Overview
The venerable old Intel i440BX chipset – lacking UDMA/66, 4x AGP and official 133MHz FSB support – is still the fastest, most reliable chipset on the market for Intel Pentium II and III processors. What can you do if you want to upgrade to a new, high-speed PIII processor but still long for a BX based board? Well, you can take a look at the FIC FB11, for one. This Socket 370 board will handle processors up to 1GHz, and memory up to 1GB.
When FIC asked me to take a look at another BX based motherboard, I wasn’t quite sure if they were quite stable themselves. However, after reflecting on it for all of about 30 seconds, I realized that there are still a very large number of users that trust nothing but Intel chipsets, and in particular the i440BX chipset. With the FB11, you can have it your way! My tests show this board to be every bit as stable as a BX board should be.
The test system included the following components:
- Intel Pentium III 500E processor
- 3 x 128MB Crucial Technology/Micron PC133 SDRAM (384MB total)
- 1 x 128MB EMS PC133 HSDRAM
- Sparkle 300W ATX power supply (model: ST-301HR)
- Western Digital AC8.4GB UDMA66 IDE hard drive
- Toshiba XM-6602B 32x IDE CDROM
- Diamond Viper V770 Ultra 32MB Video Card
Diagnostics and Benchmark Software:
- Winstone99 Business and High-end Tests – ZDBOp
- Content Creation 2000 – ZDBOp
- Burn-in Test 2.0a- Passmark
- QuickTech Pro 2000 (Self-booting) – Ultra-X
- RAM Stress Test – Ultra-X
Diagnostics Hardware:
- PHD Plus card – Ultra-X
- PHD PCI card – Ultra-X
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