Written: 8/25/99
Written by:
MotoŽ
Price: $120 ESP
Abit BE6 Supplied by:
Abit
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.