIA Apollo Pro Plus chipset is AGP compatibility - one of the biggest problems with their MVP3 chipset. While things have improved considerably with the Apollo Pro Plus, the question of what will happen in the future remains as new video chipsets are released.

As mentioned before, the board was designed with an optional hardware monitor in mind. The only problem is that the required Winbond 83781D was not included. If you want the HOT-681V and are interested in having a hardware monitor, make sure that your vendor has boards with the Winbond chip onboard.

Being based on the HOT-681 PCB also brings some of those same weaknesses. From that review we have the following short comings:

The HOT-681's 4/3/1 expansion slot configuration could very well be considered a poor quality of the HOT-681, another reason Shuttle's BX based 681 will probably turn out to be second or third out of Shuttle's Socket-370 boards in sales. Even if the 4/3/1 configuration doesn't bother you, the last ISA slot is positioned in such a manner that it is placed virtually flush against the front panel I/O block, making installing the reset switch and HDD LED an unnecessarily difficult task. Also surrounding the last ISA slot is the clear CMOS jumper, which was carefully positioned in an extremely hard to pull area, placed flush against that last ISA slot. It looks like the 3rd ISA slot is the place to be on this motherboard.

The placement of the first three fan connectors on the board was ideal, however the trend did not carry over into the placement of the fourth connector, which made its way between the first two PCI slots, a very difficult place to plug a fan into unless you've got any and all surrounding cards out of the way.

In spite of the ease of use the Installation's Guide provides, beginners will find that the guide fails to address the process of installing a motherboard to any great detail, a definite flaw with Shuttle's otherwise excellent documentation.

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 PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com