Mobos that Mattered the Most
PrintJoin us as we wander the Motherboard Hall of Fame and revisit the 10 most important boards in the history of ATX
If you think old motherboards go off to die long, slow deaths in an e-waste dump or silver reclamation plant, think again. Motherboards that have made a significant contribution are elevated to star status where they live forever.
Not all boards are worthy of the Motherboard Hall, of course. In fact, our list notably starts with ATX and moves forward. Why no AT or Baby AT boards? When was the last time someone thought wistfully of a 1992 VL-Bus motherboard? Those boards of old, while certainly heroic, hark back to a day when the component received little attention or enthusiasm—a time before it had realized its true potential.
You’ll also notice that our list doesn’t include any boards made in the last three years. We’ve intentionally excluded modern boards because it remains to be seen how much of an impact they’ll make over time. Even today’s most stellar boards, such as EVGA’s Classified SR-2—the board we used in this year’s Dream Machine, and an obvious contender for the Hall—are still too young to get inducted.
The reverence owed to the 10 boards you’ll see here, however, is unquestionable, as you’ll learn when we recount their respective roles in modern motherboard history. But if there are others you feel we’ve overlooked, please let us know at comments@maximumpc.com.
Circa 1996
Intel Advanced ATX/Baseboard
Intel's first ATX board and Triton chipset schooled the competition
It didn’t have a splashy name (hell, we’re not sure if it even had a name), but Intel’s Socket 7 “Advanced ATX/Baseboard” was a tectonic shift in the mobo scene. First, it used Intel’s 430FX Triton, which arguably marked Intel’s emergence as the core-logic chipset leader. Before that, third-party chipset manufacturers such as Opti, ALi, SiS, and VIA vied for control. The Triton series turned those other chipset makers into overnight has-beens. The Advanced ATX/Baseboard was also the first ATX board that we know of. A new formfactor designed to take us beyond AT and Baby AT, ATX has withstood the test of time and continues to dominate 15 years later. Even Intel’s own attempt to kill ATX with BTX came to naught.
Circa 1998
Abit BH6
Overclocking was never the same again
Defunct motherboard maker Abit’s main claim to fame was its “SoftMenu.” Before the appearance of the soft jumpers, no one had made a mass-market motherboard that let you overclock the front-side bus and other features in the BIOS. Other boards required you to power down, crack open the case, and flip DIP packages or throw jumpers. The soft jumpers first made an appearance in the Abit IT5H as well as the Abit BX6, but the SoftMenu seemed to really hit its stride with the Abit BH6, which some reviewers called the “perfect” 440BX motherboard. How big of an impact did the BH6 have? Today, you can’t find an enthusiast motherboard that doesn’t use a BIOS-based overclocking feature
Circa 1999
Abit BP6
Perhaps the most famous motherboard of all time
Prior to Abit’s BP6, consumers didn’t run dual processors. But in a bold move that gained the attention and respect of PC enthusiasts, Abit built its BP6 specifically for the purpose of running two Celeron CPUs in symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) mode, despite the fact that Intel had disabled dual-proc support in those chips. Practically overnight, the BP6 became the poor-man’s workstation board, allowing consumers to build affordable dual-processor machines for the first time. Built on Intel’s 440BX chipset, the BP6 didn’t just let you run two Socket 370 chips, it also let you overclock them. A common configuration was two 300MHz Celeron’s overclocked to 450MHz. The BP6 was such an oddity that it didn’t even work with the standard OS of the time, Windows 98. Consumers had to run Windows NT, BeOS, or Linux to get that second processor to show up to the dance.
Circa 1999
FIC SD11
He pulls a Pentium III, you pull an Athlon... That's the AMD way
There’s a line from The Untouchables that explains the SD11. In the movie, Elliot Ness is told, “Everybody knows where the booze is. The problem isn’t finding it, the problem is who wants to cross Capone.” In late 1999, it wasn’t difficult to make an Athlon mobo (although they were pricier than typical boards of the day), but crossing Intel was another matter. Real or imagined, boards vendors were scared crapless of angering the chip giant.
Of those vendors, FIC was the first to cowboy up by not only making the SD11, but also daring to sell it. Sure, the board had electrical and compatibility issues, but when other vendors saw that Intel really didn’t seem to care about Athlon, they, too, broke out designs they were previously too afraid to air publicly. We still believe that if not for the SD11, it’s possible the Athlon and its descendants wouldn’t be here.
Circa 2000
MSI MS-6167K7T266
The first good Athlon board
MSI certainly didn’t earn a chapter in Profiles in Motherboard Courage when it came “out” with the MS-6167. You couldn’t find the Athlon-compatible mobo on the company’s website, and inquiries to the company about the board were met with silent stares. Despite such caginess, the MS-6167 deserves recognition for being the first solid Athlon motherboard on the market. It was fast and reliable enough to blow the doors off any Pentium III–equipped contemporaries. Unlike the finicky SD11 board, the MS-6167 used AMD’s “Irongate” chipset for both the north and south bridges, which proved to be a wise decision in the long term. While the AMD south bridge had its own problems, we’ll always have a soft spot for MSI’s MS-6167 and the blazing-fast Athlon chip that paired with it.
Next Page: Mobo Hall of Fame continued »
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Ceadderman
October 28, 2010 at 1:18am
Okay, I'm lost. Didn't the author state that nothing introduced in the last three years would be mentioned?
Yet he mentions the ASRock board because they can use AGP or PCI-e standards?
I have a bone to pick then, why not mention any major Gamer board? Like how about the predacessor to my Crosshair IV board? The Crosshair or even the Rampage?
If you set the rules then at least abide by them. Way to teach future generations how to be hypocrites. lol
poee
October 26, 2010 at 9:55pm
Great article! But a top 10 doesn't give you enough space to represent the period between 2003 and 2006. A few more milestone (imho) mobos:
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe <- (best P4 board, and the peak for the P4 in its long, lingering lifespan)
DFI LANParty NF2 Ultra <- (started the trend in high-end MB's in exposing comprehensive BIOS adjustments for OC'ers - also influenced gamer-centric branding in the MB industry.)
MSI K8N Neo2 Diamond <- (best Socket 939 mobo w/ AGP, the last of the high-end AGP boards)
Asus A8N-SLI <-(first SLI MB and best of the early dual-PEG MBs, start of a new era)
...
elo231
October 21, 2010 at 1:15pm
Although I've started building system within the AT days, but the very first system of my own uses a board with combo sockets. This board (isn't on the list) lets you install either a Intel bases slot 1 CPU or the ones based on socket 370.
As the years gone by while all my friends are there rocking their Pentium 4s (their boards died out early), I wanted something better than Pentium 4 and looks like my wish was granted as this board held on for five solid years until it finally went out, just when Intel released their very first dual core: Pentium D.
ysered
October 19, 2010 at 11:48am
The BP6 did work with Win98, so it's not correct to say "The BP6 was such an oddity that it didn’t even work with the standard OS of the time, Windows 98."
However, Win98 could not benefit from multiple processors on any platform.
Zig
October 17, 2010 at 7:39am
Praetor_Alpha,
I just switched over from this board at the end of last year; it's a fine board & served me well, but I think you're not going to be able to add a SATA HDD of 500Gb or above due to a chipset limitation (unless you also add a third-party SATA controller).
Slugbait
October 16, 2010 at 2:48pm
The closest I came to owning any of these mobos was the Bad Axe 2, sporting a C2D/EE. Using it right now to type this on my 54" plasma (it's now in my HTPC), running at stock speed.
When I first got it for my main machine, I also got a Tuniq Tower 120...I figured with an unlocked multiplier, I'd want to go to 3.73 or so. Unfortunately, this board wouldn't boot if the CPU speed hit 3.5, which the stock cooler could have handled. I scoured the 'net and tried again and again for weeks to get that magic BIOS config that would allow more speed. Oh well, the TT120 looked wicked inside my Armor. But it was just a bit too tall for my Silverstone LC17, so the stock HSF went in.
Athlonite
October 15, 2010 at 11:28pm
Where's the ABIT NF7S v2.0 only the best nForce2-MCP2 mobo around I can't believe you haven't included it
Keith E. Whisman
October 17, 2010 at 12:19am
I think only the Asus board offered the full functionality of the nForce2 chipset like on the fly Dolby digital encoding for actual decoding on surround sound rigs that kicked ass. I had a Klipsch speaker system that only offered digital connections, no analog and it worked fantastic with the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I Think only the A7N8X offered that because I shopped around and couldn't find another motherboard with that feature. It really didn't make any sense to me why they used that chipset and didn't enable that feature. I think even to this day that it was a big fat fail for all the other motherboard manufacturers. I remember begging through emails to Nvidia to produce a sound card with that chipset on it. I don't know why they chickened out.
Sparx10
October 15, 2010 at 2:34pm
OMG! I have the ASRock 939DualVsta. It had this 'future CPU' slot on it, which was supposed to be a slot that would let you put an addon card in to let you run the AM2 processors. But they canceled that, knowing it was a bad idea.
It was also the only motherboard with both AGP and PCI-e at the time (I didn't think I'd need that feature at my time of purchase, but man did it ever come in handy :D)
sammy_sam
October 15, 2010 at 12:02pm
Soyo....man I totally forgot about them! Great board at the time.
Good article...brings back old memories.
TheDorkSide
October 15, 2010 at 9:43am
This is a riot! I still have this board sitting in another case somewhere. It came in an old Compaq I bought in like 1999-2000. It still has the original Athlon T-Bird 750. The only problem with the Compaq flavor (as usual) is it only had two DIMM slots and the headers for everything aren't marked. They used some kind of combo cable for that.
Keith E. Whisman
October 14, 2010 at 10:54pm
My favorite MOBO of all time was my trusty old Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with an AMD 2500 Barton processor I think that's what it was called. I had it overclocked to 3ghz on standard HSF in a Thermaltake tower case. I had 2gigs of ram on that beast. I also had that 75GB GPX Deathstar HDD in it. And yes that hdd failed and I took it apart with an Electronics Engineer friend and we diagnosed what was wrong with it. There was a gray colored clay on the top platter from where the bearing failed and shot it's liquid dynamic stuff onto the drive. The drive didn't die until the drive tried to write to a portion of the platter with a chunk of clay on it.
Because I took it apart I didn't bother sending it in for warranty repairs. But damn that MOBO was just plain awesome.
deadsenator
October 14, 2010 at 5:10pm
After running the Celeron 300s at 450GHz for a little while, I gave the Peltier coolers a try. I was able to up-clock to a stable 515GHz and ran like that for a long time.
I removed the board for an upgrade and it would never run that fast again. Back down to 450GHz. Oh, well. I gave it away 2 or 3 years ago to someone who did not deserve it. Damn.
Since the BP6, I was from then on hooked on SMP computing. Now I rock the SR-2. Yippee!!!
I remember most of these boards. Isn't nerd nostalgia fun?
proto-bytes
October 14, 2010 at 4:57pm
- DELL Proliant 5400 Dual Xeon SMP board with up to 128 gb. ECC Dual Channel Memory, This thing cooked 7.9 WEI score across the board with a simple GeForce 8800 GTX and 12 Gb. Memory and twin Xeon 5450's. Boot up took only 3 seconds. I said: "That is just too fast...."
- New Innovation from MSI: the NF980-G65. You list the EVGA nForce 680i SLI as being a master piece. The Nvidia nForce 980i SLI is completely new and only offered by MSI for AMD class CPU’s. if the nForce 680i is a masterpiece then surly the nForce 980i falls in the same category of masterful innovations, as there have been no nForce chipsets produced since the 7 series years ago. A Masters in Digital Electronics Engineering might be required to fully realize and configure this piece of masterful art. User beware, there are no safe guards in place to prevent you from smoking your AMD3 CPU….
-Proto-Bytes
amay
October 15, 2010 at 9:42pm
it is actually called the 980a chipset, (the i after the number denotes the cpu manufacturer - i for intel and a for AMD)
It isn't a new chipset either, its a rebrand of the 780a chipset. Since the whole QPI licensing issue with intel nVidia has shelved its chipset team (rumors suggest that they have gone on to work on the Tegra chips)
majorsuave
October 14, 2010 at 4:47pm
I still have an A7N8X-E Deluxe. Not sure what the E stands for.
It is still running, it has became the kids PC. Still going good, can run a few games still.
praetor_alpha
October 15, 2010 at 4:58am
Mum is still rocking my old A7N8X-E Deluxe. Went through one of them about two years ago, due to bad capacitors, got this one off a friend who had one lying around. Put Linux on that thing last month, gonna hook it up to a 640gig SATA (wd6400aaks) next week.
Melik_Jay
October 20, 2010 at 9:25am
Awesome, I still have mine running too, it's on its second cpu, the board has been a champ! It has been turned into my wifes home office pc.
Zig
October 17, 2010 at 7:41am
Praetor_Alpha,
I just switched over from this board at the end of last year; it's a fine board & served me well, but I think you're not going to be able to add a SATA HDD of 500Gb or above due to a chipset limitation (unless you also add a third-party SATA controller).
fry
October 14, 2010 at 3:51pm
I had an A7N8X and an EVGA 680i. Just replaced the 680i last month, in fact.
jac_goudsmit
October 14, 2010 at 3:22pm
The firewall at my office runs on a BP6 (with aftermarket BIOS upgrade) with two celery's. It's been rock freaking solid running 24/7 for many years. And if it ever DOES break down, we have a spare; all we need to do is blow the dust off.
knexkid
October 14, 2010 at 2:45pm
Whatever company made that little green heat sink must have made a fortune. I think EVERYBODY who is a computer person has had a motherboard with that little green guy on it.
NoCtrl
October 14, 2010 at 2:27pm
I ran the distributed.net client using linux on an Abit BP6. That was my first dip into the distributed computing world. It was fun.
orca11
October 14, 2010 at 2:06pm
I had (and probably still do have) three of the top 10! I might even have a 4th... the MSI KT's model number is familiar as is the general board, but I don't remember all the plastic mounts next to the CPU slot.
ZayLay
October 14, 2010 at 1:07pm
Built my first comp with that 2001 MSI K7 board. 2nd Comp with the 2003 ASUS A7N8X, heck built half a dozen of those for friends, and just now handed that comp down to my parents. Built the 2006 Intel board for a video rendering machine. And my co-worker is still sporting the 2007 EVGA nForce 680i that i built for work. Very cool article, brought back a lot of memories.
aviaggio
October 14, 2010 at 1:00pm
Ahhh, memories. I had a BH6 and a VP6 (dual CPU board like the BP6), they were the best! As for the ASRock beast, the 939Dual-SATA2 offered both 16x PCI-e and 8x AGP on the same board and came out quite a few years ago. I still have one in my spare machine, upgraded to an AM2 slot via the daughterboard slot. IIRC it takes DDR and DDR2 as well. Quite an extraordinary board back in its day.
Melik_Jay
October 20, 2010 at 9:29am
+1 for the BH6, that board was a champ! The board is long gone, but I still have the box it came in.
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