Friday, July 23, 1999

The performance tests results

All tests were all performed under Windows98.

The system setup was as following:

Motherboard: Abit BE6
CPU: Intel Pentium II 350mhz
Memory: 64mb PC100 SDram (LGS)
IDE first channel Primary port: Western Digital 4.3gig UDMA66
IDE second channel Primary port: Kenwood 52X True X
AGP slot: ATI Rage Fury 128GL
ISA slot number 2: Ensoniq Soundscape soundcard
ISA slot number 1: US Robotic 56k X2 modem
OS: Win98 4.10
DirectX 6.1

Winbench 99 CPUmark

Lagging only by one tenth of a point behind the leader of this test, we can't say that the BE6 is not a super performer on this test, isn't it...

Winstone 99

Head to head with the BX6 revision 2.0, the BE6 is proving that is has been built for performance...

Video sub-system tests

Once again, the BE6 is at the top of the pack with its excellent video sub-system performances.

On this series of tests, the processor has been Overclocked between 392Mhz and 412Mhz depending of the motherboard. In this case, the Abit BE6 has been clocked at 105Mhz with a multiplier of 4X but while the resulting operating speed should have been 420Mhz, it only indicated 400Mhz. I don't have the slightest idea of this weird frequency indication and as I didn't really had the time to investigate it. So, I considered that the processor was actually working at 400Mhz as indicated instead of the 420Mhz as it should have...

Hard disk drive sub-system tests

Because the Western Digital WDC AC14300 4.3Gig ATA66 hard disk drive couldn't be recognized has an ATA66 device, I had to replace it with a Quantum Fireball KA 9.1Gig ATA66 hard disk drive in order to test the onboard ATA66 hard disk drive controller of the Abit BE6 motherboard. However, for some reasons I don't understand, it appears that this controller would be slower than the standard ATA33 hard disk drive controller has indicated by the tests results I had. While the Winbench99 disk tests were indicating a slight performance increase for the ATA66 HDD controller, all the other benchmark indicated no gain or even worst a data throughput performance decrease. Has a fact, the only thing that was really going faster when using the ATA66 controller of the BE6 is the Data Burst Read as we can see on the HDTach test results. The most intriguing thing is that some Benchmarks like Threadmark and Sandra are indicating a huge performance decrease while using the onboard ATA66 controller comparatively to the performances obtained with the standard 440BX ATA33 hard disk drive controller. Is it because these benchmarks are unable to correctly read the date ou of this controller? It might be, who knows...

The below evaluation table is showing the strong points and the weak points of the tested motherboard. No need to remember to you that we never buy a motherboard only for its performances. Most of today's motherboards are exhibiting performances very close to each others, so, we need additional information in order to help us distinguish what are the real advantages of a motherboard compared to the others and this is exactly where is coming into help this evaluation table.

The score obtained by this motherboard is 97 points out of 100 points. Pretty close to a perfect note, the Abit BE6 motherboard is a top grade motherboard for sure. Honestly, there are not much reproaches one can do to such a good product...

The weak points

The weak points of this motherboard are: in my opinion, rather undersized filtration capacitors and the availability of only 3 memory sockets are the only big reproaches that we can do about this motherboard. The latest weak point is about the poor placement of th ATX power connector. In my opinion, it would have been much better if it would have been located somewhere on the top edge of the circuit board where the power cable would not have obstructed the CPU cartridge.

The strong points

The strong points of the Abit BE6 are: its top notch performances, its excellent Overclockability, its very good expendability and the originality of its design by including an onboard ATA66 controller.

Conclusions

The Abit BE6 is really a superb motherboard. Abit not only did a very good job when they designed this motherboard but as a fact they surpassed themselves. The idea to add an onboard ATA66 hard disk drive controller is very brilliant as it gives a very good option to those waiting for the upcoming Intel Camino chipset. Besides, it adds 4 more hard disk drives to the system and to my knowledge it's the only BX board to do it. In my opinion, the Abit BE6 is probably the best surprise of the first 6 months of 1999.

For any additional information, please visit Abit's web site.

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