Abit's SE6 and BX133-RAID
The Intel PC133 BX versus i815 - Where the rubber meets the road.

By Dave "Davo" Altavilla
7/30/00

Hot Hardware's Test Systems One driven by the ol' BX and the other by the new kid on the block, the i815.

LiteOn Mid Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Pentium III 933EB,  Abit SE6 i815 Motherboard and Abit BX133-RAID i440BX Motherboard, 128MB of PC133 True CAS2 SDRAM from Corsair (thanks Outside Loop), Dual IBM 15Gig 7200 RPM ATA100 Hard Drives (thanks again Outside Loop), Elsa Gladiac GeForce2 GTS AGP Graphics Card , Kenwood 72X CDROM, Win 98SE, DirectX 7.0a

Overclocking with the SE6 and BX133-RAID Abit has been there and done that...

Both boards are excellent over-clockers.  We were torn between the excellent stability of all bus speeds with the SE6 and the unbelievable range of options with respect to FSB settings on the BX133-RAID.  The SE6 exhibited the ability to run up to it's full 153 MHz. front side bus, with full stability, on our unlocked engineering sample Coppermine.  The BX133-RAID could do this as well but failed to run 3D apps above 140MHz. FSB with our Voodoo5 (not used testing).  On the other hand, the Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 card held up fine on the BX133-RAID, up to a top end of 155MHz. FSB with a 2/3 divider for a blistering 102MHz. AGP bus speed.  The V5 topped out at 92MHz. (if you are doing the math).

One of the strong points for the SE6, is its 1/2 FSB AGP clock divider.  Even at the full 153MHz., all graphics cards we tested ran flawlessly.  If you need higher bus speeds for over-clocking, the SE6 is your board.  If you want lots of over-clocking options and have a 2D/3D card that can handle high AGP speeds, the BX133-RAID is more for your taste, especially if you set it up for RAID 0 hard drive configuration.  (wow, we are almost too excited to show you this)
 

Benchmarks / Comparison Is the i815 up to the challenge?

As always, our first glance at performance will be via SiSoft's Sandra Benchmark Suite.  We are up to the "Millenium Edition" now and it shows comparative performance to more higher end systems than ever.  We set up our CPU to 133MHz. X 7 Front Side Bus speed for 933MHz. and 145MHz. X7 for 1.015 GHz., in these tests.  The results were interesting to say the least.

First CPU and Multimedia performance...

We didn't bother to post Multimedia scores for the 1GHz. tests.  You get the idea, things are fast.  At any rate, it is interesting to note that the SE6 beats out the BX133 at 933MHz. in both test.  That is because its timings are a little more aggressive than the BX133 at the same front side bus.  This is evident in the reported clock speed which is shown as a couple of MHz. higher than the BX133 even though they are set the same in the BIOS.  Conversely, you'll note that the BX133 edges out the SE6 when both are set to a 145MHz. FSB with a X7 multiplier, as they are in the 1GHz. test.  This time the BX133's timings are slightly more aggressive and a clock speed of 1022 is reported versus the SE6's 1016.  These small differences account for the slight variance each board shows.  However, both are on par and within a certain margin of error of each other.

Now, we have the memory tests.  The i815 chipset is supposedly not even in the same league as the BX, when it comes to memory bandwidth.  Let's see if that changed since the last BIOS and board revision.

  As we see here, the BX133 is roughly 10% ahead of the SE6 in memory bandwidth at both Front Side Bus speeds.  The SE6 does score somewhat better now than we have seen from recent reviews on the net.  In addition, take a look for comparison at these Sandra Scores taken on a VIA Apollo Pro133A based motherboard.  Even with "bank interleave" enabled, the Apollo Pro133A can't compete with the i815 and is blown out of the water by the BX133, in memory bandwidth.
 

So let's fire up a quick "acid test", if you will.  ZD's Content Creation Winstone 2000.

Well now, will you look at that.  The i815 bested the BX133 and the VERY expensive i820/RAMBUS driven Abit CX6 (as seen here in our Vapochill review).  Regardless, the margin is fairly small, not exceeding even 4% from the lowest to the highest score.

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