ABIT BX6 Revision 2.0 Slot-1 BX

The Bad

The layout of the BX6 Revision 2 does reflect the same poor placement of the ATX power connector as the BH6, which leaves the power connector behind the slot-1 SEC connector, forcing you to extend the power supply cable over the processor in order to plug it in.

ABIT's SEL66/100# configuration option no longer holds the unique value it once held in the market now that Intel has pretty much addressed the oversight that ABIT exploited.  Leaving the SoftMenu II setup without the unique advantage it once held over the competition, with AOpen already offering a jumperless setup on their AX6BC.  The only reason a user would have for opting for the BX6 Revision 2 would be for the ability to adjust the core voltage of their CPU for overclocking purposes, a feature, that to a non-overclocker, can be quite useless.

The stability of the BX6 Revision 2 is on the lower end of the spectrum when compared to the more well rounded solutions, such as AOpen's aforementioned AX6BC.  The board's lack luster stability, a result of a general lack of high quality capacitors near critical components, brings down the overall quality of the board and the purchase value for those users that won't be overclocking to any great degree.  AnandTech's test system crashed an average amount of times during the stability tests, leaving the BX6 Revision 2 on-par with many lower class motherboards in terms of stability and separating it by a great distance from the competing AX6BC.  

In spite of ABIT's efforts to stay competitive, their newly introduced FSB settings are almost entirely useless.  While the competing AX6BC made it up to the 143MHz FSB in AnandTech's tests, an identically configured BX6 Revision 2.0 system had problems booting at frequencies greater than 124MHz.  Attempting to run a system with an AGP card at any speed greater than 124MHz will probably be a problem in any case since most AGP video cards have troubles operating at frequencies derived from such high FSB settings, so the inability for the BX6 Revision 2 to operate reliably at anything above 129MHz should degrade the value of the purchase any unless you will be using a PCI video card (which can run at 129MHz+ * 1/4).

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM (140MHz): LG Semiconductor PC100 SDRAM (7ns)
SDRAM Tested (140MHz): 1 x 64MB LGS PC100 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested (< 140MHz): 1 x 64MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 98 & 3D Winbench 98 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• Quake 2 tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color in Software Rendering Mode