At 124MHz the SCSI controller card and its peripherals performed correctly, even though the 1/3 clock divider at this setting forced the PCI bus to run at 41MHz. Unfortunately, even at the reduced 82MHz AGP speed that the 124MHz FSB setting allowed, the Matrox AGP card still refused to run 3D applications without crashing. It did as it so happens, perform perfectly in all of the 2D and Win95 desktop applications we threw at it, never failing once. Also, the PCI-based X-24 Voodoo2 card from Quantum3D easily ran everything we threw at it game-wise, so it's clear that the 124MHz FSB speed setting can be utilized and experimented with by the majority of BH6 owners.

Most however will find that CAS latency 2 or 8ns or below SDRAM is needed for true stability at either the 124 or 133MHz FSB speed settings, so 133MHz is actually a better choice on the BH6 due to the 1/4 PCI bus speed clock divider that activates only at that speed. We highly recommend The SDRAM to buyers that we tested the BH6 with, it operated flawlessly at all FSB speeds up to 133MHz. The Goldstar part number of the DIMMs we used is listed below, ask for it from your PC vendor if overclocking is your ultimate goal.

Let's sum up the new additions to the BH6 with the most staggering one of all: It's Price.

The current street price on an Abit BH6 is, get ready for this, $110.

That is incredible, a true bargain. Abit attributes the BH6's price reduction versus the earlier BX6 to a number of different factors including the removal of the SDRAM TI Data Buffer which was used to enhance stability when all four DIMM slots were occupied on the BX6. Also, little things like a physical size reduction and the removal of the 4th DIMM slot (the BH6 has 3) added up to a significant savings.

To put this in perspective, a user could go out right now and buy some tasty PC-100 SDRAM for about $150 (64MB), throw it on a $110 Abit BH6, and the result is one of the most powerful foundations for an Intel CPU that has ever existed. Is there any doubt left in anyone's mind about the supremacy of the BH6 within its category? There aren't many left in ours, so let's move on the the benchmarks.

We performed our standard benchmarks on the BH6 and as you would expect, it performed almost identically to it's older brother, the BX6. Here's the exact specifications of the rig we tested on:

• Intel P2-400 CPU
• Abit BH6 440BX Mainboard
• Goldstar 128MB PC-100 SDRAM (Chip Part# GM72V66841CT-7J)
• Matrox Millennium G200 16MB AGP Card
• Quantum X-24 Voodoo2 24MB SLI PCI Card
• Adaptec 2490UW Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller
• IBM Ultrastar 9 7200rpm 8.4GB UWSCSI HD
• Diamond Monster Sound MX200 3D PCI Sound Card
• Plextor SCSI 32X CD-ROM
• Win95 OSR 2.1

Test Conditions and Specifications: All tests were run a total of three times with the results averaged to determine final score. VSYNCH was OFF for all video tests, and SLI was enabled, allowing maximum frame rate performance. The X-24 V2 SLI card was set to a core/memory speed of 100MHz. DX5 and DX6 were used for all tests, and produced no appreciable differences.