Motherboards

Abit!

The processor or processors you choose will determine what kind of motherboard you buy. We like the Abit motherboards because they have all the features we want along with the jumperless Soft Menu II for all our overclocking needs.

Single Celeron

With the single Celeron system, we have a choice between Abit's two socket-370 motherboards, the BM6 and the BP6. The BM6 is a good single processor motherboard, but it doesn't have UDMA 66 support or room for another processor. The BP6 has UDMA 66 support and two CPU sockets for a dual configuration. You can also use the BP6 with only one processor and have an open option to upgrade to a dual system.

It sounds like the BP6 is much better than the BM6. Yes, the BP6 is better, but it's also more expensive. The BP6 goes for about $130 while you can find the BM6 for only $90. We'll go with the BM6 as our board for the single Celeron system. UDMA 66 isn't that important; 7200PM drives work almost as well on UDMA 33. Having the ability to upgrade to a dual configuration sounds good, but it's an option many of us will never use. There's a good chance the next upgrade after this Celeron system will involve a switch to a completely different motherboard and processor.

Dual Celeron

We don't have much of choice between dual Celeron motherboards. We could try using a dual Slot-1 board, and use slockets with the Celerons, but that's expensive. That leaves us with the BP6, and that's not a problem with us.

P3-450

We'll need a slot-1 motherboard for our P3-450 processor. We can choose between the BH6, BX6 2.0, and the BE6. Surprisingly, the BH6 is still a favorite here in the FS offices. The new BIOS upgrade brings the BH6's multiplier up to 8 like the other Abit boards. The only advantage the BX6 2.0 has over the BH6 is the extra DIMM slot, memory data buffers and support for 256MB DIMMs. The BE6 is attractive because it has UDMA 66 support.

The BH6 is the cheapest of the three boards pricing in at $85, and many of us still have a BH6 from our Celeron 300A activities. The BX6 2.0 is around $100, and the BE6 can be found for $110. Considering that an UDMA controller card goes for $40-50, the BE6 offers a nice deal, but we don't think UDMA 66 will be necessary for this upgrade. We'll adopt UDMA 66 when Intel releases the 820 chipset. For now, we choose the BH6 for our P3-450 system.

Adding it up

Let's add in the cost of the motherboard for all the systems. The cost of the single Celeron 366 system with BM6 motherboard is $160. The dual Celeron 366 with BP6 comes to $270, and the P3-450 with the BH6 is a flat $300.