Great motherboard except for the ATA66...
Written: May 11 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Expandable, overclocker friendly
Cons: ATA-66 support is broken, needs another DIMM slot
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| jmoral's Full Review: Abit BE6-II Motherboard |
I've been building computers as a hobby and professionally as well for several years. I've had experience with Asus, SuperMicro, Abit, Tyan, FIC, Micronics and Soyo motherboards. In the Slot-1 arena, the BE-6 R2 has been my favorite.
Since the release of the BE6-R2, Abit has updated the BIOS almost once a month; fixing and tweaking as well as adding more features to it. Unfortunately, updates to the BIOS of the on-board High Point Technologies ultra-66 controller have not been as frequent or productive. Bottom line is: STAY AWAY FROM USING THE ON-BOARD ATA-66 CONTROLLER. The current rev. of the controller BIOS is 1.25 which I still am hearing has problems, problems, problems. The way I got around this is by installing a Promise Ultra 66 controller. I disabled the on-board ultra-66 controller and put that problem to bed.
The ultra-66 problem is really the only major issue I really have with this motherboard. everything else has been great. Five PCI slots and 1 ISA slot fill most user's expansion needs. As a side note, I am an ISDN user. The on-board serial port can only go up to 115k. I ended up getting a Pacific CommWare TurboExpress serial port card which can go in excess of 900k! That's what I have in my ISA slot. There is no PCI version available.
The other issue, which is actually irritating rather than a deficiency of this board is... WHY DID ABIT PUT THE ATX POWER CONNECTOR ON THE *OTHER* SIDE OF THE PROCESSOR? It makes no sense to have to drape the fat ATX power connector wire bundle OVER the CPU to plug it in. It gets in the way of airflow, gets caught up in the processor heatsink, etc.
With that out of the way, let me continue.
There are 3 fan headers that you can connect your smart fans to so that you can keep track of RPM's and such. 2 are located near the CPU slot and 1 is down near the case LED connectors.
For all you overclockers, this board is a dream. FSB adjustability in 1mhz steps along with adjustable voltages combine to give you the flexibility you need to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your CPU.
One other item this motherboard could benefit from is another memory slot. As cheap as memory has been getting, many people are quickly filling the DIMM slots. A fourth slot would be nice to enable you to get to a cool gigabyte of RAM.
The included owners manual is excellent as well. Its well-written as far as motherboard manuals go.
In closing, if you do some research in the Abit newsgroups in Usenet, most problems people are reporting besides the ultra-66 issue I mentioned earlier are usually the result of mis-configuring the BIOS, end-user error, or using an under powered ATX power supply (<200 watts).
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jmoral
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Location: The deep South
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 9 members
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