nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream

Abit Fatal1ty AN8: Features and Layout

Specification	Abit Fatal1ty AN8
CPU Interface	Socket 939 Athlon 64
Chipset	nForce4 Ultra (single chip)
BUS Speeds	200MHz to 410MHz (in 1MHz increments)
PCI/AGP Speeds	Asynchronous (Fixed)
PCI Express	100MHz to 145MHz in 1MHz increments
Core Voltage	Auto, 1.5V to 1.85V in 0.025V increments (with 4000+
CPU Ref Voltage	+10mv to +60mv, -10mv to -60mv in 10mv increments
DRAM Voltage	Auto, 2.5V to 2.8V in 0.05V increments
DDR Ref Voltage	+10mv to +70mv, -10mv to -50mv in 10mv increments
Chipset Voltage	1.5V to 1.8V in 0.05V increments
Hyper Transport Ratios	Auto, 1X to 5X in 1X increments
LDT Bus Transfer	16/16, 16/8, 8/16, 8/8
LDT Voltage	1.25V to 1.4V in 0.05V increments
PCI Synchronization	Auto, To CPU, 33.33MHz
CPU Ratios	Auto, 4x to 20x in 0.5x increments
DRAM Speeds	Auto, DDR200, DDR266, DDR333, DDR400 (Plus DDR433, 466, 500 with Rev. E Processor)
Memory Command Rate	Auto, 1T, 2T
Memory Slots	Four 184-pin DDR Dual-Channel Slots Unbuffered ECC or non-ECC Memory to 4GB Total
Expansion Slots	1 x16 PCIe Slots 2 x1 PCIe 3 PCI Slots
Onboard SATA	4-Drive SATA 2 by nF4
Onboard IDE	Two Standard NVIDIA ATA133/100/66 (4 drives)
SATA/IDE RAID	4-Drive SATA 2 PLUS 4-Drive IDE (8 total) Can be combined in RAID 0, 1
Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394	10 USB 2.0 ports supported nF4 2 1394A FireWire ports by TI TSB43AB22A
Onboard LAN	PCIe Gigabit Ethernet by Vitesse VSC8201RX PHY
Onboard Audio	Audiomax 7.1 Audio Card with Realtek ALC850 8-Channel codec with 6 UAJ audio jacks, CD-in, front audio, and optical SPDIF
Other Features	AMD Dual-Core (X2) Support with 1.5 BIOS
BIOS	Award 1.5 (6/21/05)

The Abit Fatal1ty AN8 is a member of the Fatal1ty series of motherboards aimed at gamers. Abit claims that everything about the Fatal1ty boards is beefed up for utmost stability in gaming situations. This "beefing-up" includes a special dual-fan OTES cooling system for the power transistors, and a dual-fan cooling device for RAM that Abit calls OTES RAMflow. These are two of the biggest heat-generating areas in modern motherboards and the Abit approach is noteworthy. With this attention to features that matter a great deal to the Enthusiast, we have great expectations of the overclocking abilities of the Abit Fatal1ty. Abit also has announced an SLI version of the Fatal1ty AN8, which adds dual-video NVIDIA SLI capabilities to the AN8 feature set.

The other side of the "beefed-up" Abit is the cost, as the Fatal1ty AN8 is by far the most expensive nForce4 Ultra motherboard in this roundup with a street price of about $185. With that kind of price, buyers will certainly expect the Fatal1ty AN8 to be head and shoulders above the other boards in the roundup. If this is too rich for your blood, then Abit also sells the more basic AN8 board for about $100 street price.

Click image to enlarge.

Boards have been improving in basic layout for the last few years, and the Abit is generally an agreeable layout - with a couple of "gotchas". Many no longer care about floppy drives, but if the floppy is important to you, the connector location at the bottom of the board will be a stretch in tall cases. The lower right-hand IDE connectors are the edge type, and we would advise you to connect them before mounting the board. Since they are often behind drives, you won't be able to reach these IDE-edge connectors otherwise in some case designs.

The 24-pin ATX and 4-pin 12V connectors are at the board edges, where they work best. It is also a pleasure to see Abit place the 4 SATA connectors and PCIe slot where they will not interfere with each other. Board makers seem to be giving more thought to IDE placement lately, but SATA connectors are increasingly a mess to work with in many motherboards. Top video cards are big, and SATA connectors behind a PCIe slot can make a decent board a nightmare if you're mounting SATA devices. Abit, fortunately, gave some thought to SATA placement.

While it's not pictured, the included "Audio Max" dedicated sound card fits in the first slot - just above the 2 PCIe x1 slots. This is a good location, which clusters sound connectors near the rear panel. While the Audio Max is powered by the very common Realtek ALC850 codec, isolating the sound hardware, like we have seen DFI do on similar dedicated sound cards, should pay off in lower noise and reduced CPU overhead for the audio hardware.

Abit boards usually have quite a few fan connectors, and this would certainly be expected on a board geared to gamers, who may have many devices to cool. Unfortunately, there are just 3 fan headers on board; after the North Bridge and CPU, there is just the System Fan header. That means that if you have a Power Supply with a fan-monitoring plug, there are no spares on the Abit. A "gamers" board really needs a few more fan headers.

The storage area is basic nForce4, which is pretty good by itself, but there are no additional RAID controllers, which you might expect on a $185 board.

The BIOS options are typically Abit, meaning that they are very good. There's just about any BIOS adjustment that you might want. One particular disappointment are the memory voltage controls, which only extend to 2.8V. Abit has fixed this option in other versions of the AN8 - the Ultra and SLI extend to 3.55V for super high-voltage 2-2-2 memory like OCZ VX and Mushkin Redline. For that reason, the other Abit AN8 boards are a better choice for the Athlon 64 enthusiast than this early AN8 Fatal1ty. The Abit AN8 Fatal1ty is one of the two boards in this roundup that supports the additional 433, 466, and 500 memory speed options on an AMD Rev. E processor.