The BM6 Up Close

To a large degree, the BM6 greatly resembles Abit's current flagship product, the BH6 Slot-1 motherboard. A standard ATX format board, the BM6 is slightly wider in order to accommodate both the PGA-370 socket as well as the larger Award/Winbond BIOS DIPP. The board's 3 DIMM sockets support the standard 384MB of 3.3v unbuffered SDRAM, either PC66 or PC100 (choose your RAM based on whether you plan to overclock the CPU or not). You'll also find 2 UltraDMA/33 ports to support up to 4 IDE devices, a floppy port, and the customary ATX backplane I/O set, including 2 serial, 1 parallel, 2 USB, and PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports.

At the heart is the Intel 440BX chipset, the standard chipset for Pentium II motherboards. You'll also find the upgrade-friendly 5/2/1 configuration of PCI/ISA slots (5 PCI slots, 2 ISA slots, with 1 PCI and 1 ISA sharing the same space). On-board connectors are supplied for SMI Lead, Power-On, HDD LED, Keylock, Lower LED, Suspend LED, Speaker, and Reset. You'll also find the SB-Link connector, a connector with an interesting history that will never be used. However, the cost for supporting the SB-Link is insignificant, and allows for an additional checkmark in that all-important feature-comparison chart.

Of course, the biggest and best reason for investing in the BM6 is for the overclocking potential. After all, why use a 100Mhz chipset (the 440BX) for a motherboard dedicated CPUs running 66Mhz FSB? Considering Abit's history, it makes sense that the BM6 is to Socket 370 what the BH6 is to Slot 1, quite simply the most advanced and easy-to-use overclocking motherboard on (or about to hit) the market.

While the overclocked stability of the new 400Mhz Celeron chips aren't as well-established as the venerable 300A, the availability of the 300A/333 in Socket-370 format make the BM6 much more attractive. The variability in bus speed makes Abit's new board ideal for crossing your fingers and pushing up the clock on the new 366/400s.