Motherboard Specifications

The Good

"Find what the people want, and give it to them...at a cost."  The driving force behind successful businesses, Find what the people want, and give it to them, what makes the business successful is the amendment to that statement, "at a cost."  Keep that in mind as you take a look at the AOpen AP58.

AOpen's AT form factor AP58 places the Socket-7 IC at the front of the motherboard (the edge closest to the front of your case) surrounded by 9 Sanyo-tantalum capacitors.  Are all SiS chipsets erratic at higher bus speeds?  As long as you have some decent RAM and and quality peripherals the answer to that question is no.  AOpen proves this statement with their AP58, the Sanyo-tantalum capacitors do account for some stability of the motherboard, however quality engineering and research come in to play with the production of any motherboard, it is quite obvious that AOpen did their homework with the AP58.

The motherboard is centered around the fairly large SiS 5582 chipset which is about the size of a small processor (i.e. 386DX).   One trademark of SiS motherboards has been the green heatsink you find on almost all motherboards that use SiS chipsets, however absent for the SiS 5582 chipset in the case of the AP58 is this stylish heatsink.  During normal and heavy operation the 5582 doesn't get hot at all, barely warm in fact, so it doesn't seem as if heat will be a problem for users.

AOpen chose to keep a small distance between the 4 PCI slots and the 3 ISA slots, the Award BIOS chip is found between the first PCI slot and the last ISA slot allowing the user to fully occupy all 7 slots without worrying about any shared slots.  For the size of the motherboard, it is amazing that AOpen managed to fit 4 SIMM and 2 DIMM slots on a baby AT form factor, nevertheless they did, and it was a great decision to do so.

The SiS 5582 chipset natively can cache a maximum of 128MB of RAM, a full 64MB more than the limit of the Intel TX chipset.   For you Socket-7 PhotoShop users who need 128MB of RAM you'll find that the SiS 5582 chipset gives you the most bang for your buck.  Most people think that if you exceed the maximum cacheable memory limit of your chipset/motherboard that you'll immediately notice a decrease in speed.  That is definitely not the case.   Windows 95 loads data from the "bottom-up" meaning that it loads data into the cached area of your RAM first, then moves on to the un-cached regions, therefore if you have 128MB of RAM installed in a TX motherboard but never use above 64MB of it you won't experience any decrease in performance.  The same is true for the AP58, if you don't use memory above the cacheable area (in Win95...other OSes, such as Linux, load from the top down) then you won't notice a decrease in performance...however if you're not using it...why buy that much RAM in the first place?  It probably sounds odd, but there are those who upgrade their RAM for the sake of watching the memory counter tick up to a higher number ;)

Configuring the Award BIOS to meet the test system's full potential is a breeze if you've had prior experience with the Chipset Features Setup of SiS motherboards, if you haven't however, the items in the BIOS may be quite frightening to you.  Leaving the AP58 at its Turbo Defaults is more than sufficient for normal and overclocked operation, however if you feel like experimenting take a look at AOpen's thick user's manual.  Why is the AP58's manual so big?   Well, not only does it cover the basics necessary for setting up your system but it also documents the BIOS Settings very well.  AOpen accurately documents many of the options in the Chipset Features Setup of the Award BIOS, something overlooked by 95% of the motherboard manufacturers selling their products today.  Its nice to know that AOpen cares.

The performance of the AP58 is a little better than Chaintech's 5SIM, however for the most part it can be classified as being average.   What is really amazing is that the AP58 came in third place among the motherboards reviewed here at 291MHz with the Pentium MMX in the Socket-7 Motherboard Comparison.

The Bad

What's missing from the AP58?  Inside AOpen's stylish box the Bus Mastering drivers from SiS seem to be absent along with AOpen's trademark copy of Norton Anti-Virus.  It would have been nice to find the AP58 in an ATX form factor, but in order to keep the price of the AP58 at its targeted point the AT design was pretty much necessary. 

In the user's manual only one voltage setting is un-named, the setting is supposedly 2.1v which should be sufficient for the AMD K6/266 however I wouldn't count on it being too reliable with the K6/266 (requires a 2.2v setting) until we can find out for sure what AOpen made the reserved setting on the AP58.   The manual states that this reserved setting is probably 2.1v, however that hasn't been decided for sure at the time the manual was printed...it all depends on what motherboard revision you got.

IRQ Usage

• Auto-detects PnP Cards after HDD Detection

BIOS Settings

Recommended SDRAM

This little addition to my review layout was put in here just so you all can have an idea of what brand of SDRAM I recommend and have tested with the board, just to avoid problems in the future if you decide to purchase the board.

Recommended SDRAM: Advanced Megatrends SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 2 x 32MB Advanced Megatrends SDRAM DIMMs

Manufacturer: Advanced Megatrends
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.megacom.com

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.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 97 / Business Graphics Winmark 97 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• Business Winstone 98 / Business Graphics Winmark 98 was run on the Pentium MMX at 233MHz, and the AMD K6 at 233MHz, the averaging rules for these tests are the same as those used for the 97 test suites. 

• Chris Dial's VGA Bench & SVGA Bench were run in cases where 3D performance of a video accelerator/onboard video was tested.   Both benchmarks were run a total of 3 times on either an AMD K6 or Intel Pentium MMX clocked at 233MHz (66.6 bus x 3.5)

• Quake was run in cases where gaming performance of a video accelerator/onboard video was tested.  DOS Quake was run with the screen size set to maximum during which 'TIMEDEMO DEMO2' was run (Hit '~' then type TIMEDEMO DEMO2) and the frame rate recorded.

• After each motherboard was tested a complete format of the test hard drive was initiated and the OS/benchmarking software was re-installed afterwards a defragment was initiated using Windows 95's Disk Defragmentation Utility

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 256 colors

Test Configuration

The Final Decision

Have you done your homework?  AOpen has...if the SiS 5582 chipset is what you're looking for, then look no further, the low cost AP58 from AOpen combines all the features that make a motherboard fit for a king with a not so royal price.