As the second largest motherboard manufacturer in the world, behind just Intel, AOpen certainly must be doing something right. OEM business is the key to such high sales, but sometimes, what an OEM wants is not what the tweaker wants. In AOpen's case, they've always done an excellent job of carefully balancing the two very different sets of requirements. What you end up getting from them is very fast, stable, and well built board.

One of the things that OEM's love is the chance to cut costs and that often means using the most integrated solutions possible. Of course AOpen is there to fill that need for OEM's as well, but such solutions can be useful to the do-it-yourselfer as well. AOpen's MX3ZA is such a board featuring onboard audio and sound and the ability to another low cost option - Socket-370 CPU's. Let's see how it fares...

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
88/B

Do not compare newer ratings to older ones, the newer ratings are much more aggressive

The Good

The MX3ZA looks like a typical AOpen motherboard at first glance - high quality construction, big capacitors, and of course the AOpen logo right in the middle of the board. But where'd the AGP slot go? Then the ATI Rage Pro Turbo chip pops out at you to remind you of the integrated AGP video that takes that slot's place - quite a bit like Shuttle's MB11 actually. Then there's the extra ports on the back of the board for sound and a joystick, powered by the ESS Solo-1 PCI audio controller.

The Rage Pro Turbo get its own bank of 8MB 100MHz SDRAM, so no memory and performance sapping unified memory architecture here. That 8MB should be plenty to handle most 2D tasks. ATI's Rage Pro Turbo is a tried and true chipset, with drivers available for just about any operating system, including Linux, BeOS, and OS/2. Of course for Windows gaming, the Rage Pro Turbo still lacks a really good OpenGL ICD.

The onboard ESS Solo-1 is a PCI based solution that does a good job at providing basic audio functionality. CPU utilization is low thanks to the PCI interface. AOpen also wisely made the sound only take up one IRQ, unlike some other solutions featuring the same chip that take two. Unfortunately, that IRQ is the same one taken by the USB controller, whose IRQ cannot be disabled.

With this sound selection, one of the few PCI soundcards with Linux support (albeit beta at the time of review), this board just needs a CPU and RAM (and maybe a network card) to become a full fledged and fairly powerful Linux box. Although not exactly the ideal setup for a hardcore gamer, the same could be done under Windows 9x or NT for a basic, but complete workstation.

AOpen decided to go with a 3/1/0 (PCI/ISA/AGP) expansion slot configuration that isn't too bad for a microATX board, although one more ISA or (preferably) PCI slot could have been squeezed in. Of course, the burden of expansion is eased a bit by the onboard video and sound, which each include a jumper for manually disabling them. Fortunately, the lone ISA slot is not shared with any PCI slots, so you'll have all of them available for expansion purposes. Two DIMM slots handle memory expansion duties - typical stuff for an i440ZX board. Although the picture above does not show it, the i443ZX AGP controller is covered by the almost "traditional" green heatsink and is adorned with the AOpen logo.

The microATX specification is followed fairly closely in terms of layout. The HDD connectors are located where they should be, right at the front of the board, so that thsee cables are not forced to run over the CPU and/or memory, minimizing cable clutter. The ATX power connector is not in the ideal location, but is far enough forward so as to not impede airflow to or from the CPU. Ten beefy 1500uF capacitors surround the CPU socket, but still provide room for a normal sized heatsink to be attached easily. Two more of those capacitors are located around the DIMM slots in addition to a number of smaller valued ones spread all over the board. Two 3 pin fan connectors are available for using monitored fans - one by the CPU socket and one right in front of the ISA slot that could get in the way of an ISA card. AOpen is still including a 2 pin fan connector for some of those older Socket 7 CPU fans that can be mounted just fine on a Socket-370.

Marring the otherwise good layout, is the placement of the FDD connector at the back of the board, forcing that cable to run over the memory, and possibly the CPU, to reach its destination. That cable clutter makes it difficult to work inside the complete system and also obstructs air flow somewhat. The board uses a standard microATX mounting format and should fit just fine in any microATX or ATX case.

Stability in both overclocked and non-overclocked situations was excellent, as we've come to expect from AOpen motherboards. It's good to see a company like AOpen refusing to compromise on this front in order to gain a slight advantage in such a cost conscious market. Performance was likewise above average given the configuration, greatly out pacing the similarly configured Shuttle MB11. Although Winstone and software Quake 2 performance were quite good, don't expect miracles from the Rage Pro Turbo - it is almost two generations old and was not even that good when it was released. Consider it barely adequate in terms of 3D acceleration in this day and age.

Following in the footsteps of the larger AX6BC, this little board has a full complement of FSB speeds - 66/75/83/100/103/105/110/112/115/120/124/133/140/150 are all available from AOpen's own jumperless CPU setup for use with any processor. The setup is found under Chipset Features Setup and you can select CPU speeds directly or use the manual configuration mode and select FSB speeds and clock multipliers.

Generally most Socket-370 Celerons won't be able to make the jump to bus speeds 100MHz and above, so they become somewhat useless for most users at this point in time. However, Celerons that officially support 100MHz FSB speeds are coming down the pipes soon from Intel. At that point, the variety of FSB speeds should allow all any CPU's overclocking potential to be maximized.

A 6 pin jumper block determines the AGP ratio - options include Auto, 1/1, and 2/3. While this jumper is not documented in the Quick Installation Guide, but is on the board and in the full manual. Unfortunately, the Auto setting is not very intuitive. AOpen listened to Intel's suggestion that the AGP ratio be linked to the state of BSEL, the CPU pin that determines whether a 66 or 100 MHz FSB speed should be used. This is the AJ33 for Socket-370 CPU's or the infamous B21 on a Slot-1 CPU. When BSEL indicates 66MHz operation, the AGP ratio is set to 1/1 by the chipset and when BSEL says 100MHz, a 2/3 ratio is selected instead. AOpen's Auto setting links the CPU's BSEL pin to the chipset and lets it select the AGP ratio. The 1/1 and 2/3 jumper settings simply force the state of BSEL. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just make the Auto setting automatically select 2/3 when 100MHz or higher FSB speeds are used and 1/1 otherwise? Better still would be a BIOS controlled setting.

Speaking of the BIOS, it features an Award 4.60PGMA core that is newer and slightly improved over the more common 4.51PG that other manufacturers are using. This means the MX3ZA features pretty much every BIOS bell and whistle you can think of. Complete ACPI support, including suspend to disk support, is built in and can be disabled if so desired. Support for wake on modem ring, wake on LAN, and wake on alarm are all there as well. Almost always forgotten by most manufacturers, but not by AOpen, is the ability to control the power state of the computer when AC power is restored after a power outage. The setting is hidden under Integrated Peripherals despite the power management roots and offers the option of the computer being off, on, or in its previous state. Control of keyboard and mouse power on is also found under here. The CPU fan can be turned off when the system suspends as well. Complete control over SDRAM CAS latency, RAS to CAS delay, and RAS precharge are included and can be set to auto detect from the SDRAM SPD.

Like all other AOpen BIOS's, an option to load a set of "Turbo Defaults" is included to get the BIOS all tweaked up with just a couple key strokes. The user can then also save and load his/her own set of BIOS settings, allowing for experimentation without having to write down old BIOS settings. Each PCI slot can be assigned a specific IRQ for working out IRQ nightmares in a loaded system. Unfortunately, the onboard audio/video IRQ's cannot be changed nor can the USB IRQ be disabled.

Hardware monitoring is performed by the Genesis Logic GL518SM - a chip that AOpen uses on most of their boards, but is rarely seen from other manufacturers. Four voltage are reported by the utility - +3.3V, +5V, +12V, and Vcore. No temperature or voltage information is provided in the BIOS, that information is only available via software. A thermistor mounted under the CPU socket provides the CPU temperature. Unfortunately, this chip is not capable of reading the CPU temperature from the on die thermal diode included in all .25 micron Pentium II/Celeron CPU's. The rarity of the chip means that If you don't like AOpen's bundled utility, which is just the Genesys Logic utility with the AOpen logo, most shareware/freeware monitoring programs either don't support the Genesys chips or don't support all of its features.

In addition to the hardware monitoring software, AOpen includes their standard software bundle, which includes all of the latest driver files for all their motherboards as well as a complementary copy of Norton AntiVirus for Windows 9x. The manual is available on the included CD as well and is the traditional high quality stuff we've come to expect from AOpen.

The Bad

With Intel's i810 poised to take over the integrated motherboard market, the MX3ZA is probably one of the last traditional solutions featuring a separate video controller with its own RAM. The i810's video is faster in 2D and 3D, features a much better OpenGL ICD, and all the new Intel chipset features like the Accelerated Hub Architecture and Ultra DMA/66. However, it uses system RAM for a frame buffer (the optional DC100 display cache is only for z-buffer use), which may be enough to steer some users away. Furthermore, as mentioned above, the Rage Pro Turbo has been around seemingly forever and has drivers for just about every major OS. It will take some time for the i810's integrated video to gain the same support.

The performance of the ATI Rage Pro Turbo is definitely not top notch compared to today's accelerators. Both 2D and 3D performance are quite a bit lower than most other cards available today. ATI does have an OpenGL ICD, but it could really use some improvement.

The 3/1/0 (PCI/ISA/AGP) slot configuration could have been modified to max out a microATX configuration through the the addition of an ISA or (preferably) a PCI slot. While less of an issue since video and sound are onboard, you never know when you'll need the slots.

As mentioned above, the floppy drive connector is placed way at the back of the board. This creates a cable nightmare in your case with a big floppy ribbon cable getting in the way of just about any work that needs to be done inside the computer.

Also mentioned above, the USB IRQ cannot be disabled and the onboard audio/video IRQ's are fixed. The audio shares its IRQ with the USB controller, which is not necessarily a problem, but has the potential to become one in certain situations.

Thanks to limitations of the ZX chipset, only 2 DIMM slots are available and memory expansion could become an issue. Make sure you buy as much RAM as you can the first time - you'll only have one shot to upgrade without throwing away some old RAM.

There still have been few attempts from manufacturers besides Abit to offer voltage tweaking support on a motherboard and the MX3ZA is no exception. Rumor has it that AOpen's AX6BC Pro does have this feature, so there is still hope.

It was a little disappointing to not find AOpen's usually excellent manual not in the box. Here they did cut corners a bit to save some money and have included a Quick Installation Guide. The manual is included, but only on CD - not much good if you can't get the computer up and running. The Quick Installation Guide is also surprisingly brief with little information about the physical installation of the board. There is just some information on basic jumper settings and CPU setup.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: No

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

AnandTech Motherboard Testing Methodology

The Final Decision

Overall, AOpen's MX3ZA does an excellent job of integrating decent video and pretty good sound onto a microATX motherboard. For those interested in such integrated solutions, it doesn't get much better than this. For just over $100, plus the cost of a CPU, RAM, and case, a complete system can be had. Although currently one of the best integrated motherboard solutions, the MX3ZA's longevity may be somewhat limited as i810 solutions pop up from everyone, including AOpen.

How it Rates