VOGONS


ABit BP6

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First post, by Stojke

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Is this board any good?
I need a system to test AGP 2x 4x graphics cards.

I found an Abit BP6 with two Celeron 466MHz CPUs for 10$. Is it worth the money?

I would use my Dual Athlon MP for this, but the Auxiliary power in makes it harder to get a PSU for.

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Reply 1 of 29, by sliderider

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For $10? Hell, yes! Keep in mind, rotten caps are common on boards from that time period so you are probably looking at a recap job which is why it is so cheap, but for $10 it's worth having even if you only intend to frame it and hang it on the wall..

Last edited by sliderider on 2013-05-16, 20:31. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 29, by Stojke

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Heh, guess that answered my question 😁
I bought it and it will arrive next week.

Finally i can test all the Voodoo 3s and all the other things i have 😀

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Reply 5 of 29, by sliderider

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The BP6 and it's brother, the VP6, are interesting boards to have. They were among the first multi processor boards priced for consumers. Before then multi processor boards were made for servers and were expensive. The only real drawback is that 98 doesn't support multiple processors and few games supported multiple processors, either, but if you needed a relatively cheap machine that plowed through apps in record time then these were the boards you wanted. I credit these boards with inspiring AMD to produce the Athlon MP because they showed that there was at least some demand among home users for an affordable multi processor machine.

Reply 6 of 29, by northernosprey02

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Is not AMD Athlon MP expensive for some home user? I hear some enthusiast using Athlon XP-M rather than MP because it has SMP, unlocked multiplier, and low voltage.

Reply 7 of 29, by Unknown_K

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Athlon MPs are nice, I have a dual 2200+ setup and since it uses cheap DDR ECC REG RAM you can get 4GB for $10 shipped on ebay.

Recently snagged a BP6 because I never had a dual Celeron before, looking for some CPUs to go with it.

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Reply 9 of 29, by sliderider

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northernosprey02 wrote:

Is not AMD Athlon MP expensive for some home user? I hear some enthusiast using Athlon XP-M rather than MP because it has SMP, unlocked multiplier, and low voltage.

Not as expensive as a comparable Xeon system. The Athlon MP and Athlon XP were basically the same chip. There is one open fuse on top of the Athlon XP that you can short circuit with conductive paint and enable SMP capability. That is the only difference, the fuse is shorted on the MP, open on the XP. Xeons are special purpose chips made for high performance server applications so they come with a much higher price tag.

Reply 10 of 29, by elfuego

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I hope you didnt order it from Limundo - the good ol' abit may prove to be wooden plank instead 😜 If however, its a real-deal, then its a steal! Gz 😄

Reply 11 of 29, by Stojke

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Hahaha, that scene was funny 😁
Nah, its from a different site, I always check first 😁

But i did buy an 486 mobo from limundo, comes with a tseng labs ET4000AX and some other things. Good thing you can find cheap stuff like that, too much recyclers that buy for nothing and simply destroy for a mere gram of gold. Makes me sick.

As Bob Marley said: Life is worth much more than gold 😜

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Reply 12 of 29, by northernosprey02

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sliderider wrote:
northernosprey02 wrote:

Is not AMD Athlon MP expensive for some home user? I hear some enthusiast using Athlon XP-M rather than MP because it has SMP, unlocked multiplier, and low voltage.

Not as expensive as a comparable Xeon system. The Athlon MP and Athlon XP were basically the same chip. There is one open fuse on top of the Athlon XP that you can short circuit with conductive paint and enable SMP capability. That is the only difference, the fuse is shorted on the MP, open on the XP. Xeons are special purpose chips made for high performance server applications so they come with a much higher price tag.

I mean Athlon XP-M for laptop, it has SMP capability and unlocked multiplier without modding them

Reply 14 of 29, by subhuman@xgtx

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northernosprey02 wrote:
sliderider wrote:
northernosprey02 wrote:

Is not AMD Athlon MP expensive for some home user? I hear some enthusiast using Athlon XP-M rather than MP because it has SMP, unlocked multiplier, and low voltage.

Not as expensive as a comparable Xeon system. The Athlon MP and Athlon XP were basically the same chip. There is one open fuse on top of the Athlon XP that you can short circuit with conductive paint and enable SMP capability. That is the only difference, the fuse is shorted on the MP, open on the XP. Xeons are special purpose chips made for high performance server applications so they come with a much higher price tag.

I mean Athlon XP-M for laptop, it has SMP capability and unlocked multiplier without modding them

IIRC by default, Mobile chips don't have SMP compatibility, although some specific motherboards, such as the K7D-Master have an option to force MP compatibility on Mobile chips, so you avoid having to mod your CPUs

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Reply 15 of 29, by NamelessPlayer

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The BP6 is a decent board, so long as you don't mind the PPGA Mendocino Celeron limitation. It requires extensive modification to run Coppermine P3s, and nobody's managed to run dual Tualatins on one yet.

If it's $10 and already comes loaded with a couple of CPUs and even a decent (for the time) AGP card, with everything in working order, I'd go for it. Just make sure you've got some SDRAM handy if it doesn't come with any yet.

(And on that note, my own BP6 isn't seeing much use, but I don't even know that many people around here who would make use of it...Celeron 533s aren't powerful enough for my tastes, and Win9x is held back by the fact that it can't utilize the second CPU at all.)

Last edited by NamelessPlayer on 2013-05-21, 09:16. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 16 of 29, by Unknown_K

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I am going to run Win2k or NT4 on mine but it will see limited use (same with most of my collection). Lately I have been getting into a retro dual processor kick and figured I would add a BP6 to the collection. Sooner or later these boards will be hard to find working or not.

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Reply 17 of 29, by Stojke

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Yeah it had RAM as well, but I already have a lot of SD ram so no problem 😀
I need it just for testing. I played a little Quake GL with all Voodoo cards i have, including Voodoo 5 5500.

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Reply 18 of 29, by sliderider

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NamelessPlayer wrote:

The BP6 is a decent board, so long as you don't mind the PPGA Mendocino Celeron limitation. It requires extensive modification to run Coppermine P3s, and nobody's managed to run dual Tualatins on one yet.

If it's $10 and already comes loaded with a couple of CPUs and even a decent (for the time) AGP card, with everything in working order, I'd go for it. Just make sure you've got some SDRAM handy if it doesn't come with any yet.

(And on that note, my own BP6 isn't seeing much use, but I don't even know that many people around here who would make use of it...Celeron 533s aren't powerful enough for my tastes, and Win9x is held back by the fact that it can't utilize the second CPU at all.)

I got a BP6 and a VP6 as oddities for my collection. Since 98 does not support multiple processors, they're really only good for using with NT based OS's or Linux and most games didn't support multiple processors then, either, so as a gaming rig you'd be missing out on the extra processing power. They'd probably be good machines if you still have a lot of vintage apps that you run like older versions of Photoshop and such.

Reply 19 of 29, by Private_Ops

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I've got 2 BP6s myself, love'em. One needs new caps (if its going to be put in long term use) and the other has a broken surface mount capacitor in one of the sockets (pliers, and tight CPU holders (whatever its called) is a bad combination. Otherwise they work fine.

Ones setup with a Voodoo 3 3000 and AWE64 Value with W2K, was playing some UT on it.