Abit SA6-R Motherboard
Dec 28th, 2000 | By Archive
Abit SA6-R Motherboard
Date
: 12/28/00 – 10:58:40 PM
Author
:
Category
: Motherboard
Manufactor: Abit
Price: $200
Introduction
It has been a while since we’ve seen an overclocking friendly motherboard based upon the i815E chipset. Abit decided it was time to replace the aging SL6 and SE6, which I reviewed two months ago. The new kid in town is called the SA6-R and has everything an overclocker could ask for. Has Abit managed to build a worthy successor to the SE6? Let’s have a look.
Specifications
CPU
1. Supports Intel Pentium II/!!! up to 1Ghz socket processor based on 100 & 133 MHz FSB
2. Supports Intel Celeron up to 733Mhz socket processor based on 66 MHz FSB
3. Reserves support for future Intel Pentium III/ Celeron socket processor
Chipset
1. Intel 815E (ICH2) chipset
2. Supports 66/100/133MHz(Front Side Bus)
3. Supports AGP 1X/2X/4X (Sideband) 1.5/3.3V device.
4. Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI)
5. Supports Ultra ATA/100,Ultra ATA/66,Ultra ATA/33 mode.
Ultra DMA 100/RAID
1. High Point HPT370 IDE Controller
2. Ultra DMA 100MB/Sec data transfer rate
3. RAID 0(stripping mode for boosting performance)
4. RAID 1 (mirroring mode for data security)
5. RAID 0 +1(stripping and mirroring)
Graphics
1. Chipset integrated AGP 2X 3D graphics acceleration.
2. Support AIMM (AGP In-line Memory Module)
Memory
1. Four 168-pin DIMM sockets support SDRAM module
2. Supports up to 512MB MAX. ( 64, 128,256MB SDRAM)
3. Support 100MHz,133MHz SDRAM interface
Audio
1. AC’97 2-channel Audio CODEC on board
2. Audio driver included
System BIOS
1. CPU SOFT MENUIII technology and DIP switche funtion.
2. Award Plug and Play BIOS supports APM, DMI
3. Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS.
Multi I/O Functions
1. 4 channels bus Master IDE Ports support Ultra DMA 33/66/100 (up to 4 devices)
2. PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse Connectors
3. 1 Floppy Port (up to 2.88MB)
4. 1 Parallel Port (EPP/ECP)
5. 2 Serial Ports
6. 2 USB Connectors
7. On board USB header for two extra USB channels
8.1 standard 15 pin VGA connector.
9. Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, and Game Port)
Miscellaneous
1. ATX form factor
2. 1 Universal AGP slot, 6 PCI slots and 1CNR slot
3. Hardware Monitoring – Including Fan speed, Voltages, CPU and System temperature and one thermal header for other devices temperature monitoring
4. Keyboard and Mouse Power On
5. Built-in Wake on Lan / Wake on Modem header
6. Digital Video out interface supports digital display or TV out (Option)
7. Built-in IrDA TX/RX header
Soft Menu III
As you can see Abit decided to include Soft Menu III with the SA6-R. The SE6 was still equiped with the older Soft Menu II which kept the board from being the king of the overclockers, since it was not possible to up the front side bus in 1mhz increments. Sometimes the FSB choices you were given were 120MHz and 124MHz, while your cpu might only be stable at 122MHz. Having those 3 extra choices in there might have made a difference.
Thanks to the Soft Menu III you can increase the front side bus in increments of 1MHz all the way up to 250MHz! Although it is very unlikely that you will actually use a fsb of 250MHz, Abit shows what they are capable of. Now, it is possible to get that last drip of performance out of that processor, meaning the Soft Menu III is very welcome.
Onboard RAID
Another great implementation ABIT made is adding onboard RAID capabilities. ABIT chose the Highpoint 370 controller to control all the RAID functions. For those who don’t know what RAID is, RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independant Disks, which means you are making one big drive from two smaller, and preferably identical drives. In theory this means your drives are twice as fast as when running them in a non-RAID configuration. The RAID feature I just described is RAID-0 or striping. The SA6-R also supports RAID-1, better known as mirroring. Mirroring your drives won’t give you more performance, but it will ensure you that your files are always safe. When you mirror a drive, the RAID keeps an indentical copy of your original drive on the second drive. When the first one fails, the RAID will automatically enable the second one, and you’re all set. You can also combine RAID-0 with RAID-1 resulting in fast performance and data security. For these configurations you will need four identical drives.
Other Stuff
There are some other good features on the SA6-R like 6 PCI slots, 4 USB channels, onboard video/sound, and 4 DIMM slots. Maybe you’ve noticed it, but the SA6-R is the only motherboard based upon Intel’s 815 chipset I know of that has 4 DIMM’s onboard instead of 3 DIMM’s that most manufacturers include. Why do most manufacturers only include 3 DIMM’s? Intel decided to limit the i815 chipset so it could only support 6 layers of memory. In the case that you have 3 doublesided DIMM’s and you plug them all in, this will work just fine (3×2 layers equals 6). Abit included 4 DIMM’s because there are memory sticks that are single sided, and in that case you can use them on your SA6-R. This is a very good feature for people who own e.g. 4 DIMM’s of single sided memory. On any other 815 based motherboard they would lose one DIMM, but not on the SA6-R! I tested it myself and it works perfectly. Of course I also wanted to see if the SA6-R would support 4 double sided DIMM’s (resulting in 8 layers) but it did not work. What a pity. But we should not blame Abit for this as it is Intel who decided to limit the support to 6 layers only.
Overclocking
To test if the SA6-R overclocked well, I used an Intel PIII 800E which uses a front side bus of 100MHz and a multiplier of 8x. I was able to clock this beauty to 960MHz at 1.85v. At this speed the cpu was rockstable as it would run Prime95, MadOnion 3D Mark 2000 and Q3:Arena for hours without a single lockup. The chip also posted at 1000MHz (8x125MHz) but it was not stable in Win2K at that speed. I believe that a core voltage of 1.90v or 1.95v would made this setting rockstable as well, but since Abit limits the SA6-R to 1.85v there wasn’t much I could do.
I also tested this 800MHz cpu on the Asus CUSL2, one of the most popular motherboards for Intel cpu’s, and I was able to crank the speed up to 920MHz. I used the exact same hardware as with the SA6-R. This means that the Abit board gave me 40MHz more then the Asus one, which is a very nice achievement!
In order to cool the cpu down and make sure that cooling was not inhibiting me from overclocking, I used a GlobalWin FOP38 socket cooler kindly supplied to me by 2cooltek. This little mofo has the exact same heatsink as the FOP32, but instead of the regular Y.S. Tech fan, the FOP38 has a black Delta fan which rotates at an amazing speed of 7000rpm! There is only one downside to this cooler and that’s the noise it generates. It actually sounds like you’re sitting next to a
Boeing 747 Jumbo jet preparing for take-off. But heck … a true overclocker doesn’t mind that ;).
Benchmarking
System Setup
- Intel PIII 800E @ 960MHz
- Abit SA6-R Motherboard
- 128MB OCZ Select RAM
- Western Digital 7200rpm UDMA100 20GB (2x)
- Geforce DDR
- Windows 2000 SP1
Sisoft Sandra Pro 2001
As you can see Abit did a pretty good job on the SA6-R as it is scoring pretty well on all of the above benchmarks. The CPU and Multimedia benchmarks are a bit slower than the AMD 1GHz reference model, but they are still worthy of mentioning. The memory scores are a bit on the low side, but that is because the cpu ran at 100MHz front side bus at 800MHZ and at 120MHz when the cpu speed was at 960MHz. The scores would be higher (somewhere between 380-420MB/s) if I could run the memory at 133MHz or even more, but the cpu would not let me run at 133MHz with a multiplier of 8x. The OCZ ram I used can run rockstable at 150MHz 2-2-2 (I tested this with a P3 550E at 150MHz fsb) so that was not the problem.
The hard drive benchmark is showing amazing results for which we need to thank the Highpoint 370 RAID controller. In daily use the RAID will show its brute power when you move big files but smaller files will also gain from it, just not that much. I used two identical Western Digital hard drives running along at 7200rpm and supporting the new UDMA100 interface, which increasing the transer speed to 100MB/s (theoretically speaking). The two drives where transformed into one big 40GB RAID0 (Stripping) with the easy to use RAID BIOS on the HighPoint controller.
Quake 3: Arena
The Q3A benchmark was done at 640x480x16bit because I wanted to minimize the performance drop caused by the videocard. The benchmark can not be used to evaluate the power of the SA6-R since the frames per second you get in such games are mostly depending on the videocard and the cpu. I just included it to show the stability of the SA6-R.
The SA6-R performs just as I expected: rockstable and very fast. Of course the speedy processor and the ‘not so old’ videocard have something to do with this. Running this benchmark with a 500MHz processor and a TNT videocard would make the game choke like an old man trying to swallowing a chickenbone.
3D Mark 2000 v1.1
Sames scenario as with the Quake3: Arena test: this benchmark is better suited to test videocard performance, but I decided to run it to show of the stability of the motherboard. I used the default benchmark which runs at 1024x768x16bit. Just as I expected, all the test where handled with extreme care and stable but fast performance.
Ziff Davis CPU Mark 99
This benchmark demonstrates the raw cpu power and as expected the Intel 800E processor showed us that it is a pretty nice cpu. It is not the fastest score I layed my eyes on, but it is more then enough for the daily shores you throw at it.
Ziff Davis FPU Mark 99
Same story as the CPU Mark 99 benchmark, just read the comment I wrote in the above bench ;).
Distributed RC5 Short Benchmark
I decided to include a brand new benchmark at Overclockers Online. Most of you are crunching keys for a contest called RC5 (we have our own team) so I thought you would be interested in seeing how well the SA6-R along with the P3 800E would perform. This benchmark is also cpu related and the motherboard does not make any noticable difference, but still it is a good program to test stability since it makes the cpu, memory, and motherboard sweat!
Conclusion
Abit has definitely succeeded in building a decent contender for the Asus CUSL2, one of the most popular 815 based motherboards around. The SA6-R has all the features you could possibly ask for and has shown itself as stable as a rock in all our tests. If you are in need of a excellent overclocking motherboard, then the SA6-R is what you need.
Good
- Overclocking minded
- Onboard RAID, Soft Menu III, 6 PCI, …
- Rockstable in all our tests
Bad
- Price is a bit high