Motherboard and RAM

We used an Abit BP6 motherboard. It's currently the only dual socket-370 motherboard on the market, but the lack of choice didn't bother us -the BP6 is one sweet motherboard.

The motherboard features Abit's famous Soft Menu II, which offers 26 different bus speeds for a variety of overclocking configurations.

66MHz	72MHz	75MHz	78MHz
80Mhz	82MHz	83MHz	84MHz
85MHz	86MHz	87MHz	88MHz
89MHz	90MHz	91MHz	92MHz
93MHz	94MHz	95MHz	96MHz
97MHz	98MHz	99MHz	100MHz
103MHz	104MHz	106MHz	108MHz
110MHz	124MHz	133MHz

Our only complaint is that Abit doesn't offer any frequencies between 110MHz and 124MHz. We can't try any bus speeds between 605MHz and 682MHz. It shouldn't matter because the theoretical maximum speed of the Mendocino core is around 600MHz, but there are reports of people reaching higher speeds with super cooling methods.

The Soft Menu II also allows you to tweak the voltage of both processors separately in case one processor needs a little more juice than the other. The BP6 also has built-in Ultra ATA-66 support that we needed for our 7200RPM ATA/66 Western Digital Expert hard disk.

The BP6 can also function with a single processor for those techies on a budget who want to run SMP, but can only afford one processor. They can still do 550 with the single CPU while they're scrounging up the scratch for the second processor. (Upgrading's an expensive habit, but we just have to get that fix.)

The RAM

We went with a single 128MB 8ns Micron RAM module. It's not quite PC133, but with the -8E speed rating, the memory can run up to 125MHz according to specifications (1000/8 = 125). We'll be able to try several of the bus speeds between 100MHz and 124MHz without worrying about the RAM.