Next Generation Motherboard Platforms - Part 2: Intel's 820

Regular AnandTech readers will know that our pick for best overall Slot-1 BX motherboard went to AOpen for their AX6BC Pro Gold. AOpen has consistently manufactured stable products and they have never failed to deliver strong performance and features. Their quality is top notch and as a manufacturer they are among the top 5%. It isn't a surprise that they are second only to Intel as the largest motherboard manufacturer in the world in terms of yearly sales. Now just because a company sells a lot doesn't mean that they are producing quality goods, but in this case, they most definitely are.

The AOpen AX6C arrived in our labs around the same time as the VC820 and it provided us with a very good comparison of what to expect from the first generation of i820 motherboards and what to expect from the future of i820 boards. The AX6C is little more than AOpen's BX design adopted to the i820 chipset, which is quite unfortunate since, as we've seen with the VC820, there is quite a bit of room for improvement. So we'll make it very clear right now that it wouldn't be a stretch to say that the AX6C isn't the only i820 based board that we'll see from AOpen; it may be the first, but it won't be the last.

The board features the same expansion slot configuration as the VC820, except this time the AGP slot is placed closest to the CPU slot and the AMR slot is placed in between the AGP and PCI slots. There are a number of issues that you can discuss with this configuration, the first being heat. In most cases your CPU is the primary source of heat in your case, and placing an extremely hot graphics adapter next to it isn't beneficial to either component. Intel's solution was to separate the two by an AMR slot, which is a perfectly reasonable decision, but in the AX6C, this is not taken into account and the placement of the slots isn't as wise of a decision as it could have been. If AOpen wanted to stick to this design it would have been a preferred option to use the idea of a shared AMR slot. Live and learn.

AOpen finally realized that the positioning of their floppy drive connector was a problem that needed attention and they moved it to the lower end of the motherboard. However, in doing that, they kept the ATX power supply connector up top behind the Slot-1 connector. The ideal position for the power supply connector would have been in the lower right hand corner of the motherboard or on the opposite side of the Slot-1 connector but, pushed to the right edge of the motherboard. There’s no doubt that the layout of the AX6C could have definitely been improved.

Other than those complaints, the board resembles your standard BX board, with the exception that its an i820 based board. Keep in mind that the AX6C is still a pre-production sample; it doesn't even include the silk screen for the AGP retention mechanism. Also remember that we're using it as an indicator of where improvements can be made on future i820 boards and not as a sample to evaluate.

With the current state of the chipset it is surprising that any motherboard manufacturers are taking the platform as seriously as they are.