ATA-66 & Soft Menu III

ATA-66 onboard

You may have noticed the availability of ATA-66 hard drives this summer. In fact, in its short lifetime the newer interface has already spawned its second generation of drives. With 7200 RPM spindle speeds and 2MB buffers these newer drives can already be found in sizes over 40GB at very affordable prices.

One of the first things you'll notice about the BE6-II are the four IDE connectors! With four connectors, you could theoretically (if you can free up enough IRQ's) install up to eight IDE drives. Since the BE6-II is based on the BX chipset, how is it able to support ATA-66 hard drives? The answer - The HighPoint ATA-66 controller.

Here are the ATA-66 connectors

...And here are the ATA-33 connectors

ATA-66 cont'd

With the addition of the HighPoint controller and its accompanying BIOS, the BE6-II fully supports ATA-66 hard drives. One additional requirement for ATA-66 operation is the use of an 80-conductor cable. Thankfully, Abit included the 80-conductor cable in addition to the traditional 40-conductor cable used on older IDE drives.

Nestled between the DIMM sockets and the Southbridge of the BX chipset, just to the right of the PCI slots is the HighPoint controller chip itself.

The Highpoint controller chip

HighPoint Installation

Once you've got everything setup in the hardware, the next step is to set up everything in the software, particularly the OS. Windows 98 immediately recognizes the HighPoint controller as a "Mass Storage Controller."

Once Windows prompts you, simply install the HighPoint drivers with the included ATA-66 driver disk. Once Windows has installed the drivers, HighPoint installation is complete!

We didn't encounter any problems during the driver installation, Windows 98 SE identified the controller as a SCSI device. While it doesn't offer Ultra SCSI-2 performance we're glad to see such a trouble-free install.

SoftMenu III

Long-time Abit users are well aware of the SoftMenu interface. Each new revision seems to add more features than the last. Having a hard time getting your CPU stable at its default voltage? Simply dial in a higher setting in SoftMenu and reboot! Abit's BE6-II and BF6 are the first Abit products to feature the brand new SoftMenu III interface.

So what new features does SoftMenu III bring to the table? Most notably, ease of use.

While the new interface looks very similar to SoftMenu II, experienced users will quickly recognize the new Help Menu on the left side of the screen. This Help Menu briefly describes the function of the highlighted setting. For some settings, it even gives a recommendation of what value to use. When adjusting certain settings such as the front side bus speed, SoftMenu III automatically adjusts the corresponding settings for the PCI and AGP clock ratios to the optimal speed.

SoftMenu II on the left

SoftMenu III on the right

We love the new SoftMenu III interface. With it, tweaking CPU and motherboard settings becomes easier. If you've been hesitant to adjust BIOS settings in the past, with SoftMenu III you'll find the experience much more enjoyable.

SoftMenu II page for adjusting CPU parameters. Note the missing help menu.

SoftMenu III page for adjusting CPU parameters. With new help menu.

SoftMenu III offers detailed explanations of various settings.