Physically, the BE6-II does not differentiate too much of the original BE6:

BE6

BE6-II

Since we see, the most significant thing the disappearance of a groove is ISA; now we have 5 PCI and 1 ISA instead of 5 PCI and 2 ISA. In my opinion it is not a loss that imports the most minimal thing, since the groove that we lose was the shared PCI/ISA (that is to say, that in this area could not use two together cards, but only one PCI or an ISA) and also nowadays QUITE (modems, cards of sound, of network...) it comes in format PCI, to have only 1 groove ISA should not be a problem.

Curiously, we see that there exists a space saved for a sixth groove PCI, since the design of the circuits is common to the ABIT BF6, identical to the BE6-II except for having 6 PCI and not to have UltraDMA66.

Another thing that attracts attention is the presence of a battery of switches DIP in the right top corner, which serve to form the mike. He does not seem to have greatly sense in a badge that also allows to do it marvelously by means of the BIOS, but there they are...

Otherwise, the badge is now a narrower pinch, what will do the easiest life to us if our box is not very loose and our a little long CD - ROM; 4 connectors for hard disk are slightly more separated; and the position of the electrical connector has risen a little, which also can be considered to be a small advantage.

But everything previous there are only minimal changes, which they justify neither for good nor for badly the achievement of the second version of which it was already a good motherboard. What it differentiates to the BE6 of the BE6-II is his incredible overclocking capacity by means of Soft-Menu III.

If in the BE6 we had already 15 available bus speeds (almost not at all...), in the BE6-II we meet more than 100 available speeds of bus: 66, 75 and 83 MHz, and also: support ALL the possible ones between 84 and 200 MHz in increases of 1 MHz (84, 85, 86...)! The sleep of every overclockeador...

To be able to enjoy all these options, the configuration must be done in the BIOS; the switches DIP "only" admit 8 speeds of bus, the most normal. The BIOS of the BE6-II is one of the most recent of Award, with a help window permanently to the right, longer menus and desplegables (for example, the triangle that the hard disk options have in the image indicates that a menu exists to form them, to that one gains access touching "Enter").

In the BIOS we find SoftMenu III (the part software of the overclocking of the BE6-II), which includes its own marvels; now we can:

• to raise the voltage I/O, for overclockear the memory, the chipset and the AGP (that is to say, the badge in itself; it turns out to be something radical and dangerous, but it can help to the stability of a strong overclocking);
• to change the configuration of the secondary cache memory or L2. For example, if we lower his latency, it will go more rapid but it will be less stable; if we raise it it will favor the overclocking capacity.