May 1999 Slot-1 BX Motherboard Roundup

The times have changed, and looking for a BX board is no longer the same as it once was, there are now a number of other factors that must be taken into consideration when purchasing a new motherboard. While some factors have changed slightly, others have been completely renovated, the bottom line still exists, choosing a BX board based on the same logic from the previous years won’t get you anywhere.

The number of expansion slots on motherboards still hasn’t changed, with a total of 8 slots being present (7 usable). What has changed is the addition of another slot configuration intended to offer a third and more expansion-friendly option to the older 4/3/1 and somewhat newer 5/2/1 choices. The idea of having a motherboard with 6 PCI slots gave birth to the 6/1/1 expansion slot configuration, first introduced by Tyan in August of 1998. Since then, a few competing manufacturers have endorsed the 6/1/1 expansion slot configuration, including ASUS and TMC. You can expect the latter part of this year to bring about the introduction of quite a few motherboards with 6 PCI slots.

As briefly mentioned earlier, the PCI/ISA/AGP expansion slot nomenclature AnandTech has been using to identify motherboards is going to be replaced soon enough on AnandTech with the introduction of the first motherboards with the AMR slot. AMR stands for Audio-Modem Riser, allowing for motherboard manufacturers to integrate Audio/Modem Codecs onto the motherboard and allow for them to be taken advantage of by a low-cost AMR add-in card. No BX boards will feature AMR slots, however future boards based on Intel’s 810 and 820 chipsets, as well as boards based on VIA’s MVP4 solution will feature the new slot. In the future, when you read about a motherboard with a 6/1/1 configuration chances are that the last 1 will be referring to an AMR slot rather than an AGP slot.

A once ridiculed feature, integrated audio and video has quickly gained popularity among advocates of the sub-$1000 PC. A consideration that must be made when looking at a board with either integrated audio or video (or both) is the manufacturer of the audio/video device(s) as well as their "card equivalent" or what add-in card they are essentially the same as. For example, most newer motherboards with on-board sound come equipped with the Creative Labs ES1373 PCI audio controller whose "card equivalent" is the Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI64.

Another consideration to take into account is whether or not the integrated components are actually PCI or ISA peripherals. Although they don’t physically occupy a slot on the motherboard, an integrated audio controller can either be a PCI or an ISA device, and can therefore "occupy" what would normally be another PCI or ISA slot. As you would expect, a motherboard with integrated video could either be a PCI or an AGP device, in the latter case that motherboard would come equipped with no AGP slots at all due to the integrated AGP video. An example of a board with integrated AGP video would be the Intel SR440BX, whose integrated AGP NVIDIA Riva TNT graphics accelerator takes the place of the AGP slot that would normally be present on the motherboard.