Misc: FUGGER beats Fatal1ty @ Computex

FUGER of XS posted some really neat pictures he has taken when he attended Computex 2007. He had a good pics with Fatal1ty and they are really funny.

Source:FUGGER beats Fatal1ty @ Computex

Tech Link (Motherboard): abit AB9 QuadGT

HardOCP has an article posted about Abit*'s motherboard. The QuadGT is not something I can call new, as it's been out in the market for quite some time. Check it out...

Conclusion

Morry's Thoughts:
abit has done it again with the AB9 QuadGT motherboard. They’ve successfully delivered a high performance, high stability solution pushing the technological envelopes as well. The board comes standard with high performance all metal-solid state capacitors, as well as digital power regulation circuitry for the CPU. The board layout and heat pipe design were well thought out as well, with the rear panel CMOS switch, onboard power and reset buttons, and 2-digit diagnostic display as added in gravy.

My only complaint with the board – not being able to make the 500MHz overclock club with it. I tried my best and came as close as possible. However, a 475MHz overclock is in no way anything to be shunned, especially given the fact that that FSB speed forces the CPU to run at almost 2x its rated speed.

What more can I say here? It appears that for all intents and purposes that abit is back ladies and gentlemen, and they are gunning for the top spot as always. The AB9 QuadGT hails to the glory days of abit, and is definitely not a board to be passed up. Give this one a good hard look it you’re looking to upgrade…

Kyle's Thoughts:
abit was the company that got me into the hardware review business so many years ago, so they have always been one of my favorite motherboard builders over the years. That is not to say they did not miss the mark a couple of times in the last decade, but in the recent past they have somewhat fallen off of the enthusiast radar, including my own. With the new Universal abit company formed we were promised motherboards that were engineered like abit motherboards of the past, but until now Universal abit has pulled up short. The AB9 QuadGT is the best true enthusiast motherboard that abit has made in a long time. Hopefully the QuadGT will pave the way for more quality enthusiast motherboards behind it.

The Bottom Line
The abit AB9 QuadGT is a Core 2 Quad ready enthusiast motherboard that is truly worthy of the abit legacy. It has a tremendously stable and solid build and is a motherboard that we would not hesitate to use ourselves. All but the most hardcore overclockers are going to be very satisfied with this motherboard.

Source:abit AB9 QuadGT

Tech Link (Overclock): Intel Core 2 Extreme Edition 2.93GHz@5.1GHz

Thanks for visitors and friends who frequents my Blog site and contributing. I got an email about my Blog post about Abit@CeBit, apparently, not being able to use the phase change cooler for some OC loving due to CeBit not being able to provide enough current (talk about the source of that news, FUDZILLA, that taught me it's another INQ garbage site). Well, according to the interview with hipro5, an uber Intel FanBoy like FUGGER, the problem was the 110v vs 220v. Well, that's just too bad. Anyway, watch the video at Hexus.TV and watch fellow Intel FanBoy show off an awesome 5.1GHz overclock (Hexus titled it 5.4GHz though, ugh).

Source:Tech Link (Overclock): Intel Core 2 Extreme Edition 2.93GHz@5.1GHz

Tech Link (Industry): Cebit could not handle Abit

Woah, funny stuff I got from a friend sending me this info. Apparently, FUGGER's three-stager cooler was shipped over to CEBIT 2007 hall to show how powerful the Abit* boards are, unfortunately, it requires just too much power to run. Talk about xtreem cooling, but they still managed to get a smaller, more electricity-friendly cooler to work. Anyway, the part about the cooler being FUGGER's is still a rumor (Update 3/25/2007: verified it's FUGGER's, link added), and that guy in red is the world famous overclocker and modder hipro5. Check out the full news, expand this Blog post.

CEBIT 2007: Electrical installations too weak
Abit was ready to show the world how good their motherboards can overclock, and they were damn shore that they would succeed. But when you run out of luck, even the best hardware can't help.

A huge three stage custom made gas cooling unit that was brought too cool the CPU. As we were informed, they couldn't even start up the cooler because it started eating more energy than the Cebit hall electrical system could handle.

Well, instead of cooling the CPU, this cooling unit turned into a pretty expensive paperweight.

After a few days, a smaller system was used to demonstrate Abits IN9 32X motherboard power combined with Intel Core 2 Extreme x6800 @ 4813MHz, and CAS3 DDR2 memory. The bus speed was 1750 MHz which looks nice.

Source:Cebit could not handle Abit

Tech Link (Motherboard): abit AB9 QuadGT – Fully fledged P965 motherboard

Tweaktown reviews the relatively new motherboard from Abit*, their AB9 QuadGT. This board got a very good high score from the author and can overclock well too. If you are planning to get this board, check out the review and see if it fits your needs.

Final Thoughts

As far as we are concerned, we believe the guys over at Universal abit are certainly on the comeback trail and they’ll continue to improve if they continue producing motherboards like the QuadGT.

We have so far been provided three successful motherboards from them and one mediocre board, and surprisingly it was the nForce 680i. The big mother of them all that failed the QuadGT, AB9 Pro and the A8N 32X which were all smashing successes, proving ABIT can do it when it has to but they just skipped a couple of important beats with the IN9 32X-MAX Wi-Fi.

When we tested the AB9 Pro, we criticized it for its lack of Crossfire support and extra PCI Express x16 slot. Since the Intel P965 chip was given the Crossfire seal of approval, it seemed a big shame to not put that to use. Finally ABIT has really listened and started to put boards out that people want, not telling people what they want. The latest P965 motherboard from ABIT not only see dual graphics support but further additions such as an extra e.SATA port, better heat pipe cooling, better stability and durability through the use of solid state capacitors and digital PWM and the list goes on.

One thing we must really criticise if the placement of the FDD connector - I mean come on, how hard is it to place it behind the memory sockets, Gigabyte does it, ASUS does it, time to shape up on that one ABIT and get that fixed. Sure, rarely the aging floppy drive is used these days but it does add a slightly sour note to an overall very impressive motherboard.

Overall though the placement of the FDD connector didn’t overshadow the great performance, very impressive features and solid package and we’d be silly not to recommend the ABIT AB9 QuadGT in a very high regard. It’s up there as one of the best Intel P965 motherboards on the market and it’s also cheaper than the Gigabyte DQ6 in Australia by about 15 - 20%.

Source:abit AB9 QuadGT – Fully fledged P965 motherboard

Tech Link (Motherboard): ABIT AW9D-MAX 975X Express Motherboard Review

PCStats has a new motherboard up in their bench table. If you still aren't decided on which board and still hunting for one, then check it out.

After a few years of hardships, ABIT, which is now officially known as Universal ABIT, is recapturing is former glory. The ABIT AW9D-MAX motherboard is based on Intel's top of the line 975X Express and ICH7R chipsets, packs in quite a lot to get excited about. This high end desktop chipset enables the AW9D-MAX to accommodate 533/800/1066MHz FSB Intel socket 775 processors. The four memory slots can be filled with up to 8GB of unbuffered ECC/non-ECC DDR2-800 RAM. Standard equipment on the motherboard includes dual PCI Express based GigABIT network cards, ABIT's AudioMAX High Definition 7.1 channel audio controller, eight 3GB/s SATAII channels, Firewire IEEE 1394a and two additional two port Silicon Image SiI3132 Serial ATA II/RAID controllers. ABIT specific hardware includes microGuru, a port 80 diagnostic card and the SilentOTES thermal system (the collection of passive chipset heatsinks and heat pipes).

Source:ABIT AW9D-MAX 975X Express Motherboard Review

Tech Link (Motherboard): Intel P965: abit AB9 QuadGT

AMDTech got busy and gave their first impression experience with the new motherboard from Abit*. While the board seems to perform, AMDTech are still torn between giving it an uber board or just typical board. Check out their review...

First Impressions

abit has done a wonderful job in the design and inclusion of high quality components on the AB9 QuadGT when compared to the AB9 Pro. The layout, feature set, performance, and BIOS options obviously place this board at or near the top of the Intel P965 product offerings. We really like the board and were impressed with its overall performance. In fact, the board just seems to be light years ahead of the AB9 Pro, but an otherwise excellent design is ruined by an immature BIOS. The issues we discovered during testing make us wonder if the light is on at abit's quality assurance department. We have briefly described some of the problems we faced during testing but there are more.

In our USB testing we found if the BIOS was changed from USB Keyboard or Mouse support via OS to BIOS then Windows XP would refuse to load if it was installed or if we tried a new installation from the CD drive. Additional USB testing revealed that any USB drive attached that is not a bootable device will result in the same behavior with XP not loading.

During storage drive testing we noticed the board would not run our Optical drives in DMA mode and defaulted to PIO mode regardless of how the JMicron controller was setup when utilizing the latest firmware and driver updates on our test image. We had to complete a new XP SP2 install with the JMicron controller setup as a RAID device in the BIOS and load the driver set via the F6 command in order to get DMA support for the Optical drives.

We also noticed IDE support from the JMicron controller was not available if we were using a RAID setup on the Intel ICH8R controller. We have noticed this before on other motherboards utilizing the JMicron chipset. However, this issue has generally been solved so we expect abit to have a solution shortly. For now, we recommend purchasing a SATA DVD drive and turning off the JMicron controller altogether unless you need the e-SATA support.

The JMicron fiascoes have hit every board manufacturer at one time or another and if you want to blame somebody then start at the doorstep of Intel for shipping a chipset without native IDE support before the market was ready for it. Of course, the motherboard suppliers could have opted for the VIA IDE controller that Biostar uses without issue, but then e-SATA or additional SATA port availability would not be on the option list. Considering most people would rather have at least one solid IDE controller rather than a couple more SATA ports that they often won't use, Biostar's decision seems to make the most sense, even if it doesn't look as good on the feature table comparisons.

Our retail sample was also delivered with the incorrect I/O panel shield so it appears to us that somebody was sleeping or watching Oprah during the packaging operation. Besides the issues listed above and the ones mentioned during the article we have to say the worst offense committed by abit is the memory voltage setting issue with the µGuru utility. The inability of the current µGuru application to correctly read and display the memory voltages set in the BIOS could directly lead to product failure as in our example.

Normally, we test each option and software switch and then reboot to ensure the BIOS setting matches the application in use. Unfortunately, after using version three of this application for the past few weeks we trusted it would work correctly. Instead of checking each setting before starting our benchmarks we assumed our memory voltage settings were correct after increasing our voltage slightly during the overclocking stability tests. We will no longer assume that µGuru and the abit BIOS are working in tandem before we start our test sessions. Needless to say, frying memory that costs over twice as much as the motherboard being reviewed was not a pleasant experience.

Overall, our initial experiences with the AB9 QuadGT have led us into a love and hate relationship with the board. We love the layout, performance, stability, and overall quality of the motherboard. This motherboard has tremendous potential and is a board we want to own for a long time. We hate the obviously early release of the product and the issues encountered to date as they should not be occurring. Several of the issues discovered in our initial testing can be blamed on an immature BIOS release and should be solved quickly, but we have to wonder why these issues even exist. It seems as if part of abit did not learn from the AB9 Pro launch while others took those same issues to heart and solved them. This situation reminds us of an old saying, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." After spending a few days with this product we can attest this saying has never been truer.

Source:Intel P965: abit AB9 QuadGT

Tech Link (Motherboard): Four Mainstream Core 2 Motherboards

ExtremeTech reviewed four motherboard that supports Conroe. They aren't targetted necessarily for overclockers, so if you're such type, then you'll skip this one. However, those boards are really nice and if you're not interested about overclocking, then give this one a look. They have an Abit AB9 Pro, Asus P5B-VM, Foxconn P9657AA-8KSH2, and a Gigabyte GA965P-DQ6 on the test bed.

Final Thoughts: Consider What You Need
About the only board in our roundup we'd be hard pressed to recommend is the ABIT AB9 Pro, but that's only because of its weird layout. All of these boards offer solid performance and stability at default settings. The Gigabyte GA-965-DQ6 is a dream power-user board, while the Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H is easy on the wallet. If you're hankering for a compact but full-featured microATX board, then the ASUS P5B-VM is an excellent choice.

Motherboards have come a long way. Buying a name-brand board these days usually means you get a stable, reliable system. If you want to go beyond that, however, you'll have to pay a bit more.

Source:Four Mainstream Core 2 Motherboards

Tech Link (Motherboard): 975X Express Motherboard Round-Up: Foxconn, Abit, and MSI

HotHardware posted a nice round up of motherboards that supports the new Intel processors. If you are looking for one, and can't decide which brand to take, take a gander and decide for yourself.

Performance Summary: All three of the 975X Express-based motherboards we tested performed similarly throughout all of our benchmarks. Overall, the Abit AW9D-MAX came away with the most benchmark victories, but the deltas separating the boards were always quite small. Strictly form a performance standpoint, there isn't much to differentiate the Abit AW9D-MAX, from the Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2, or the MSI 975X Platinum v2. But, there are other things to consider of course.

Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2H: There is a lot to like about Foxconn's 975X7AB-8EKRS2. According to our PriceGrabber price search engine, this motherboard is the least expensive of the three motherboards we looked at here, and could potentially be the least expensive, Core 2 compatible 975X Express-based motherboard available currently. At about $172, the Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKR2S is a relative steal. This motherboard exploits all of the features inherent to the 975X Express (CrossFire, HD Audio, Matrix RAID), and incorporates some innovations like Fox One and a solid state VRM. Performance and stability were both solid throughout our testing, and the board overclocked quite well. If you're in the market for a well appointed 975X Express-based motherboard, you owe it to yourself to check out the Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2H.

Source:975X Express Motherboard Round-Up: Foxconn, Abit, and MSI

Press Release: abit introduces the AB9 QuadGT Motherboard

Seems like abit* is going against the big, bad, Asus* when it comes to releasing uber boards. Of course, nVidia* has their own, but nothing beats Intel on Intel! Check out the latest news from abit*.

The new board comes with a digital PWM, all-solid state capacitor, and external CMOS reset switch. I think when it comes to coolness, Asus*' Commando would have taken the crown easy. Besides, Asus* touted their OCability, abit* is yet to show theirs. But nonetheless, if it is a lot cheaper than Asus' version, I'll go with this board anytime. Expand for more....

January 2, 2007 - abit today announced their latest Intel® P965 chipset based motherboard for Core™2 Quad/Duo processors, the abit AB9 QuadGT. This motherboard has been specifically engineered for and around LGA775 quad-core CPUs with up to 1066 MHz FSB. It is equipped with abit's powerful µGuru™ technology for extensive hardware monitoring and control. The extreme tuning and overclocking capabilities of this exclusively abit engineered microchip stands unsurpassed in the industry. With the New Year, abit also ushers in an entirely new generation of extreme computing.

Cool, Stable, Efficient and Extreme
The AB9 QuadGT is geared towards extreme performance. Accompanying the native support for Intel's latest quad-core and Extreme Edition CPUs, abit took measures for an even higher performance potential to be explored by the users themselves. A 6-layer board layout equipped with 100% Japanese made solid state capacitors and ceramic digital PWMs warrant the best electrical characteristics under the most stable currents. abit's patented Silent OTES™ convection heat-pipe design keeps the Northbridge as well as the digital PWMs efficiently cool. These abit engineered features prolong your the life of your motherboard product and dramatically increase durability by protecting vital components from strenuous thermal and electrical stress.

Games, Multimedia and Full Action

The AB9 QuadGT motherboard does not only have extreme power under the hood, it is also ready for full on gaming and multimedia action. Two X16 PCIe slots offer a wide range of multiple graphics options. Despite one of the X16 PCIe slots only supporting PCIe X4 bandwidth, it still caters adequately to most of today's graphics needs, including CrossFire operation. Alternatively you can also use this slot for other PCIe cards such as LAN, RAID, TV or audio add-on cards. A simple and flexible solution that serves almost any high-speed expansion demands. The 3-pin HDMI header connects with HDMI ready graphics cards, offering crisp HD audio.

6 internal SATA 3Gb/s and 2 eSATA connectors for the fastest hard drives on the market form the basis for more than sufficient storage capacity, while the single Ultra DMA 133/100/66/33 IDE connector provides the option to keep your older optical drives and HDDs running.

Source:abit introduces the AB9 QuadGT Motherboard

Tech Link (Motherboard): Abit 975 board takes on two Asus contenders

If it's not for a friend and Abit, I wouldn't have posted this article. So anyway, INQ posted a "First Impression" look at Abit's greatest offering. It may not be the latest, but currently, it is the greatest. Be careful reading it though and try to develop a skill that will help you isolate the FUD from FACT when you are wading thru that freaky review. If you are ready, then take the plunge.

In Short
Abit made a great overclocker's motherboard. It has all the features that one would like and it is the 975X board that will run two ATI cards. We wonder if it will run two R600s but this will be the big question for 2007.

The board has a nice layout, illuminates the room with its LEDs, heat-piped chipsets and it make memory faster than any other 975 board we seen so far. It is great and it goes neck-to-neck with Asus' P5W DH Deluxe. It costs around €190 in Euroland depending on the country.

It is one of the best 975X boards we've come across. It is stable and worth the money but you can also consider Asus very good alternative. For dessert, we tried cableless Crossfire and have an answer to some of your questions on X1950PRO cards, we will try to tell you that story in 2007. µ

Source:Abit 975 board takes on two Asus contenders

Tech Link (Industry): abit Xtreme OC Workshop-Update

The era of enthusiasts has really come of age. Overclockers, unite and rule the world, err, well, something to that effect. abit has just completed an event that takes the cake with Kentsfield overclocking, reaching the highest clock frequency known to man.

I snag some pictures over at INQ, and posted it here so you can also check out the nice images aside from those posted at the official abit site. The parts that helped reached this amazing overclock is, of course, Intel® Core™2 QX6700 Extreme Processor, Abit AW9D-MAX motherboard, and a Kingston DDR2-1200. Philly-boy and FUGGER were given the challenge, and they accept and beat it with flying colors.

Click these for more pictures:
Is that the cooler?
Just can't get enough of LN2
Philly-box (left) and FUGGER (right) chillin' out
Cooling attached and ready to roll
Wheee, let's get it on.

DECEMBER 15, 2006 – Xtremelegends Philly-boy and FUGGER attained unprecedented success at the abit OC Xtreme workshop. It began as a slow day, working up to some speed. With various obstacles such as the LN2 being late we began with using a 3-stage compressor cooler. Initially we ran with a normal QE6700 Kentsfield “Core 2 Quad” processor pushing up the multiplier further and further. Clocking it up to 12x, then 14x. The results then improved drastically especially after the liquid nitrogen arrived, until late in the day some worthwhile figures came about.

The final result obtained was the highest Overclock of the Kentsfield on an AW9D-MAX to date. This remarkable achievement gives abit the OC World Record for a Kentsfield QE6700. The 5010.03 MHz seen on the CPU is literally a 100% Overclock. In this, the AW9D-MAX does not disappoint. Any board that can give you that kind of stability is certainly worth owning. Of course this record is not expected to last long, as enthusiasts will continue to strive and push the boundaries further. We managed a stable Super-pi of 10.5sec for 1M at 4918.7MHz. the multiplier manually set at 18x for a chip which is usually automated at 10x.

Several unusual benchmarks were also computed. The team was guided by a renowned expert in the shady sides of internet security. One thing of note was that with a special utility programmed onto our super overclocked monster, we were able to run a benchmark using the AES 128 bit encryption algorithm.(this is the standard used by many banks and secure websites around the world according to our specialist). It seems as if things are not as safe as we are led to believe. The brute force of our overclocked beast enabled roughly 10.5 million times cbc’s on 64 size blocks in 3.81 seconds. What that means to the layman is that in every four seconds, this computer could provide 10.5 million unique codes to attempt to crack a 128 bit encryption code sequence. In essence, if the decryption software is very good, then this OC beast computer could crack your (128 bit encryption) code in a matter of hours at the most... Before you spring into an uproar, please bear in mind that not everyone has liquid Nitrogen as a coolant, nor the assistance of the World’s best overclockers at hand. Then to make matters more complicated, you would need to have the VERY complex software to achieve this goal. But if you did, cracking codes would be a breeze.

Special thanks must go out to Intel who co-sponsored the event: Intel has stood by abit strongly, helping us promote their flagship chipset and CPU, while giving abit the necessary collateral to make the event happen.
Special kudos’ go out to Kingston who supplied some of their latest high speed 1200MHz Ram. In Addition, Xtremesystems.org rallied some of their finest in abit’s hour of need and many thanks for stepping up to workshop with us.

The support is highly appreciated as our search for the perfect Overclock goes on…

abit is continually committed to make hardware designed to keep guys who demand the best completely happy. Our μGuru BIOS is second to none in the industry, giving holistic and immersive features for tweaking and fine tuning motherboards to obtain the perfect Overclock. abit is taking the lead and is surging forward embracing the principles of overclocking, taking it further than ever before. At this event abit used a special edition modded board from HIPRO the ultimate overclocker of them all. OC expertise came from FUGGER & Philly-boy, both from Xtremesystems.org. All in all an excellent combination to take the MAX board to the MAX with Intel and beyond**.

**Please note we do not recommend overclocking as it may harm your motherboard and other hardware, in this case we are dealing with experimental circumstances and so please do not attempt this at home nor anywhere else. In fact it should be noted that if you Overclock your hardware, it voids your warrantee. Only those qualified should ever attempt to push hardware to the extremes that were achieved at this event.

For more information on abit, go here:
www.abit-usa.com

For more information on Xtremesystems, go here:
www.xtremesystems.com

Source:abit Xtreme OC Workshop-Update

Tech Link (Motherboard): abit AW9D-MAX i975 Express Motherboard Review

I highly agree with the author over at LegitReviews about their impression on this board. It has pushed my Conroe Extreme up high there in the clouds, along with the angels and cupids, err, I mean, you get the idea. But be forewarned though, this isn't engineered for QuadCore, at least, not at the current official bios release. Here's the snippet, and you can check out their site for more....

The abit AW9D-MAX motherboard is one of the best Intel 965P/975X motherboard that I have used to date. It's actually refreshing using a motherboard like the abit AW9D-MAX because everything just works out of the box. The NVIDIA 680i chipset has gotten a ton of attention in recent weeks, but at the same time it launched with numerous bugs that are just now starting to be taken care of via BIOS updates. The Intel 975 Express chipset has been on the market for over a year and has 99% of the bugs worked out, which is nice for those of us that want to set up their system with a stable overclock and be done.

Source:abit AW9D-MAX i975 Express Motherboard Review

Tech Link (Motherboard): abit IL9 Pro Motherboard Review

If you are looking for an affordable motherboard, that supports the latest Conroe processor, and supports Crossfire, well, look no further because a nice board is available from Abit. Not the latest chipset, but this i945-based board makes it also cheaper than other boards that supports Conroe. If you are looking for one, motherboards.org reviews one and you may want to consider this board as your next board.

Intel generally releases two new motherboard chipsets a year, a high-end one and a mainstream one. In 2004, when Intel released the 925X high-end chipset, they also released the 915 mainstream. 2005 saw the release of the 975 chipset for the high-end and the 945 chipset for the mainstream. This year the 965 chipset was released but the 945P chipset remains for the mainstream inexpensive market. The board on the test bench today is the abit IL9 Pro board they recently announced.

Source:abit IL9 Pro Motherboard Review

Tech Link (Motherboard): Abit AW9D-Max on Vapochill LS

Uber owner, FUGGER of XS has geared up an Abit board under some pure fun run of Vapochill LS. The board proved to meet FUGGER's expectations and gave it a really high score of 9.5!!! I am itching to get my hands on this board, mine is due to arrive in about two to three week's time. Expand to check out FUGGER's thoughts on the board...

Final words:

There is no power restart issues like those found on the Asus line of boards and I only had done the cmos reset once by choice. The system will reset after failed overclock correctly making life much easier when testing.

It would be safe to reccomend this board for both benching and gaming. Stability is one of this boards stong points. Knowing the board hits so high on 1066 strap makes this board very strong in bandwidth at top speed. If it had the 1333 strap I am sure this board could huge bus speeds like those found on other boards.

The other problem is my top multiple is 11x with the x6800 on the beta bios, not the big of a problem as I use 10x now.

Abit needs to include the fans with the Max boards, not sure why that was overlooked. Despite that oversight I still give this board 9.5 score. Taking points off for small bios problems and the lack of fans in the Max package.

After gaming on this board for a few weeks it has proven itself for stability. My NB gets very hot but not unstable if dont have a fan on it.

Source:Abit AW9D-Max on Vapochill LS

Tech Link (Motherboard): ABIT AW9D-MAX

VR-Zone's newest editor, Steeldogs, seems very impressed with Abit's* top dog motherboard for Chipzilla CPUs. I love this board too, if only it comes short with PCIe slots. I would have love to see this have three(3)+ PCIe slots! Expand to read the conclusion...

Conclusion

My over all experience with the abit AW9D-MAX is nothing short of excellent. From setup to benchmarking the AW9D-MAX performed flawlessly. Out of the box performance while based on related hardware shows the performance and stability of this product. Granted I didnt do much tweaking with the ram settings other than just allowing the system to default to specifications, but the fact we have such great scores combined with rock solid stability proves once again abit is moving in the right direction and doing so with a vengence.

With some extra cooling and tweaking this board can and will push our E6700 2.66GHz CPU to well over 3.6GHz giving us a full GHz or better of over-clocking potential. This is amazing headroom to say the least. abit has hit a home run in the world series of motherboard products and the AW9D-MAX makes this possible. abit has been a major player for many years and with products like the AW9D-MAX, is a testiment to abit's commitment to excellence by offering milestone products, giving the consumer a high end solution and features, combined with the best product support by trained professionals, makes abit a leader in there domain.

Source:ABIT AW9D-MAX

Tech Link (Motherboard): Abit AW9D-MAX: Overclocking

I know, I have posted a motherboard article based on this motherboard already, but hey, what can I say, this is just a FanBoy site so check it out at your leasure. Besides, this isn't THG or AMDTech, this home of the best overclocker NordicHardware. Expand for more...

Intel has for the last 12 months released two different setups of motherboard circuits for the performance segment which have introduced certain complications for motherboard manufacturers. i955X was Intel's first chipset with support for processors with dual cores, while the Pentium D processors of the 900 series which arrived at the end of last year required the updated chipset, i975X. To top it all off it turned out that these motherboards would not support Intel's upcoming Core processors. They needed a minimal modifications of the voltage regulation, but alas an essential such. Abit, together with several other motherboard manufacturers, got stuck in between revisions and uncertainties up until a few months ago when the final chipset specifications arrived. These months of hard work has resulted in Abit's new AW9D and the "MAX" version AW9D-MAX.

Source:Abit AW9D-MAX: Overclocking

Tech Link (Motherboard): Abit AW9D-MAX: When "Beta" MAX is a good thing

So AMDTech posted an article about a new motherboard from Abit* and they seemed pretty impressed. Check it out, expand for more...

Our preview of the Abit AW9D-MAX now shows a motherboard capable of living up to its heritage. In fact, this is probably the best performing Abit board we have tested since the IC7-MAX3 board that was one of our all time favorite Intel 875 boards. While we noticed a few minor issues with the BIOS during a rigorous test schedule, we have to state once again that the overall performance of the board is extremely impressive at this time. However, our enthusiasm is curtailed by the layout and expansion options on the board. While the minimalist and almost legacy free nature of the board may appeal to some, we found the lack of useable PCI slots to be a major drawback during operation with this board. We did come to accept this limitation as we found the on-board audio solution to be very good for most purposes and accepted the fact that this board would probably not be used in a home theater setup. That still does not excuse Abit for not including more PCI slots or at least changing the location of the single slot provided.

Source:Abit AW9D-MAX: When "Beta" MAX is a good thing

Press Release: abit launches AW9D Series

abit, a world-reknowned motherboard manufacturer seems to have regained their strength and joined the slew of motherboard supporting the new Chipzilla processors. They are really focusing on developing an overclocking board, and they are touting it at this press release. I am getting my hands on it in about a month's time or so my contact said.

August 16 th , 2006 – Today Universal abit launched their much anticipated AW9D and AW9D-MAX motherboards based on the Intel 975X chipset. There has been much anticipation in the industry for this series and as far as looks go, these boards are built to please. The benchmarking has been exceptional in typical abit style and our tweakability and overclocking features have exceeded even our own expectations:

Mark, a bright new star in the abit engineering department, says: "I really like abit's µ Guru overclocking features on this board and playing with the engineering samples I've managed to OC to 470 FSB using a 6800XE Core™ 2 Duo. The BIOS has plenty of options for adjusting FSB, tweaking voltages and controlling stability. It's truly an amazing overclocking motherboard ... I love it!"

Source:abit launches AW9D Series

Tech Link (Motherboard): Abit AB9 Pro: A sneak peak at Intel's new P965 chipset

AMDTech had some quality time spent on the newest Abit* motherboard based on the soon-to-be-publick i965 chipset. The motherboard offers great features, and looks great too. I always loved Abit* products, so I am hoping that when the full blown review comes out, that it'll show its true powers. Expand for more.

As we mentioned in our Computex 2006 coverage, the rejuvenation of Abit was one of the more welcome surprises of the show. Abit was the top manufacturer of enthusiast level boards just a few short years ago and catered almost exclusively to the overclocking community. However, Abit found itself in serious trouble over the past couple of years as its product portfolio expanded to include video cards and a wide range of motherboards from the low end value segment to the upper end enthusiast sector. In essence, Abit tried to expand into areas where it did not have the manufacturing expertise or cost advantages to compete with the larger tier one manufacturers. As a result, Abit lost focus on its core competence, the enthusiast and overclocking market, and allowed DFI to become the number one brand name in an area where users are highly passionate about their products.

Source:AMDTech