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One of the most surprising stories of the year continues this month as Abit is releasing yet another 440BX based mainboard for consumers to enjoy.

Named the BF6, the new board is intended to replace the aging BH6 mainboard as both a CPU overclocking platform as well as an economical upgrade choice for Abit loyalists who have somehow not yet upgraded to any other new Abit board this year.

Abit has been on a winning streak the past six months as the introduction of their BE6, BE6-II, BP6, and now the BF6 has brought increased exposure as well as sales to the innovative Taiwanese company.

This will likely be Abit's last 440BX mainboard (we keep saying this) as Sharky Extreme has confirmed that Intel as well as certain mainboard vendors will be announcing the release of i820-based products on November 15th, the first day of the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas.

Abit will be one of the first mainboard vendors to jump on the i820 bandwagon and we'll have a review of their new "CX6" RDRAM-powered i820 mainboard soon.

Today however is all about the new BF6, will it wind up being the best 440BX board Abit's ever created?

As previously mentioned, Abit's goal with the BF6 is to replace the most economic mainboard they produce, 1998's BH6.

Towards that goal the BF6 offers some advantages over Abit's higher end BE6 and BE6-II mainboards, including a lower price tag and an additional (sixth) PCI slot.

The BF6 differs from either of the BE6 boards in one major way however, and that is its removal of the High Point Technologies UDMA/66 controller chip. Because of this the BF6 cannot access the fastest mode of newer UDMA/66 supporting hard drives, but it can still use the next best thing, which is UDMA/33.