Abit BX6 Motherboard Review
June 1, 1998
By Scott Wainner
Documentation As usual, Abit's documentation is easy to understand and quite complete. The manual for the BX6 includes a new section on how to flash the BIOS, which can be helpful to those who are hesitant to perform a flash upgrade without any instructions.
Once again, they fall short in documenting the Chipset BIOS Setup options, providing a very small description of only 3 out of 12 or so options. See the BIOS Information page if you need help with any of the settings.
Bus speed adjustable via BIOS Setup from 66MHz to 133MHz,
CPU Voltage adjustable via BIOS Setup from 1.30v to 3.20v,
Multiplier adjustible via BIOS Setup from 2x to 5x in 0.5 increments.
Disadvantages:
Very few RAM timing adjustment options in BIOS Setup.
Overall Report For overclockers, this is a fantastic board. The wide range of bus speed, clock multiplier, and CPU voltage settings, make it very easy to overclock the BX6 to a speed that will be stable with your hardware components. And of course, Abit's "Softmenu II" technolgy makes changing those settings a breeze by enabling them to be changed from within the BIOS Setup, without the hassle of opening the case and switching jumpers around.
I did not run into any instability or incompatibility issues. The BX6 ran fine with all 3 ISA slots filled (56k Modem, Scanner SCSI card, and Sound Blaster Gold), 3 out of 4 PCI slots filled (2 Diamond Monster 3D II Voodoo2 cards, and a Diamond Fireport 40 UW SCSI card), and a Diamond Viper V330 AGP video card in the AGP slot (no, I'm not a Diamond rep, I just happen to own a lot of their stuff, ok!? :-) ). FYI, I was using the final release of Windows 98 to test the BX6.
I would recommend the BX6 to advanced users. The overclocking options can be hazardous in the hands of a novice, but as long as you're conservative at first, anyone should be able to appreciate this board's features without doing harm to their CPU and other components. To use a bus speed of 100MHz, not just on the BX6 but with all BX based boards, I recommend 8ns PC100 SDRAM. Anything less opens yourself up to the potential for instability problems that can otherwise be avoided. However, it should be noted that the BX6 ran fine with my 10ns "PC66" SDRAM DIMM.
Add www.earthwebhardware.com to your favorites Add www.earthwebhardware.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.xReceive news via our XML/RSS feed
Jobs
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
