Manufacturer:Abit Inc.
Board Revision:1.0
Reviewed By:Erik Frechette

After posting my Asus review yesterday, I thought it would be appropriate to share my experiences with the Abit SE6 as well.

Abit and Asus have been battling it out for the enthusiast's precious moolah for quite some time now. The SE6 is Abit's high performance Intel i815E based motherboard. This means that the board's specifications and features are very similar to that found on the CUSL2. The biggest difference being that the SE6 includes an onboard sound processor and MIDI port. SoftMenuII technology is also included, so the tweaker will not have to worry about jumpers or DIP switches.

Specifications: Check the GIF for specs. You'll notice that the board specifications are very close to those of the Asus CUSL2. This is a result of the two boards using the same controller chipset. The Abit does have one more PCI slot than the Asus board and comes with the aforementioned AC97 Audio/MIDI support, but otherwise the boards are very similar.

First Impressions:

The Abit SE6 is another socket based motherboard intended for FC-PGA compatible Intel Pentium!!! and Celeron processors. Like the CUSL2, the SE6 is a board intended for the tweaker and overclocker market. Unlike its Asus competition, the SE6 only supports FSB speeds up to 153MHz. Word around the web suggests that this is a result of a limitation in the their clock generator chipset. Whatever the reason, the Abit does fall some 63MHz short of Asus' top speed.

The board's physical layout is well spaced and fairly easy to work with. Like the CUSL2, the board includes a "greenie" heatsink on the northbridge as well. Abit adheres to high quality standards and it shows in their board's construction and general design. The two boards run neck and neck in terms of layout and finish.

Let's Get on With it Already:

The system as tested:

Pentium!!! 800EB
256MB Micron PC-133 SDRAM
30GB IBM Deskstar, 7200RPM UDMA100 HDD
Shuttle 10X DVD-ROM drive
Yamaha 8424EZ CDR/CDRW drive
Hercules 3D ProphetII GTS 64MB AGP4x
SB Live! Value Soundcard
3COM PCI 10/100 Network Card
Initial BIOS release

Performance between the Abit and Asus when running all defaults was so similar I would chance saying that the two operate identically with untouched BIOS settings. I would again recommend manually disabling the onboard video along with the sound and midi port interfaces in BIOS. Leaving the settings at Auto should be safe for most users, but I believe that stability is ultimately the most important aspect of a good motherboard, especially if you're thinking about overclocking.  It should be noted that Abit is the only mainboard I know of that presently allows the user to manually set the In Order Queue Depth, which may or may not improve video performance(depending on who you ask).

Abit's installation CD contains the Intel INF and ATA driver updates for i815E  chipsets, as well as integrated video, sound and MIDI drivers.  You will also find Adobe Acrobat 4.0 and Hardware Doctor software bundled with the mainboard.  Again, the boards are packaged with virtually identical software bundles.  The SE6's overall performance in its off-the-shelf state was on par with the CUSL2 and I have read very few reports of bugs or problems with the board to date.  When we get to tweaking the system, the similarities start to melt away.  On to overclocking!

AGAIN: READ THE ENTIRE MANUAL BEFORE ANY EXPERIMENTS WITH OVERCLOCKING!

As a reference, the CUSL2 was able to push my 800EB to 966MHz(161MHz FSB), totally stable and at a steady 38C.  The Abit is limited in its ability to overclock the 133MHz FSB, 'B' processors due to its 153MHz cap and its variable speed stepping, which is in three to thirteen MHz increments as opposed to Asus' 1MHz steps.  This does not allow for absolute optimization, but the speeds prove versatile enough for most users and overclocking newbies.  The board did run rock solid at its maximum FSB speed, thus taking my 800EB to 920MHz at 36C.  Both the  Asus and Abit overclocks were run at 1.70V core voltage using a GlobalWIN FOP-32 cooler to dissipate heat off the CPU.  The SE6 allows one to manually set the RAM bus speed to100 or 133MHz, defaulting to 100 at speeds over 140MHz on the FSB.  You can also adjust CAS latency settings for the RAM banks, but there is not an option to reduce the AGP functionality from 4x to 2x, which might cause problems when the FSB speeds start approaching their maximum.  Overall, the board is highly functional and relatively overclock friendly, though the variable speed stepping and lack of AGP reduction capabilities might end up leaving your system with unused potential.

The Verdict:

Like the Asus, running the SE6 at stock speeds and default settings, save for the onboard VGA/sound/MIDI chipset features, made for a very stable environment under WIN98SE and my test game package.  I would have some reservations recommending this board over the Asus, but that is not to say the Abit is not a fine product in its own right, quite the contrary.  If you're more familiar with Abit products or simply prefer the Abit name, you cannot go wrong with this motherboard.  If you're looking for the ultimate in performance and functionality, I think the SE6 falls short of the lofty feature set found on the CUSL2. In the end, the choice is yours, as the two boards are nearly identical in price.