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Originally published at Internet.com 
Abit has long been heralded as the company that keeps overclockers' wishes at the forefront. From popularizing the Soft Menu to adding bus speeds galore and other features, they've shown they want to be considered the user's choice. With their very newest offering, the ZM6, they are trying to capture the low-end market without sacrificing features. Here's how they did. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Features
CPUs Supported Socket370 Celeron 300-433 MHz and beyond Top MHz supported: 1064 MHz (8*133) Clock Multipliers 2 to 8 (.5 increments) Bus Speeds 66, 75, 83.3, 100, 103, 105, 112, 120, 124, 133 MHz CPU voltage settings 1.30-2.1v (.5v increments), 2.2v, 2.3v System Memory Three 168-pin DIMM sockets supporting SDRAM, 256 MB max. (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 MB) Expansion Slots 1 AGP 2x, 5 PCI, 2 ISA (all full-length) Internal/External I/O * Floppy port supports up to 2.88MB and mode 3 floppies * Ultra DMA/33 IDE supports up to 4 devices (Including LS-120) * Two USB connectors * Two 16550 fast UART serial ports * Built-in Standard/ECP/EPP parallel port * PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors * IrDA Infrared port header (not external) * Wake-On-LAN header * Wake-On-Ring header * SB-Link Header Form Factor ATX Miscellaneous * Intel 440ZX chipset * CPU SOFT MENU II * Award BIOS * Supports ACPI and Soft-OFF functions * Motherboard temp, CPU temp, system and CPU fan speed, and voltages monitoring * Keyboard and Mouse wake-up * Y2k compliant Boot Options A, C, SCSI C, A, SCSI C, CD-ROM, A CD-ROM, C, A D, A, SCSI (At least 2 IDE HDD can be used) E, A, SCSI (At least 2 IDE HDD can be used) F, A, SCSI (At least 2 IDE HDD can be used) SCSI, A, C SCSI, C, A
Summary ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Price Street $90 (????) (guess)
+ Stability & Compatibility Feature Variety CPU/System temp. Voltage Control - FSB <100 MHz Little voltage selection
Overall Great Socket370 board. Should be cheap and definitely the option for low-end overclockers. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Setup as tested: Celeron 400 64MB PC100 SDRAM Diamond Monster Fusion 16MB AGP 13GB WD Caviar 13100 8x CD-ROM 14" Acer AcerView 11D
Socket370 and ZX
Last year, Intel announced the Celeron, a scaled down version of the Pentium II. A few months later, they announced the Socket370, a 370-pin socket designed for low-cost computers based around the Celeron family of CPUs. At the same time as the Celeron announcement, they announced the EX chipset which was basically a scaled down version of the LX chipset. That chipset was never a big seller simply because the LX chipset was already out of date when the EX was released so manufacturers just used that for the Celerons.
However, with the BX still with us, Intel has needed an excuse to make the chipset for the Celeron better, but cheap. They took the BX chipset, still one of the best for any kind of board, removed a few features most users don't need, which also allows for a lower price point, and created the ZX chipset. Those features which were changed are: * 256MB RAM supported (2 Double-sided DIMMs) vs. 1GB of RAM for the BX. (Although unofficailly according to Abit, they were able to get two 256MB modules working for 512MB total RAM). * 4 PCI slots can be bus-mastered vs. 5 for the BX. Many PCI peripherals require bus master slots, but some VGA and LAN cards as well as the Voodoo series of 3D cards don't require bus mastering.
For the most part, neither of these should be a problem. If you have 5 PCI cards, one or two of them is likely to be a Voodoo2 or possibly the right kind of LAN card so you wouldn't be affected.
So what came with it?
The unit I recieved
Installation
I had no problems with the installation. Even though the Socket370 has more pins than a Socket7, a Socket7 CPU fan will work fine. I just used one I had lying around from a K6-2 purchase. I didn't find it to have any conflicts with any hardware either. For this install, I decided to do a clean install of Win98. So once I got the hardware connected, I booted to a floppy and installed Win98, the ZD WinBench and Winstone 99 benchmarks, and QuakeII. The entire install went without a hitch.
I used a Diamond Monster Fusion card simply because it's one of the cheapest good 2D/3D cards. If you are planning on building a system with this kind of setup, you probably are in it to save cost which is a strong argument for using the Banshee. I found that I got about 35 fps on massive1 at 800x600 using the Banshee at 450 (6*75). This is statistically indistinguishable from the results on my Celeron 450 (4.5*100)/BH6 combo.
Stability and Overclockability
The Celeron 400 was totally stable at 400 MHz. Never a crash. I went ahead and pushed it up to 450 MHz (6*75) at the default voltage. This is actually the speed I did all my testing on. Winstone 99 ran 18 straight hours with one crash at the end (when I was exiting it). QuakeII ran in demo mode for 36 hours and never crashed. The system was completely stable. After this, I tried for 500 MHz (6*83) at the default voltage. The system POSTed fine, but at the beginning of the Win98 startup, the splash screen froze. I tried it with the voltage up to 2.3v, but had exactly the same results. Perhaps if I had a bit better cooling, I could get it up there, but with what I used (2 1/2" heatsink, large fan), 450MHz was all I could get. It's likely that most Celeron 400s will hit 450 MHz pretty easily, but it'll take some serious cooling or serious luck to hit 500MHz.
One very nice thing was that Abit added support for full IRQ control of the first 4 PCI slots just as in the BX6 II, however, because the last PCI slot, the one that's shared, cannot be bus mastered, there is no such control for it. The IRQs allowed to be selected are 3 through 15.
Good Stuff
Very good stability, great compatibility. Excellent layout for what should be a low-cost board; the 1/5/2 layout is still my favorite. Abit did well to add an extra DIMM slot and PCI slot even though not they aren't fullly supported by the chipset. It's great to see that they have a full list of monitoring functions including system temperature, fan speeds, voltages, and even the CPU temperature. The ZX chipset shouldn't detract for most users, but should be welcomed because of good stability, compatibility, and should lower motherboard costs.
Also, Abit didn't slack and pull some of the voltages, but left all the same options as in their other boards 1.3-2.3v selectable through the Soft-Menu (which still rocks... you never want to go back to jumpers).
Bad Stuff
It's rare that a big mix of bus speeds is listed as bad, but what Socket370 CPU (C300A withstanding) will be able to use the 105MHz or higher range? It's possible that once 100MHz FSB Celerons are released very late this year or early next year that those speeds will do some good, but for the present and near future, they do very little good. It would have been much nicer to have one or more options between 75MHz and 100MHz other than 83MHz.
Of course, there's also the same problem as with any Socket370 board - upgradeable only with Celerons. There will likely never be an actual Pentium II or any competitor on the Socket370 board.
Conclusion
I am impressed with the board. A lot of features, and great stability on an entirely neew chipset. Depending on the price, this is the board I recommend. I actually found myself getting on it because it didn't really have anything new, but when I realized that it had nearly all the features of the BX6 II, but would probably cost 30-40 dollars less, I was amazed. There's really nothing new here, but you could save a bundle by choosing this and a socketed Celeron. I recommend this over the BX version because very few people will miss the higher limits set by the BX chipset and it should be quite a bit cheaper. If you have to go this route, this is the board for you, assuming a competitve price, which is supposed to be one of the ZM6's main selling points. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Author: Joel Kleppinger
Read article at Internet.com site