The Abit BF6 slot 1 440BX mainboard
Friday, September 10, 1999
Introduction
Hot off the assembly line, the all-new Abit BF6 that I've received yesterday was a pleasant surprise. Less than 48 hours after learning of its existence, I was fortunate enough to receive a prototype. With no less than 6 PCI slots, the Abit BF6 tries to bridge the gap between Intel's i820 chipset (slated for release this Fall), and the i440BX which has been left behind by events. Recall that it has been some time since Abit released, in grand ceremony, the BE6 and the BP6 - both decked-out with Highpoint HPT366 hard disk drive controllers with ATA66 support. The BF6 thus is the logic suite of the BE6, while Abit are also introducing a new version of this board named the BE6 revision 2. In this article, we'll focus on the BF6 and what distinguishes it from other motherboards currently on the market.
The Features
Designed, in all likelyhood from the same board used by the BE6, the BF6 that I have in hand is missing the Highpoint HPT366 controller, and does not support the ATA66 standard as we might expect. Instead, the version in front of me resembles more of an evaluation prototype, rather than a final product. However, I would be very surprised if the final version of this board does not incorporate the additional ATA66 hard disk controller, as the emplacement for that piece of hardware is quite evident on the board and the technical specifications clearly mention support for ATA66 hardrives. As things stand, the connectors present are named as IDE3 and IDE4, which corresponds with the ATA33 connectors present on the BE6 motherboard...
Where expansion is concerned, the BF6 motherboard benefits from a 6/1/1 design. This translates into 6 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, and 1 AGP port - as well as 3 168-pin DIMM sockets, for a maximum of 768MB of memory. Note that the PCI slot 3 shares its IRQ with the PCI slot 6 and that the PCI slot 4 shares its IRQ with the PCI slot 5.
As concerns the configuration of the BF6, we were in for a bit of a surprise. First, let's mention that the BF6 uses the new, more flexible 6.0 BIOS Award, which is considerably more elaborate than the familiar v4.51. Elsewhere, an array of DIP switches can be found on the circuit board, as well as the Soft Menu II which is typically associated with Abit. Thus, it seems possible to configure the motherboard by way of two different routes. Again, I believe this particular characteristic will not make it into the board's final incarnation, as configuration can be determined strictly from Soft Menu II. As I've mentioned, one finds on the board no less than 10 DIP switches for choosing clock frequencies, a clock multiplier to apply to the clock frequency (In order to determine the final operating frequency), AGP clock frequency, and for activating Soft Menu II.
As for Soft Menu II, Abit has again reserved for us another big surprise. Not only are frequencies available between 66Mhz and 200Mhz, but they are available in steps of 1Mhz. Thus, a total of 134 different clock frequencies are available in all. Imagine for a minute the latitude that this provides. Its possible, for example, to tweak a system that works great at 115Mhz, but that becomes unstable at 120Mhz, by graduating frequencies in 1Mhz steps at a time - thus finding the highest frequency pushing performance to the absolute limit. Here clearly is the ultimate answer to an Overclockers dreams... Marvelous, isn't it? :)))
As mentioned, other goodies presented to us by Abit are located in Soft Menu II, and I've mentioned:
Adjustment of the clock multiplier from between 2X and 8X in steps of 0.5X
Disabling of the multiplier lock on older processor via the SEL100/66# function
Adjustment of the PCI bus to 1:2, 1:3, or 1:4 of the clock frequency
Adjustment of the AGP port to 1:1, or 2:3 of the clock frequency
Adjustment of the processor's core voltage from 1.3v to 2.1v in steps of 0.05v, and from 2.1v to 3.5v in steps of 0.1v
Adjustment of I/O voltage from between 3.2 and 3.9v in steps of 0.1v
As well, the option of adjusting the latency of the L2 Cache is available, as we found on the BE6, with the possibility of varying the value of this setting from between 1 and 15. At the same time, there is the possibility to use the frequency spectrum modulation in order to avoid electromagnetic interference, as well as the availability of automatic detection of the frequency of busy PCI and memory slots.
Finally, a new feature has arrived, and permits us to set the In-Order Queue Depth to 1 or 8. When this value is set to 1, the processor's pipelining is deactivated, and operations are handled one at a time. In contrast, when this value is set to 8, pipelining is active, and permits the handling of multiple simultaneous operations. "What does all that mean?", you may ask? It's actually quite simple: Henceforth, you have the choice between two alternatives. The first consists of reducing your Overclocking to gain stability in selecting an In-Order Queue Depth of 8 with the pipelining activated. The second alternative consists of deactivating pipelining in choosing a value of 1. In doing so, you reduce the number of operations that may be handled and therefore the processing speed of your CPU, but you can Overclock more aggressively to compensate and get a final gain overcoming the deactivated pipelining. Now, you have in hand another tool in your arsenal in the drive for ultimate CPU performance.
Suite: Additional Functionalities.
