Socket 939 Roundup: Battle at the Top
by Wesley Fink on July 30, 2004 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Abit AV8: Features and Layout
| Abit AV8 Motherboard Specifications | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | VIA K8T800 PRO/VT8237 |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 336MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| CPU Ratios | 4x - 25x in 1x increments |
| PCI/AGP Speeds | CPU:AGP:PCI - Fixed, 6:2:1, 7:2:1, 8:2:1 |
| HyperTransport | Auto, 200MHz to 1GHz (1x-5x) |
| Core Voltage | 1.50V to 1.85V in 0.025V increments |
| DRAM Voltage | 2.50V to 2.8V in 0.05V increments |
| AGP Voltage | 1.50V - 1.65V in 0.05V increments |
| NB (Northbridge) Voltage | 1.50V - 1.65V in 0.05V increments |
| SB (Southbridge) Voltage | 2.50V - 2.65V in 0.05V increments |
| HT (HyperTransport) Voltage | 1.20V - 1.40V in 0.05V increments |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Unbuffered Memory to 4GB |
| Expansion Slots | 1 AGP 8X Slot 5 PCI Slots |
| Onboard SATA/IDE RAID | 2 SATA 150 drives by VIA VT8237 Can be combined in RAID 0, 1, JBOD |
| Onboard IDE | Two Standard VIA ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by VIA VT8237 3 IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports |
| Onboard LAN | Gigabit Ethernet by VIA VT6122 PCI |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC658 6-Channel with SPDIF |
| Tested BIOS | 1.3 |
The AV8 is Abit's flagship board for the Athlon 64, and you can certainly see this reflected in the features lavished on the AV8. Compared to the 754 version that we recently tested, Abit includes 3 Firewire ports on the AV8. True to their tradition as an overclocker's board, Abit has not included additional RAID, IDE or SATA controllers on the AV8. However, you will find that the VIA SATA RAID in the VT8237 Southbridge is fully supported. Abit has also used VIA chips for Firewire and LAN, but the VIA LAN is PCI-based and not on-chip as we see featured on the nVidia nF3-250 boards.
The overclocking controls are typically Abit in that they are a wonderful selection of voltages and frequencies to get the most from the K8T800 PRO and the Athlon 64. Particularly notable are the voltage adjustments for the Northbridge, Southbridge, and chipset - in addition to the expected voltage adjustments. The only surprise here is memory voltage, which is somewhat limited to 2.8V in BIOS. The latest version of uGuru (2.11) does not offer any additional vDIMM adjustments, so you are left with a top voltage of 2.8, which is limited for a board geared toward overclockers. We first tested uGuru in our review of the Abit KV8 Max3, and it continues to evolve as a very useful tool for the overclocker.
The first thing that we looked for was a working PCI/AGP lock, and we are pleased to report that the AV8 fully supports the AGP/PCI lock and a full range of ratios for overclocking the 939 processors. This is important because all Athlon 64 processors are unlocked downward, a side-effect of AMD Cool'n'Quiet technology. This means that any Athlon 64 can be set to lower CPU multipliers and higher frequencies to get the most out of high-speed memory. In addition, the Athlon 64 FX chips are completely unlocked, so both higher and lower ratios can be selected.
The Abit AV8 actually runs at 204 speed when the frequency is set to default, but we were able to force a 200 CPU frequency in BIOS for testing. All of the recent Abit boards that we have tested have been set to 204 at default, so be cautious in comparing review results unless the reviewer corrected the CPU frequency in testing an Abit motherboard.
Abit uses flat edge connectors for IDE connections, which does a very good job of removing any interference from the bulky IDE cables. We like the edge connectors, but some case designs make it very difficult to connect the edge-connectors. The bulky 20-pin ATX and 4-pin 12V connectors are both between the CPU and the back panel I/O ports, which makes routing the 20-pin ATX without blocking air flow a challenge in most case designs. Abit included the 2-digit diagnostic LEDs, which can be very useful for troubleshooting.
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thebluesgnr - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
"Our FX53 topped out at about 3.59 GHz on the ECS KV2, which is slightly below the 3.6+ achieved on the top 939 boards."Is this ECS a P4 board? :P
This was a great article. I agree with other readers, CnQ should definately have been tested, as well as audio and IDE subsystems.
btw Wesley, will there be reviews of KT880 socket A mobos in the future?
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Just a few comments. It's a little (*little* mind you) unfair to compare FX-53 to P4 560, given the price advantage of the P4. Then again, comparing it to the P4EE is a little unfair in the other direction. It might have been nice to include one or two other systems in the benchmarks, though, like a 3400+. Sure, we can cross-reference other articles, but if you have all the data already it would be a lot cleaner. I'm especially interested in seeing AutoGK benchmarks with the "lesser" Athlon 64 processors (3500+ and 3400+ would be good, or maybe even 3200+ - not everyone has $400+ to spend on a CPU!)Of course, while it might be less fair to Intel, I would like to get AutoGK numbers using Xvid as well. That's how I use it, as I feel the quality is a little better than DivX. Oh, and while you state that you used 2-pass encoding, what was the target resolution? 640x360, or 720x408, or something else? And did you specify a target size, or was it on unlimited quality? All those are important questions, I think.
One final request: I truly appreciate the memory stress testing benchmarks. However, I would like it taken a little further. All of the boards claim that they can support up to 4 GB of RAM. I would love to see some tests showing this configuration. After all, 64-bits is really about breaking that memory barrier. Even if the boards need to run 4x1GB at DDR266 or DDR333, it would be good to know. (Too bad there simply aren't many good 1 GB DIMMs available yet.)
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
#14 & #20 - Perhaps tests with the X800 XT on nF3 compared to the 6800 Ultra will at least shed a little light on where the efficiencies lie - in the nF3/nV Video combo or in the nF3 itself.#16 - We will make an effort to talk a bit more about Cool'n'Quiet in individual board reviews, but in a roundup like this it is difficult to explore that level of detail, and still hold the article length to anthing you might want to read. We try to do more with features in individual reviews.
#19 - We report the full range of vCore in our board charts for people like you who are interested in umdervolting. If you notice some boards begin vCore at default, while others make a wide undervolt range available as well as overvolt. We try to report this range as accurately as possible for this reason.
Pete - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Wesley, very interesting numbers. Halo is supposedly limited by some inefficient DX9 layers/commands, so I at first thought maybe nV had somehow optimized or bypassed some DX9 calls. The office and Content Creation benchmarks advantage is more puzzling, though. Could nV's performance edge be the result of some intelligent caching or either the HD or the CPU?Testing an X800 for reference is a good idea for Halo. Just be sure to retest the office and Content Creation suites, too, as the performance boost there is equally curious, IMO.
I found one typo, on the system specs page. It's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, not Wolfenstein: Enemy Within. :)
JKing76 - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Sure there's Cool'n'Quiet, but how about adding manual undervolting capabilities to the review? A lot of mobos only allow upping the vcore, but undervolting is a great tool for creating a truely cool and quiet system without losing performance.XRaider - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Love that FX53 and the MSI K8N Neo2 together. Sure is purdy nice!! ;) But must...hold...out...until...price..drops...some..more.. ;o)Great article BTW!
XRaider - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Love that FX53 and the MSI K8N Neo2 together. Sure is purdy nice!! ;) But must...hold...out...until...price..drops...some..more.. ;o)Great article BTW!
jojo4u - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
I miss information about Cool'n'Quiet. It's a shame that anandtech.com only is insterested in overclocking and speed.esSJae - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Nice, another article touting the non-existent MSI K8N Neo2.Sure, you can go to MSI's Taiwan site and download the manual and BIOS, but doesn't seem to be much point in that.
DAPUNISHER - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
"We never expected the nVidia nForce3-250 Ultra to be a better performer in Winstone benchmarks than the VIA K8T800 PRO. However, both the nF3-250 boards are outperforming the VIA boards by a significant percentage. Since the nVidia 6800 Ultra video card was used for all benchmarking in the roundup, we plan to verify these results with an ATI X800 XT as soon as that board is available to the Motherboard Lab for testing"Is this to determine if it's a result of forceware opts that is responsible for the difference observed?