"At a price lower than that of the BM6, the ZM6 can be considered the best overall Socket-370 motherboard thus far"The ZM6 uses Intel's ZX chipset. It uses the 440BX core and is the same exact chipset except for the reduction of one busmastered PCI and the reduction to 4 memory banks as opposed to 8. But as Anand points out, "on a motherboard with the BX chipset, you could theoretically install 8 of the single-sided 64MB DIMMs or 4 of the double-sided 128MB DIMMs. Before you begin bragging about how you can do that on your motherboard, quietly ask yourself if you'll ever need 512MB of RAM." But even if you are worried about the ZM6's memory capacity, you can rest assured as ABIT has put an extra DIMM for a total of 3, allowing different combinations of double and single sided memory to give you the most options. The ZM6 offers many of the newer bus speeds giving users the maximum in flexibility and also supports the 1/4 PCI clock divider with all > 100MHz FSB settings to keep the PCI frequency as close to the specified 33MHz setting as possible. The ZM6 has the newer clock generator as well, which allows for variation of the AGP clock: "The AGP clock is also derived from the FSB frequency, and the ZM6's SoftMenu II does offer the ability to select from a 1:1 or a 2:3 FSB ratio for the derivation of the AGP frequency, keeping the clock as close to the rated 66MHz frequency as possible. Complaining about ABIT not including any other AGP ratios is quite futile as the motherboard has nothing to do with the AGP frequency, which is actually stored in the chipset itself and only selected through the motherboard, leaving the 1:1 and 2:3 ratios as the only two options with the BX chipset." As the ZM6 was designed for a cost efficient entry level board, we have taken pride in our easy to use manual, which Anand describes in the following: "ABIT's highly regarded User's Manual makes its presence felt in the box of the ZM6 giving users a step-by-step installation and a configuration guide for their system. The ABIT manual includes a fairly easy to read and useful explanation of the BIOS and CPU setup, and makes the overall experience with the new ZM6 (especially for first time system builders) a pleasant one." The ZM6 offers a terrific price versus performance edge. "If it weren't for the fact that the ZM6 exhibited top-notch stability (in comparison to other Socket-370 boards), ABIT would have been in a very bad position, with an overclocker's board, yet with nothing to overclock. Luckily, the ZM6 is quite stable, and it's easy to setup nature makes it the ideal Socket-370�K" |
