ABIT BF6 i440BX Slot-1 ATX

The Bad

Like the vast majority of ABIT motherboards that have found their way into the AnandTech lab, the BF6 wasn't exactly the most stable board. Once again, ABIT comes away with a slightly below average stability rating.

As mentioned above, the ATX power connector is still located behind the Slot-1 connector, which is less than ideal. The ATX power cable will run over both the CPU and memory in most ATX cases, creating quite a bit of cable clutter inside.

The location of the DIP switches is not ideal for changing the CPU configuration after the motherboard is installed in a case. Fortunately, the purpose of the DIP switches is to prevent unauthorized configuration changes, so maybe that's not such a bad thing. For the vast majority of BF6 owners, SoftMenu will be the configuration method of choice, so this is almost a moot point.

The 6th PCI slot is only a slave slot, meaning no bus mastering devices can be used. Once again, this is more of a limitation of the i440BX chipset rather than anything ABIT did wrong. The same goes for the ineffectiveness of FSB settings in the 133+ MHz range due to the lack of a 1/2 AGP ratio.

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: 1 x 64MB Mushkin SEC Original PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man SEC Original PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 128MB Mushkin SEC Original PC133 SDRAM

SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB Mushkin SEC Original PC133 SDRAM

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

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Website: http://www.mushkin.com