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ABIT SE6 Motherboard


Date
: 10/15/00 – 05:55:35 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Manufactor: Abit

Price: $175

Introduction

I got my hands on the ABIT SE6 just over 2 months ago and I have been

using it since then with several cpu’s. First it ran

a PIII 550E@733MHz, later on I used a Celerimine 566@892MHz on it

and for the last two weeks I have been running a PIII 650E@994MHz (!!)

on this baby.

The Abit SE6 features the new Intel 815E chipset, which was designed by

Intel to replace the good old BX chipset for which we all love Intel (yea right!).

The main features that make this chipset look good are support for

a front side bus of 133MHz, an AGP 1/2 divider and UDMA100 support.

It also comes with onboard sound and video but I don’t like onboard

solutions and I guess I never will …

Why did I go with the SE6 featering the Intel 815E chipset? Well

I really wanted to try this new chipset and secondly my supplier

had this one in stock so I didn’t have to wait :).

Now let’s head over to the actual review so you guys can see how good or how bad

this puppy really is …

The specs for the SE6 …

For those that care, I copiedall the features from Abit and pasted them below.

CPU

1. Intel Pentium III 500~1GHz processor sockets based on 100 & 133MHz FSB

2. Intel Celeron 566~677MHz processor sockets based on 66MHz FSB

3. Reserves support for future Intel Pentium III /Celeron processors

Chipset

1. Intel 815E(ICH2) chipset

2. Supports 66/100/133MHz(Front Side Bus)

3. Supports AGP 1X/2X/4X (Sideband) 1.5/3.3V device.

4. Supports Advanced Configuration and Power Management Interface (ACPI)

5. Supports Ultra ATA/100,Ultra ATA/66,Ultra ATA/33 mode.

Graphics

1. Chipset integrated AGP 2X 3D graphics acceleration.

2. Support AIMM (AGP In-line Memory Module)

Memory

1. Three 168-pin DIMM sockets support SDRAM module

2. Supports up to 512MB MAX. ( 64, 128,256MB SDRAM)

3. Support 100MHz,133MHz SDRAM interface

Audio

1. AC’97 2-channel Audio CODEC on board

2. Audio driver included

System BIOS

1. CPU SOFT MENUTM II technology andDIP switche funtion.

2. Award Plug and Play BIOS supports APM, DMI

3. Write-Protect Anti-Virus function by AWARD BIOS.

Multi I/O Functions

1. 2 channels bus Master IDE Ports supportUltra DMA 33/66/100 (up to 4 devices)

2. PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse Connectors

3. 1 Floppy Port (up to 2.88MB)

4. 1 Parallel Port (EPP/ECP)

5. 2 Serial Ports

6. 2 USB Connectors

7. On board USB header for two extra USB channels

8.1 standard 15 pin VGA connector.

9. Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, and Game Port)

Miscellaneous

1. Support STR(Suspend to DRAM)

2. ATX form factor

3. 1 universal AGP slot, 6 PCI slots and 1 CNR slot

4. Hardware monitoring – Including fan speed, voltages, System environment temperature,and one Thermal header for CPU or other temperature monitoring

5. Keyboard and Mouse Power On

6. Built-in Wake on LAN /Wake on Modem/Open Chassis header

7. Built-in IrDA TX/RX header

8. VL-Bus Supports Flat Panel display or TV out (option)

The board …

The Abit SE6 is no different from other boards Abit designs. It features a good layout, Softmenu II which lets you adjust all functions of this motherboard

from within the bios. This makes overclocking a piece of cake. For those who still want to thincker with jumpers, Abit has included DIP-switches so you can’t

lose a jumper somewhere in you case and adjusting is very easy.

The DIP-switches also let you disable the Softmenu II bios which can be interesting for OEM’s so customers won’t play with things they don’t have knowledge off.

But for us, true overclockers, the softmenu comes in pretty handy :).

Like I said before the board has onboard sound and video so if you want you can easily plug in your speakers and monitor in the back and off you go. Just don’t

expect Geforce graphical power and Soundblaster Live! quality through you speakers. But for business or school use I guess it will do just fine.

Off course Abit included the possibility to check all your voltages and fans for abnomalies or malfunctions, a feature well appreciated by overclockers because we

don’t want our cpu to burn up due to a fan failure or something.

Torture testing the SE6!

System setup

* Abit SE6 with TQ bios

* Intel PIII 650E with Alpha PAL35 cooler and Artic Silver

* 2x64MB PC100 RAM

* Creative Geforce DDR

* IBM 34.5GB harddrive

* Creative Soundblaster Live!

* Windows Millennium

Overclocking the hell out of it …

‘Overclocking is the art of running compontents at a speed higher (as much as possible) then the speed it was sold at’. I found this definition on a site one day (can’t remember which one)

and I really love it! Now let us see how much we can overclock our cpu with this board.

One bad thing about the SE6 has come to my attention when I tried overclocking my cpu. Abit has chosen to implement the Softmenu II instead of the third version into this board, which means

we can not overclock with incredements of 1MHz (fsb speeds off course). Another bad thing that crossed my mind is the limitation of the voltage adjustement. Abit has chosen to only allow

us to up the voltage by +0.25v which means we can not get more then 1.9v of juice to a coppermine PIII. I understand they did this to protect some people against their own stupid actions, but

for overclockers this is somewhat a limitation I believe. I tried to set the voltage to 1.9v and then flash the bios in order to get 1.85v as default voltage so we could go up to 2.05v on the cpu

but unfortunately this old BH6 trick does not work anymore.

To get back to the fsb options … the SE6 gives you a wide range of speeds: 66 / 68 / 70 / 72 / 75 / 77 / 83 / 90 / 100 / 103 / 112 / 115 / 120 / 125 / 128 / 130 / 133 / 137 / 140 / 145 / 150 / 153!

For most users these speeds will be more then enough.

The agp divider is set automatically to 1/2 or 2/3 according to your chosen fsb.

Now what did I achieve with the SE6? My 650E is happily cruising along at 994MHz / 1.85v. Yep that’s right we are using a fsb of 154MHz and stability is perfect! I still need to get my first blue screen.

I even believe that the cpu would go higher if more fsb option would be available. Please note that this cpu would not run at 994MHz on my CUSL2, not even with a core voltage of 1.95v. This is an indication

to me that this board is one very stable beast.

At this speed my ram is running at 154MHz with cas setting 3-3-3. Overall speed is very good and liek I said before stability isn’t an issue.

Now lets see some numbers shall we?

Conclusion

I really like this board and it will remain in my main system for some months to come! Overclocking is really easy and stability is always present. The board has

enough features to please 95% of the buyers and since the price is also good, I am proud to say that this board is a definate winner. IF you are looking for a

good, stable nice 815E based motherboard then the SE6 is what you need.

Good

* Overclocking

* Stable

* Price

Bad

* No Softmenu III

* 1.9v limit for cpu