I seem to recall it was quite popular with people running modded celerons for a time. It's BX based, so how can it be bad? I think there was some kind of limitation on CPU support, but it might be possible to run dual tualatin PIIIs using powerleap adapters. Later Celeron's had their SMP disabled, so that's out of the question.

Likely to need capacitor replacement. Abit boards of that time usually do.

BP6 was designed for PPGA Celeron CPUs, which apparently is not compatible with FC-PGA or PC-PGA(2) pinout. Adapters are necessary.

My understanding is that dual CPU PIII-S Tualatin is possible if you double stack Powerleap Neo S370 and Upgradeware GU370 adapters. Not sure why you need two, but you can get details on bp6.com

I might be getting two boards, complete with a total of 4 cpu's and all memmory modules populated.
Just need to figure something out first, regarding shipment.
Trading my old Playstation2 with net-adaptor and 120 gigabyte hdd (and a motherload of stuff) off
for both of the boards.

Just wondering how much are these configurations worth in Euros:

- Gigabyte GA-6VTDX with dual Tualatin P-3s 1.4GHz and copper coolers
- Abit VP6 with dual Coppermine P-3 1GHz and alu coolers
- Epox EP-D3VA with dual Coppermine P-3 1GHz and alu coolers

Epox even has one ISA slot.

The Abit BP6 was an excellent board back in the days. I had one, and it was fast, stable and well designed, but as somebody else said, watch out for dried out caps. I seem to remember this board using some kind of voodoo black magic to allow you to run dual CPU with regular PPGA Celerons, but I could be wrong.

LunarG wrote:

The Abit BP6 was an excellent board back in the days. I had one, and it was fast, stable and well designed, but as somebody else said, watch out for dried out caps. I seem to remember this board using some kind of voodoo black magic to allow you to run dual CPU with regular PPGA Celerons, but I could be wrong.

I too owned one of these boards back in the early-mid 2000s with dual 500mhz CPUs. The previous owner had already recapped it prior to my purchase. I ran Win2K on it with a GF MX440 as an HTPC. It played videos and MP3s really well. It excelled at its intended purpose. At the time, it was really nice to have a dual-CPU machine. I had absolutely no complaints with it except that I wanted more power. I couldn't find a reason to keep it. For Win9x legacy gaming purposes, there are much better boards that support much faster CPUs. For WinXP HTPC purposes, there are also lots of better options.

In mid-2006, I replaced it with an ABIT KV85 and Athlon 64 3400 Venice that I continue to use as an HTPC to this day.

I currently have a BP6 with dual 400mhz Celerons and a VP6 with dual 1ghz Coppermine P3's. They are great boards BUT you must have an NT based version of Windows to take advantage of the second processor and your games and apps must be SMP aware. DOS and Win9x can't do it. Not many games that will run on those boards are SMP capable, either. For a DOS/Win9x gaming rig, there are better options out there.

I found that there are very few performance difference between Slot 1 boards with BX440 chipset. They all should do well.

swaaye wrote:

Likely to need capacitor replacement. Abit boards of that time usually do.

LunarG wrote:

The Abit BP6 was an excellent board back in the days. I had one, and it was fast, stable and well designed, but as somebody else said, watch out for dried out caps.

What's the make of this board, 1999-2000? Are those comments above related to the 'capacitor plague era' or just Abit-specific? Also, though I read that Abit was one of the few who admitted to be using flawed capacitors (around 2003-2005 IIRC), I got the impression that they're not the only one in this, but still they were punished anyway for acknowledging the problem.

That's why I would generally avoid using motherboards from between 440BX-era to post-2008 or so (don't have need for them anyway), unless I plan on recapping the entire board. I didn't keep my KT7-RAID long enough to see any problems. But in this case, it's a BX, so I'm curious. Any insights/experience on Abit BX boards' longevity in general, anyone?

archsan wrote:

What's the make of this board, 1999-2000? Are those comments above related to the 'capacitor plague era' or just Abit-specific? […]
Show full quote

swaaye wrote:

Likely to need capacitor replacement. Abit boards of that time usually do.

LunarG wrote:

The Abit BP6 was an excellent board back in the days. I had one, and it was fast, stable and well designed, but as somebody else said, watch out for dried out caps.

What's the make of this board, 1999-2000? Are those comments above related to the 'capacitor plague era' or just Abit-specific? Also, though I read that Abit was one of the few who admitted to be using flawed capacitors (around 2003-2005 IIRC), I got the impression that they're not the only one in this, but still they were punished anyway for acknowledging the problem.

That's why I would generally avoid using motherboards from between 440BX-era to post-2008 or so (don't have need for them anyway), unless I plan on recapping the entire board. I didn't keep my KT7-RAID long enough to see any problems. But in this case, it's a BX, so I'm curious. Any insights/experience on Abit BX boards' longevity in general, anyone?

I used to go through lots of 2nd hand motherboards, and I've seen some of the later ABit BX models. The ones I remember for sure are the BX133-RAID and the BE6-II. Not sure if I saw any others.
ABit used "Jackcon" brand capacitors at that time. Although lots of motherboards had bad capacitors in those days, Jackcon are in the absolute lowest tier IMO. They're virtually guaranteed to fail, as quick or quicker than anything else ever did. On the plus side, both of those boards came back to life when I recapped them, so I believe they are salvageable. The BE6-II does have a dead IDE port though, and from what I read, this was a common failure on those. I don't know if the caps contributed to that.
The BX133 had no issues after being recapped (except I had to finish replacing caps I didn't replace the first time..). I gave it to a relative who used it for about 2 years, and it was playing games quite a bit. I have it stored since then and it still works last I knew.

A friend of mine back around ~2000 had an ABit Coppermine P3 motherboard (don't know what model) which died 3 times. The first 2 times it was replaced under warranty, the 3rd time, warranty was expired. I didn't know about the cap issues back then, but I would bet that's what was killing them. From then on he swore off ABit, obviously.
It's too bad, because they made amazing enthusiast niche motherboards, but these rampant failures ruined their reputation.

ABit switched to good quality caps late in the Socket-A era, when they admitted the problem. Prior to that, back at least to 99, many of their boards have Jackcons and I think those were universal at the time of the BX boards.
Except for the capacitor issues, ABit are my favorite 440BX boards. I love how tweakable they are. Their BIOS have more manual controls and less training wheels than any competing board I've seen.

brostenen wrote:

Is the ABIT BP6 motherboard something that are: Good? just okay? or a pile of garbage?

I never had a BP6, or any dual CPU ABit. I do generally like ABits as described above, if it's still alive and you can replace the caps. If you aren't ready to replace caps, then forget it. If it has seen much use, the caps are bad, and if it hasn't seen much use, it should get good caps to keep it healthy.
Nowadays I wouldn't find dual Mendocino Celerons very appealing. The BP6 is an interesting bit of history and a nice example of what ABit was doing in those days, but you can just as easily get a board with dual Coppermine P3 support. I wouldn't bother with that either though, I'd rather have a good single CPU board, especially if it's for games. Single boards usually have an easier time with overclocking, if that matters to you.
But we're talking obsolete hardware here, so to some degree there's always an emotional component of why we want certain things. Anything with a BX chipset is by default awesome. And that board has a website named after it, so that tells you something.

@shamino
Thanks, that's what I needed to know. I didn't know anything about capacitors back then. At least ASUS supposedly had used better/decent caps for the P2B series though? I've read somewhere that the P2B-F has Chemicon and Rubycon caps.

Yes, Abit's main attraction among the BX boards is their Softmenu. But they're not the only one to offer such jumperless feature though. At least MSI (then "Microstar"), Chaintech, AOpen, and SOYO have it also (this classic first-gen 440BX roundup is a good refresher).

ASUS did typically use better caps yes. My K7M has Rubycon. Best to look close at photos before buying though.

kixs wrote:

Just wondering how much are these configurations worth in Euros: […]
Show full quote

Just wondering how much are these configurations worth in Euros:

- Gigabyte GA-6VTDX with dual Tualatin P-3s 1.4GHz and copper coolers
- Abit VP6 with dual Coppermine P-3 1GHz and alu coolers
- Epox EP-D3VA with dual Coppermine P-3 1GHz and alu coolers

Epox even has one ISA slot.

How are you coming up with this stuff? 😀

Half-Saint wrote:

kixs wrote:

Just wondering how much are these configurations worth in Euros: […]
Show full quote

Just wondering how much are these configurations worth in Euros:

- Gigabyte GA-6VTDX with dual Tualatin P-3s 1.4GHz and copper coolers
- Abit VP6 with dual Coppermine P-3 1GHz and alu coolers
- Epox EP-D3VA with dual Coppermine P-3 1GHz and alu coolers

Epox even has one ISA slot.

How are you coming up with this stuff? 😀

Actually I'm just looking for a good deal. At the moment these are out of my price range and I'm wondering if the problem is with me or with them. So... if someone is more knowledgeable to make a price approximation.

archsan wrote:

@shamino
Thanks, that's what I needed to know. I didn't know anything about capacitors back then. At least ASUS supposedly had used better/decent caps for the P2B series though? I've read somewhere that the P2B-F has Chemicon and Rubycon caps.

Yes, Abit's main attraction among the BX boards is their Softmenu. But they're not the only one to offer such jumperless feature though. At least MSI (then "Microstar"), Chaintech, AOpen, and SOYO have it also (this classic first-gen 440BX roundup is a good refresher).

I'm pretty sure the P2B series boards universally have quality caps. I bought some bulk lots of those several years ago, and out of about 30 boards, all of them had good brands. The brands I remember seeing were Sanyo, Chemicon, Rubycon, and maybe Nichicon. I never saw any bad/cheap ones out of all those boards. I think Asus might have had some cap issues later on, but not at the time of the P2B. When other brands were experimenting with cheaper caps, Asus played it safe, and that certainly proved to be the right move.

There are other jumperless boards, but what I loved about ABit's SoftMenu boards was the level of detailed control. They seemed to have every conceivable overclocking option, and they were some of the earliest boards to have really precise control of the bus speeds (1MHz adjustments in much of the range).
One option I really appreciate on some boards (not unique to ABit, but all too often lacking) is the ability to manually set the bus dividers. Some jumperless boards force the dividers based on whatever bus speed you've selected. For example, if the FSB is at 120MHz, some boards will force the PCI ratio to be 1/3, instead of giving you the option of using 1/4. ABit lets you use whatever ratios you want, even if your choices aren't sane.
I remember they had one unusual setting that I've never seen on other boards, which had a big effect on the memory speed. I wish I could remember what it was called. It wasn't the typical latency settings, it was something else. When enabled, it dramatically reduced the memory bandwidth measured in memtest86. I think that setting was exposed because they were pretty boldly implying support for the BX at 133MHz, so they wanted some recourse if it wasn't stable. In a way this wasn't user friendly though, because that option was enabled by default, and it really needed to be turned off to get the BX performance at it's best.

shamino wrote:

I remember they had one unusual setting that I've never seen on other boards, which had a big effect on the memory speed. I wish I could remember what it was called. It wasn't the typical latency settings, it was something else. When enabled, it dramatically reduced the memory bandwidth measured in memtest86. I think that setting was exposed because they were pretty boldly implying support for the BX at 133MHz, so they wanted some recourse if it wasn't stable. In a way this wasn't user friendly though, because that option was enabled by default, and it really needed to be turned off to get the BX performance at it's best.

This option is called "In-Order Queue Depth". One time I needed to change it to 1 - when I didn't connect two pins on my BX-prepared Tualatin. 😵