ABIT BX-6 Revision 2.0 Mainboard Review

Date: 15th March by Matthew Fam Kai Liang

- The Good - The Bad - Test System Configuration - Conclusion - Rating - Other  mainboard  reviews

When INTEL gave birth to its 440BX chipset last year for the use on Pentium II processors, It also gave birth to a new champion in motherboard industry. ABIT Corp from Taiwan(R.O.C) shock the whole world with the revolutionary "SoftMenu II" on the BX6 mainboard which in-corporates what other mainboard manufacturers were not able to offer, the ability to tweak the CPU voltage by a 0.05v step. Since then, overclocking was never  the same again. ABIT introduce us their latest mainboard, the BX6 Revision 2.0 mainboard early this year in a bid to strengthen its stronghold in the overclocking market.Since then AOpen and Microstar have released newer boards which are much improved and are a real threat to the popular BH6. ABIT engineers went into the labs again to create  the latest BX-6 rev2.0 mainboard. Now with newer features and higher FSB settings. Until now, the ABIT BH6 motherboard has been in the overclockering limelight, but with the introduction of this new motherboard, the situation may just change. This is the second motherboard currently available in the market that allows the selection of the CPU FSB and voltage in the BIOS settings. The package comes in a well designed blue coloured box with all the standard accessories including the FDD & HDD cables, a copy of the motherboard's user manual, ABIT retention cap (for Celeron processors) and a CD-ROM (containing drivers and PC health monitoring program).

The board is a modified and improved version of its predessor. Both the classic BX-6 and the newer BH6 influenced the design of this insanely overclockable mainboard. ABIT revotionary SoftMenu was among the most famous products in 1997 with the IT5H board,offering one of the earliest software-based CMOS setting for the system. After going through a rough patch during the 440LX boards, ABIT went back to its lab to research for new ideas. It took a few months,   but in the end, after INTEL launched the 440BX chipset in 1998 to allow 100MHz FSB processors to fit into the mainbaord. They were able to release the....

ABIT BX-6 mainboard which sported the world first SoftMenu II which allows CPU tweaking and most importantly, the ability to tweak the voltage of the CPU. Allowing what overclockers dream to achieve, the ability to increase the voltage by just 0.05v in small step. Overnight, ABIT was reborn, as people flock to purchase the BX-6. The BX-6 was also fitted with many nice features that appeal to the mass,including the Texas Instrument's 6 Data buffer chip to stablised the memory in case you use up the maximum 4 DIMM slots as BX-6 was one of the only few that offer 4 DIMM slots then. But Abit didn’t stop there. Encouraged by the initial success of the BX6, they went back to their labs and came up with the Abit BH6. The BH6 was a very affordable upgrade and became a must-have for any user looking for a new motherboard. One important change made to the BH6 was the 5/2 PCI/ISA combination, because the market was getting flooded with PCI peripherals. In order to save space, Abit also decided to remove one memory socket from the design to make it a 3-socket solution. Another important change brought with the BH6 was the SEL66/100# setting, which allowed the user to unlock the CPU clock multipliers on both the Pentium II 350 and the Pentium II 400. Perhaps not surprisingly, in the light of all this, the BH6 was considered by most users to be the most technologically advanced motherboard, and in a very short time the BH6 became one of the most sought-after motherboards in history. And in 1999,ABIT returns to the scene again after seeing a few manufacturers also adding voltage tweaking function to their mainboard and new FSB speeds to their latest mainboards. A new BX-6 Revision 2.0 has to be designed to resist the competition.

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The Good

Thrash Test

ABIT's latest offering tends to be reviewed all over the world with some bad comments as well as great remarks. Singapore Hardware Zone goes in depth now to give you some facts to prove that this board is no pushover.

BX-6 Revision 2.0 Mainboard comes with a wide range of FrontSide Bus selections ranging from the aging 66MHz setting to the highly unlikely 153MHz setting which might be useful if INTEL Pentium III processor are manufactured with a default 133MHz FSB setting. Right now anything above the 138MHz FSB settings will be impossible to achieve even with the world's best heatsink/fan combo. One unique function is the ability to allow all four dimm slots to be fully utilize with the inclusion of the Texas Instruments's 6 chip data buffer to ensure stability on the mainboard.I ran the test using 2x 32MB of SAMSUNG -G8 SDRAM and 2x 64MB of SPECTEK(A subsidary of MICRON USA) PC-100 SDRAM which have been proven to run 133MHz sucessfully on this board. This is to test the stability of using the full 4 slots in which a mix of different brands were used. The test ran for 12hours non-stop using Winbench99 tests during which the system did not encounter a slight crash during the period 

Board quality & Features

ABIT BX-6 Revision 2.0 mainboard is Pentium III compliant right out from the box.The first revision bios is 'HJ' while those currently selling in most Singapore's hardware stores are already with the latest 'JH' bios dated 12th of Feb 1999.THe "HJ" supports 2 additional features;

1. Supports Socket 370 Celeron 433 Mhz CPU.
2. Supports correct naming of Pentium III CPU.

This board has almost all the popular features available in the market.Voltage tweaking for overclockers, 5x PCI slot for future expansion,ability to assign IRQ freely through BIOS and more. But all these features come with a little penalty,the overall stability of the board is suspicious, according to numerous retailers and end-users of the BX-6(Rev1.0) and BH-6. They strongly agrees that the ABIT board 'RMA' rates are very high as cases of the mainboard being unable to boot-up and/or faulty Dimm slots are rampant.

The Benchmarks

I benchmarked the ABIT BX6-2 in Windows98 with ZDbop's 3D Winstone 99 and also Quake II to determine the performance of this board.

So here they are:

ABIT BX-6 Revision 2.0 Mainboard Benchmark Results Table
CPU Type	ZD 3D Winstone 99  @ 1024x768	Quake II Crasher Demo 1024x768 @ 16-bit
Intel Celeron 300A 464 MHz 64 MB	20.7	30.1
Intel Celeron 450 MHz (100 x 4.5)	20.6	30
Intel Pentium II 448 MHz (ABIT BX-6 Rev 1.0)	21.2	30.7
Intel Pentium II 448 MHz (ABIT BX-6 Rev 2.0)	21.6	30.8

 

As a user of BX-6 of both the first revision and the current new 2.0 version. I have little doubt as to the overclocking ability of this board. It is definately in a class higher than the new MSI-6163 board in terms of sucessful overclocking.Who would have known that a slight tweak of 0.05v from the standard 2.00v can produce such amazing stability on the processor.

BX-6 Rev.2.0 came bundled with 2 software.XStore Pro IDE Bus Master Driver and also the useful CD Xpress utility which increase the ability of your CD-ROM drive. ABIT went through the extra step of removing the Winbond temperature detection feature on the BH6 but it returns again on this board. This feature enables you to observe the temperature and also monitor the RPM(rotation per minute) speed of either the CPU or the 3 optional fans . This feature is rather important to many users especially those whom have overclocked their processor to the extreme limit as it warn the clocker of any overheating problems.

IRQ selection has become a problem with the BH6 which caused many users to abandoned their precious SCSI controller. Well they will be happy to see that ABIT has corrected this problem with perhaps the industry's first board that allow user to assign the IRQ according to their liking. Utilizing this feature which is in the BIOS  is also fairly easy with a few reboots here and there. Pratically every function of the BX-6 2.0 is controlled in the BIOS. From tweaking the CAS rating of the SDRAM to adjusting CPU multiplier. You should read the manual first before advancing as ABIT user manuals are considered to be very detailed though not as colourful as those of ASUS and the other brands.

Overclockers will be glad that the tweaking of CAS timing on their precious PC-100 SDRAM is now possible with the timings of 2 or 3. If you overclock the Front Side Bus to over 124MHz. It is wise to adjust the CAS timing of your SDRAM to 3. But those of default CAS 3 SDRAM will have serious problems booting up unless you have got yourself a very good batch of ram. New FSB speed of 117/129/138/143/148/153MHz is especially unique for overclocking. I guess ABIT has sensed that if INTEL were to built a processor running default 133MHz FSB.The dream 138MHz,143MHz,148MHz and 153MHz speed will be a quite easy to obtain.

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The Bad

Being able to test 4 sets of the ABIT BX6-2 Mainboard allowed me to determine the overall quality of the mainboard. I did not find any major faults with the first 3 sets but the fourth set had a rather poorly soldered power connector as you have to push a bit sideway after you plug-in the power supply cables to boot up the system. You might need to do this in order to boot up everytime. I finally returned it in exchange for a new set to avoid such problems.

Almost every Computer Hardware related website that reviewed the ABIT BX6-2 have praised the board's ability to tweak the voltage by just a 0.05v increment up or down.But wonder why no one mentioned that the 0.05v set is only available for voltage between 1.8-2.1v Anything outside this voltage, for example the 2.15v setting is not available as you jump immediately to 2.2v from 2.1v. This really makes the claim of tweaking 0.05v quite bullish to the public.But I guess ABIT does have the ability to improved the board on this.

The mainboard definitely does not have the feel of a high quality board as the PCB can be observed to be of quite moderate quality and are in a lower class compared to those of the AOpen or ASUS boards.Which just shows how much you sacrifice when you opt to cut cost. Novice users might not notice this as it is not very obvious.

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