Abit BX6 (rev 1) and coppermine - Will it be possible? Abit says...

[Nuno]

Hi people

Having an Abit BX6 (rev 1) and a celery 450 I´m thinking about upgrading in the near future. The BX6 with the latest MP bios suports core voltages as low as 1.3v. So I guess it was just natural to wait for the coppermines (100 Mhz fsb) to be more affordable or wait for the celery coppermine 128k.

I e-mailed Abit tech support and here´s what they have to say:

For this moment there are no plans to make an coppermine update because its not possible yet to make it for the coppermines in combination with the bx6 board.

Huh? why not? It has a slot1, it has the BX chipset, it has 1.6 voltage, so what´s missing comparing with the newest BX boards?

So once more time to upgrade the cpu I must get a new mobo? I just can´t belive it. Don´t know why but that Athlon is looking better and better...

Anyone care to comment?

[CrazyBee]

Well, you should probably be upset at Intel andnot Abit. Intel may have "new" technology corrosponding with the Coppermines and may therefore be "incompatible" with older equipment.

Or, the Coppermine could have new features that BX chipset boards dont support, etc.

And, another alternative could be that the BX6 might be able to support a low voltage, but, because it was never intended to be that low it may not reliably regulate that voltage according to intel specs.

Or, it may just be cheaper for them to make a coppermine mobo from the start instead of taking new technology and reverse engineering it to work with an older mobo.

CB

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Abit BX6 Rev.1
Celeron 366A PPGA @ 566, 2.1v
192 meg RAM, CAS2
13.0 gig Maxtor 4320 HD
HP8110i 4x2x24
Creative DVD 5x
Creative DxR2
SB Live! Retail
USB ZIP 100
G400 32MB DH
Two KDS 17" Trinitron monitors

[Wombat]

It could be that all Coppermines are supposed to be 133Mhz FSB, and the BX "doesn't" support that. Remember Intel's creed: "Our hardware can't do X, unless we want to make money selling it to do X".

[Nuno]

Hi guys, thanks for replying.

The BX chipset does support the copermine. There are coppermines slot1 100 Mhz Bus (the PIII E) - the .25u are just PIII and the coppermine 133mhz fsb are PIII EB.
These are the available PIII:
(Name, FSB, L2 cache size, core speed)

Pentium III 733 133 256 733
Pentium III 667 133 256 667
Pentium III 650 100 256 650
Pentium III 600EB 133 256 600
Pentium III 600E 100 256 600
Pentium III 600B 133 512 300
Pentium III 550E 100 256 550
Pentium III 550 100 512 275
Pentium III 533 133 512 267
Pentium III 500E 100 256 500
Pentium III 500 100 512 250
Pentium III 450 100 512 225

The FC-PGA PIII are incompatible with BX mobos, because of a moronic voltage protocol made up by Intel (but that will be overriden by FCPGA/SLOT1 adapter, I think Iwill just anounced one of those)), but the Slot1 cu-mine aren´t.

Several mb manufacturers have updated their BX mobos bios to support coppermine. Several coppermine tests in the net were made on BX boards (could it be for the lack of the i820? ) Look here : http://www.anandtech.com/html/articl...1073&pagenum=6 , Anand reviewed the PIII E using an Abit BX6 R2...

So really I am curious why the hell the BX6 r1 probably won´t be suportingthe cu-mine (and yes, I asked Abit why in case it won´t suport it, and they replied as I quoted above)


[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 21 November 1999).]

[Nuno]

***Update***

I guess Abit technical support worldwide is a bit out of sync... The previous reply was from Abit Netherlands (the tech support closest to Portugal, I guess). Not satisfied, I e-mailed Abit in Taiwan, and here´s what I got:

Dear Sir/Ms,


We will release a new bios for supporting but
it is under development. Please wait a second.
We will relase it when the new bios is available.


Regards,
ABIT/fae

So after all it will be possible


[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 22 November 1999).]

[Buuri]

We will release a new bios for supporting but
it is under development. Please wait a second.

LOL!!
He knew it's coming, but apparently has no idea how long it will take to write a BIOS..

_
B

[Nuno]

Hmmm. Something is wrong. I waited a whole second and the bios didn´t pop up in their ftp server...

Now seriously, the guy who replied is obviously not a native english speaker (just like me) and he must reply to tons of e-mails every day... we got the point, that´s what matters!

[merchant2112]

ok i might be wrong on this but. aren't the p3b just overclocked p3's set to run at 133mhz fsb??? dosn't coppermine have a COPPER based CORE??? think about it the B series p3 is just that. A overclcoked p3 (even has higher core voltage.) the real coppermines have yet to be released and we probibly won't see them untill the I820 chip set is out.

i have a k7 based system and i must say i havent been this impressed with a computer in a long time. k7500 with a 650 core now runing at 650.

------------------
my system has arived. all together and if i new about the usb bug in 98 with this board i would have been fiished a lot sooner.

msi 6167 mobo k7 500 wk41 now at 650.(not overclocked its a real 650 they underclcoked.) 256 meg ram ,addtronics case w 250watt sp power supply, matrox g400, maxtor diammax 2500+ 10gig hd,5x cldvd region free, 3com 10/100 nic and 56k ext modem, xitel p storm sound card. lots of controlers joystick throttle rudder raceing wheel, and 19in monitor, usb logitech mouse.

i found the fix for the mouse hang problem.

[Nuno]

The .18u PIII are coppermines. 256kb cache on die. And no, they don´t have copper - nice Intel marketing trick, isn´t it?

[paulcs]

It's aluminum. I want one anyway.

It's funny. Aopen was claiming for a while that only certain revisions of the AX6BC would run the coppermines (with a BIOS upgrade, of course). Now they're appear to think all of them will. I suspect they were just being cautious.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[merchant2112]

ya i was just reading about that bloddy misleading bastards (intel), i wonder what they are going to do when amd releses the COPPER based k7 with the full speed cach ?
(i seam to remember reading that they plan to go copper, and what about when the via 133 chipset comes out.)