Written: 8/25/99
Written by:
MotoŽ
Price: $120 ESP
Abit BE6 Supplied by:
Abit
Introduction
When it comes to motherboards that caters to overclockers,
no company does it better than Abit. Abit has dominated this arena since the
introduction of the first BX 6. Since then Abit has continued to improve their
products to stay ahead of the competition.
After the BX 6 took the overclocking world by storm, Abit
introduced a smaller version call the BH6. They then updated the BX6 with a BX6
v2. Now Abit has decided that the BH6 needs an update also. Hence the new BE6.
The BE6 is an almost PC-99 spec motherboard, complete with
color coded input/output ports (one of the requirements for PC-99) for people
who don't know which port the mouse goes into. The PC-99 spec calls for all PCI
and AGP slots only. Abit chose not to do that at this time. I guess they think
there are still people out there who still has some ISA devices.
The BE6 includes ATA/66,
which the BX chipset was not designed to support. Although the BX chipset was
designed to be compatible with this specification, it is only capable of running
at a maximum of 33 Mbytes/sec, thus offering no advantage over UDMA/33.
With the help of specially
designed ABIT hardware additions, the BE6 can support this specification at its
intended 66 Mbytes/sec of data throughput. With the Ultra ATA/66 (Also known as
Ultra DMA/66) specification, this new high-speed interface doubles the Ultra
ATA/33 burst data transfer rate to 66.6 Mbytes/sec.
The result is maximum disc
performance using the current PCI local bus environment. Ultra ATA/66 hard
drives are 100 percent backward compatible with both Ultra ATA/33 and DMA and
with existing ATA (IDE) hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and host systems. The Ultra
ATA/66 protocol and commands are designed to be compatible with existing ATA
(IDE) devices and systems.
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