Features

What does Abit have to offer with the VA6? Here's a bit from their product page:

ABIT Computer announces the VA6, supporting all Intel Pentium III/II and Celeron processors with FSB up to 133 MHz using the VIA chipset. The VA6 supports all performance level features such as AGP 1X/2X and three 168-pin DIMM sockets supporting up to 768 MB MAX with ECC and includes an integrated AC'97 Digital Audio controller. The VA6 also features ABIT's SoftMenu II as well as 2x Channels of Bus Master IDE Ports supporting up to four Ultra DMA 33/66 devices. With 4 USB and hardware monitoring capability, the VA6 provides power and features at an affordable price

The key phrase there is "affordable price".  A quick look around the web reveals an average price of about $70 USD or so...

I forgot to take a picture of the board before installing it (I was originally using it to build a PC for a friend), but I did get a pic of it installed in the case.  hardCOREware does NOT steal pics from other sites!

For those of you who are curious; that's a P3 550e on an Iwill Slocket II, and a CLAP GeForce DDR.  As you can see, the VA6 still has more than one ISA slot; why, I do not know.  That leaves us with 5 PCI slots to work with.  The VA6 makes use of the integrated audio codec of the Apollo Pro 133, but did not include an AMR slot.  Does that really matter? Not really; most of us will probably be using either a Vortex 2, or a SB Live!, so it isn't much of an issue to me

The IDE and ATX power supply slots were all nicely placed, and easy to get around, even in the cheap $30 17" case I installed it in.

One thing that really bothered me, though, is the fact that this board ships with only one IDE cable; an ATA/66 (80 conductor) cable! That means you have to find your own cable if you plan on installing a CDROM or anything else.  It did come with a floppy cable.

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