The Definitive Review Of The ABIT BE6-II Motherboard

HighPoint HPT366 UltraDMA 66 Controller

For those who are eager to jump on the DMA-66 bandwagon immediately, you would be glad to know that ABIT had also added UltraDMA 66 support to the BE6-II via HighPoint's HPT366 UltraDMA 66 controller. The HPT366 controller (shown below) supports up to 2 UltraDMA 66 channels.

Each channel supports 2 IDE devices so that means the HPT366 controller supports a total of 4 IDE devices. That brings the total number of IDE devices that the BE6-II can support to 8. Of course, most people don't have 8 IDE devices to play with. But the presence of 4 separate IDE channels (two supporting DMA-33 and two supporting DMA-66) allows the user to allocate a separate channel for up to 4 IDE drives. This allows those IDE drives to run concurrently, thereby improving their performance.

With built-in support for the HPT366 controller in the BIOS, users will find it easy to install and use UltraDMA 66 drives. Hooking up the 40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 hard disk used in this test was simplicity in itself. The appropriate UltraDMA 66 cable (helpfully provided with the motherboard) was used to hook up the DiamondMax Plus 40 to one of the white IDE connectors below :-

The HPT366 controller then automatically detected the DiamondMax Plus 40 and loaded up the BIOS support for UltraDMA 66, thus enabling the DiamondMax Plus 40 to run with full UltraDMA 66 support. The whole process is quite straight forward if you only use a single hard disk. But if you have another hard disk hooked up to the standard Intel 82371EB IDE controller, then you'll need to adjust two BIOS settings in order to boot up the UltraDMA 66 drive. Other than that, the installation of any UltraDMA 66 drive should be no problem for most users.

Note that the HPT366 controller is sharing IRQ with the PCI slot 3. The HPT366 itself supports IRQ sharing so there shouldn't be a problem most of the time if you install a card in the PCI slot 3. Just make sure you don't install a card that cannot support IRQ sharing into that slot. Installing such a card may cause either the PCI card or HPT366 not to function properly. In addition, if your operating system does not allow peripheral devices to share IRQs, then you cannot install any PCI card in PCI slot 3.

Also, I noticed that UltraDMA 33 drives won't work with the UltraDMA 66 cable. At least, that was true for the IBM Deskstar 14GXP drive I tested the motherboard with. When I tried to boot the system up with the Deskstar 14GXP hard disk hooked to the HPT366 controller with the UltraDMA 66 cable, the controller completely refuses to initialise the hard disk. But once I hooked the hard disk up using a standard IDE cable, the HPT366 controller immediately detects and initialises it during boot-up. So, if you want to use your UltraDMA 33 hard disk with the HPT366 controller, you will most probably need to use the standard IDE cable.

By the way, you will probably note that the arrangement of the IDE connectors have been changed a little. Compare the picture above with this picture of the BE6's IDE connectors :-

See how the IDE connectors in the BE6-II are now separated instead of clumped together in the BE6. It may seem insignificant but it allows ABIT to cut down a little on PCB costs and allows better access to the IDE connectors.

Stability

I tried the BE6-II with both Win98 and Win2K and it performed beautifully. No stability problems whatsoever, even with an overclocked processor. Since it's only the rev. 1.0 board, it must be due to the increased number of capacitors strategically placed right next to the CPU slot. Check out this picture of the capacitors lining the CPU slot :-

As you can see above, there are eleven 1500 μF and four 1000 μF capacitors lining the side of the CPU slot. The four smaller 1000 μF capacitors are the last four of the line of capacitors directly lining the CPU slot. In the BE6, there are only six 1500 μF capacitors and three 1000 μF capacitors lining the CPU slot. Of course, the number of capacitors isn't the only important factor. The proper placement of those capacitors is equally, if not more, important. That's why the BE6-II has fewer capacitors overall compared to the BE6. This all points to ABIT's smarter use of capacitors in the BE6-II.

All in all, the BE6-II has eleven 1500 μF, eleven 1000 μF and three 100 μF capacitors all over the board. As mentioned earlier, the majority were placed between the CPU slot and the power connector. The rest were placed close to the CPU slot, the DIMM slots and the AGP slot.

DIP Switches

When I first saw the DIP switches, I thought to myself, "Whoa! Blast to the past!". It has become a fad after ABIT introduced SoftMenu for motherboard manufacturers to introduce similar jumperless setup in their motherboards. However, SoftMenu and other such jumperless solutions are double-edged swords. Because they enable even amateur users to tweak the CPU settings, they bring about the specter of higher numbers of unnecessary RMAs due to improper setting of CPU parameters by amateur users.

So, to reduce the possibility of accidental or unauthorized manipulation of CPU settings, ABIT added DIP switches to the BE6-II. Check them out :-

With these DIP switches, a retailer will be able to set the CPU settings without fear of the end-user meddling with SoftMenu and causing the system to fail due to improper settings. This would greatly reduce the amount of RMAs that both the retailer and ABIT would receive and the cost of servicing those RMAs. The same could be said for parents with meddlesome children who just love to see how high the CPU's voltage can go...