Written:
10/8/2000
Written by: UnkleŽ
Price: $175 (Find a MUCH lower price at
iBuyer)
Manufactured by: Abit
Introduction:
So you're sitting there with an Intel FC-PGA processor
and no motherboard... what do you do, what do you do? Well, you could go with
an i820-based motherboard and pay out the ass for RDRAM. You could get a Via
based motherboard and suffer poor memory performance. You could even get a
motherboard based on the ancient yet amazingly robust BX chipset. All these are
good options, each with their own high and low points, but now there's a new
entry into the field, a motherboard based on Intel's new 815E chipset, the ABIT
SE6. Is it any good? What does it have going for it? What sucks about it?
Can it overclock? Does it make your whites whiter than white? For answers to
all but maybe the last one... read on.
815 Chipset:
The ABIT SE6 is based on Intel's latest offering in the
chipset game, the 815E. Positioned as a 'mainstream PC' product... something
that's not quite on the bleeding edge of technology, but not something you're
going to find in the bargain bin either. Smack in between the 810 and 820
chipsets the 815 delivers a bunch of features that are pretty much standard in
the chipset game... and best of all, you don't need RDRAM.
So by the looks of it we have a pretty capable chipset
that should be able to handle not only being a good OEM board for a business
machine, but also something with the potential to be a good chipset for someone
looking to plug in some PCI cards and go looking for performance. Perhaps the
best selling point for this chipset is that it isn't made by VIA and doesn't
suffer from VIA's notoriously horrid memory performance. Sure it's limited to
512 Megs of RAM, but for a single processor system 512 is plenty... at least for
the time being.
The chipset has native support for Coppermines, Celeron
IIs, bus speeds of 66, 100, and 133, and a bunch of smaller features like power
saving, suspend to RAM, and even an DVI output for the on board video. At least
on paper Intel looks to have a winner in the mid range segment, this chipset
appears to have everything that we need, and even some things like on board
video and sound that we might disable... but still could come in handy one day.
Next page: The specs
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