Classic Abit
Abit builds boards for the tweaker and performance enthusiast, and the VP6 is no exception. As with all recent Abit boards, the VP6 comes stacked with the excellent SoftMenu III BIOS interface. Within minutes, you can be digging through your memory settings, overclocking the front side bus, and adjusting the voltage of your processors.

Unfortunately, Intel has severely limited how you can overclock a processor, at least when compared to AMD. All Abit can really do is let you raise the voltage and front side bus. How your system responds is more a matter of the processor and other system components. The VP6 will take you all the way up to a 150MHz bus, but your memory, hard drives, IDE controller, and processor will decide what's stable. One thing to note here is that the voltage you set for your processors applies to both. Unlike the MSI dually, you can't set CPU voltages independant of each other. Not a big deal, really, but it's been done by MSI, so it's worth acknowledgement.

As with most recent boards like its KT7 AMD platform, Abit has included Highpoint's HPT370 IDE RAID controller. Rather than walk you through IDE RAID, I'll refer you to this evaluation of IDE RAID using the Highpoint controller.

Layout and packaging
The VP6 comes pretty loaded: four DIMM slots, four IDE ports, and that extra CPU socket. My first thought was that things were going to be cramped. They are, but not really because of the motherboard. Abit's between a rock and a hard place here. On one hand, you could try to cram everything onto a normal-sized PCB, making the motherboard itself incredibly cramped. The other alternative is making the PCB a bit larger, and spreading things out.

Abit's gone with making the PCB a bit bigger. They've spread things out quite nicely, and the additional size isn't a problem as long as you've got yourself a generous case like any self-respecting hardware geek should. There is plenty of clearance around both sockets for the larger breed of HSFs. The DIMM tabs don't get blocked by the video card PCB, and the lineup for IDE ports is pretty standard.

The packaging for the VP6 is stock Abit. You get a detailed manual, driver CDs, IDE cables, a floppy cable, and a USB header. One thing I've mentioned in previous reviews is the USB header—it spits the extra two USB ports out the back of your PC. Now, if you're already using the 2 standard USB slots, I'm thinking it makes a lot more sense to move the extra 2 up front so you can use them with MP3 players, digital cameras, or anything else you may regularly plug in and out. It doesn't make much sense to be reaching around the back of your PC all the time when there's plenty of real estate up front in terms of 3.5" or 5.25" bays. That's just a nitpick, because I'm getting crotchety in my old age, but it just makes sense.

Darth Via?
The VP6 is running Via's Apollo Pro 133A chipset, including the notorious 686B south bridge. The north bridge chip is actually hiding under a rather menacing looking heatsink. Oddly enough, it looks like the same heatsink I had on an old 486—how retro. With Via's reputation for flakiness, or at least for the potential for flakiness, I decided to run the VP6 through some torture stability testing. After all, dual processor motherboards are usually for servers and workstations, which need to be more stable than your average gaming hot rod.

I plugged a SoundBlaster Live! Value into one of the PCI slots, just to taunt Darth Via.

Well, after several rounds of benchmarking, and a stability test that involved multiple instances of Prime95 and a Team Arena botmatch running for over 24 hours straight without a hiccup, I'd have to say the VP6 is stable. Well, my VP6 is stable. I make no promises regarding how yours will work. We all know that Via has the potential to be a bit finicky in some situations.

It would seem that Darth Via is content to let my VP6 run smoothly. I've only had one unscheduled reboot thus far, and not a single blue screen through several weeks of use and heavy testing. Maybe Darth is too busy with the AMD platform. I really don't know, but I'm glad he's leaving my VP6 alone.