A History Lesson

Abit's motherboards are legendary among overclockers. While their LX6 and IT5H were considered good motherboards for their time, Abit didn't earn its elite status until the release of the original BX6. With the BX chipset, their jumperless SoftMenu II technology, and several bus speeds to choose from, it isn't hard to understand why it was so popular. Later that summer, Abit followed it up with the even better selling BH6. Offering a lower price, the perfect (at that time) 5/2/1 PCI/ISA/AGP combo, and even more bus speeds to choose from, the BH6 was a remarkable success for Abit. Combine the BH6 with Intel's Celeron 300A and you have a combination so popular it's still in use by countless consumers to this day, over a year after it's initial release!

More Abit Products

Abit's successor to the BX6, the BX6 2.0 was another great product from Abit. Fusing the 5/2/1 combination from the BH6, with the 4 DIMM slots of the BX6, and all the bus speeds that you normally expect from an Abit product, and you've got the BX6 2.0. After releasing three great products in a row, many were beginning to wonder if Abit could ever release a substandard motherboard again. This success carried over to their Socket 370 products as well, with their BM6 and BP6 becoming very popular choices for Celeron users.

Unfortunately, their next Slot 1 product, the BE6, left a mixed taste in our mouth. While we liked the ATA-66 support, we didn't see any additional features it added over the BX6 2.0 to make it worth upgrading to. When a company releases so many great products in a row our expectations naturally rise to another level. Perhaps this is a little unfair, as the ATA-66 support was a great addition. But we were anxiously awaiting a motherboard with additional bus speeds.

Enter the BE6-II. Abit's flagship BX-motherboard, the BE6-II adds the additional bus speeds we were hoping to see and maintains ATA-66 compatibility. To be honest, we've been using the BE6-II for some time now, in fact, it's the current testbed we use to test all our components.