Abit AW9D-MAX: When "Beta" MAX is a good thing
by Gary Key on September 8, 2006 3:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Basic Features
Abit has delivered a well optioned but very performance oriented 975X board that should sell for around US $229 or under. While our BIOS is still beta we were surprised at the stability of the motherboard during our benchmarking. We will provide screenshots and a more in-depth look at the BIOS once we receive a shipping version. At this time the one glaring omission is the lack of advanced DRAM timing control settings and a 1333 memory strap that would certainly let this board overclock further. Abit only allows the basic four timings to be changed (tCAS, tRCD, tRP, tRAS) and for a board of this caliber we believe this is a mistake. The ability to increase the MCH voltage to 2.00V and memory to 2.65V is impressive considering the limits on the other 975X based boards. However, we wish the memory settings above 2.35V were available in .05V increments instead of .10V increments.
One of the main BIOS issues consisted of the inability of the board to lower the CPU multiplier on standard Core 2 Duo processors (and raise it on the Core 2 Extreme), a feature available in current Gigabyte and ASUS boards. The weirdest issue was that setting the PCI Express speed above 100Mhz would render our SATA drives inoperable in most instances. We had to hunt and peck for an acceptable increase in the PCI Express speed before our drives would be recognized. Our Seagate drives would work at 102 and 108 at certain times while our WD SE16 drives would only work at 105 with the Raptors not working at anything above 100MHz. In the end, none of the SATA drives would work above 100MHz consistently so we left this setting at the default.
We also had trouble overclocking the board at first unless we disabled the Abit EQ thermal controls. This held true when trying to increase our CPU or memory voltages at various times. If the system defaulted to standard EQ limit settings (memory voltage at 2.1V maximum) then we would have to disable the Abit EQ controls, set our increased voltages, and then enable EQ before we could overclock the system. Although this typically worked, the bios would sometimes lose its way and no longer accept the extended voltage settings we specified in the EQ utility. We ended up disabling EQ voltage monitoring altogether during overclocking. Our remaining issue was the bios was unforgiving with specific DDR2 modules at certain settings. We generally found that the 4:5 ratio would work at times with our other DDR2-800 test modules when a 1:1 ratio would not and vice versa. We certainly believe from our discussions with Abit that these BIOS issues will be fixed before retail release but the board basically works fine at this time.
| Abit AW9D-MAX Specifications | |
| Market Segment: | Performance Enthusiast |
| CPU Interface: | Socket T (Socket 775) |
| CPU Support: | LGA775-based Pentium 4, Celeron D, Pentium D, Pentium EE, Core 2 Duo |
| Chipset: | Intel 975X + ICH7R |
| Bus Speeds: | 133 to 600 in 1MHz Increments |
| Memory Speeds: | SPD, 533, 667, 800 |
| NorthBridge Strap: | CPU, 1066, 800, 533 |
| PCIe Speeds: | Auto, 100MHz~200MHz |
| PCI: | Fixed at 33.33 |
| Core Voltage: | Base CPU V to 1.7250V in 0.0250V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier: | Auto, 6x-11x in 1X increments if CPU is unlocked |
| DRAM Voltage: | 1.75V ~ 2.65V in .05V or .10V increments, above 2.35V all increments are .10V. |
| DRAM Timing Control: | SPD, 4 Options |
| NB Voltage: | 1.50V ~ 2.00V in .01V increments |
| Memory Slots: | Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 8GB Total |
| Expansion Slots: | 2 - PCIe X16 (x8 operation in multi-GPU setup) 2 - PCIe X1 1 - PCI Slot 2.3 1 - Audio Max Slot |
| Onboard SATA/RAID: | 4 SATA 3Gbps Ports - Intel ICH7R (RAID 0,1,1+0,JBOD) 3 SATA 3Gbps Ports - Silicon Image 3132 1 e-SATA 3Gbps Port - Silicon Image 3132 |
| Onboard IDE: | 1 ATA100/66/33 Port (2 drives) - Intel ICH7R |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394: | 8 USB 2.0 Ports - 4 I/O Panel - 4 via Headers 2 Firewire 400 Ports by TI TSB43AB22A - via Headers |
| Onboard LAN: | Gigabit Ethernet Controller - PCI-E Interface Realtek RTL 8111B |
| Onboard Audio: | Realtek ALC882M HD-Audio 8-channel CODEC - Dolby Master Studio |
| Power Connectors: | ATX 24-pin, 8-pin EATX 12V, 4-pin 12V Molex |
| I/O Panel: | 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x PS/2 Mouse 2 x RJ45 1 x eSATA 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 |
| BIOS Revision: | AWARD W628 - Beta |
Abit has delivered a well optioned but very performance oriented 975X board that should sell for around US $229 or under. While our BIOS is still beta we were surprised at the stability of the motherboard during our benchmarking. We will provide screenshots and a more in-depth look at the BIOS once we receive a shipping version. At this time the one glaring omission is the lack of advanced DRAM timing control settings and a 1333 memory strap that would certainly let this board overclock further. Abit only allows the basic four timings to be changed (tCAS, tRCD, tRP, tRAS) and for a board of this caliber we believe this is a mistake. The ability to increase the MCH voltage to 2.00V and memory to 2.65V is impressive considering the limits on the other 975X based boards. However, we wish the memory settings above 2.35V were available in .05V increments instead of .10V increments.
One of the main BIOS issues consisted of the inability of the board to lower the CPU multiplier on standard Core 2 Duo processors (and raise it on the Core 2 Extreme), a feature available in current Gigabyte and ASUS boards. The weirdest issue was that setting the PCI Express speed above 100Mhz would render our SATA drives inoperable in most instances. We had to hunt and peck for an acceptable increase in the PCI Express speed before our drives would be recognized. Our Seagate drives would work at 102 and 108 at certain times while our WD SE16 drives would only work at 105 with the Raptors not working at anything above 100MHz. In the end, none of the SATA drives would work above 100MHz consistently so we left this setting at the default.
We also had trouble overclocking the board at first unless we disabled the Abit EQ thermal controls. This held true when trying to increase our CPU or memory voltages at various times. If the system defaulted to standard EQ limit settings (memory voltage at 2.1V maximum) then we would have to disable the Abit EQ controls, set our increased voltages, and then enable EQ before we could overclock the system. Although this typically worked, the bios would sometimes lose its way and no longer accept the extended voltage settings we specified in the EQ utility. We ended up disabling EQ voltage monitoring altogether during overclocking. Our remaining issue was the bios was unforgiving with specific DDR2 modules at certain settings. We generally found that the 4:5 ratio would work at times with our other DDR2-800 test modules when a 1:1 ratio would not and vice versa. We certainly believe from our discussions with Abit that these BIOS issues will be fixed before retail release but the board basically works fine at this time.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
56 Comments
View All Comments
Jedi2155 - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
Oh heck yea! I thought I was going to have to go with Asus P5B deluxe board mainly due to the color scheme as I'm a bigger fan of Black & Blue than Black & Red. Too bad for all those other people who prefer red tho.wolf550e - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
How much is Scyhte paying you?Madellga - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
Actually his review is very neutral and not a PR stunt.This space is to discuss the review itself and the product there.
If you want to make such comments I suggest paging him, instead of writing here on the open.
Gary Key - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
Actually I paid NewEgg $51.99 for the pleasure of using the Scythe Infinity. :) Scythe does not advertise with us and the picture was published based upon numerous reader requests wanting to know how the larger heatsinks fit on the boards. I still love and use the Tuniq 120 but until they are readily available again my current air cooling favorite is the Infinity. Just in case it comes up, the E6600 was also bought from NewEgg and is not supplied by Intel.
DigitalFreak - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
LOL! First time I've ever heard a motherboard described as "menacing".
mostlyprudent - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
I am very pleased to see Abit producing a strong board again. Two of my older systems are still running with Abit boards (4 years old and 2.5 years old) with no issues. I am still deciding, but the PCI slot issue is a tough pill to swallow.BTW, there is a type-o in the last paragraph on page 3 "Although this 'typcially' worked..."
GoatMonkey - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
I used to be a big Abit fan. I bought 5 Abit motherboard for myself over the years, and built at least 4 other systems for friends with Abit motherboards. Unfortunately, over half of them failed after several months of use. Abit really needs a good warranty and some good testimonial of quality to get me back.yyrkoon - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
ABIT has a decent warranty policy, the only problem is that they exchange 're-certified' boards for your new one.We've had to deal with ABITs RMA a couple of times in the last two years, and while they did replace the boards, the process was slow, and again, they replace it with a re-certified board. However, it turned out it wasnt the motherboard that was bad at all, but a ATI videocard (pre-PCIE, and additional card power), that was drawing too much power from the AGP slot.
ABIT forums, while not owned or paricipated by any ABIT workers (that I know of), is second to none. If you cannot find someone on ABITs forums to help with an issue, then said issue is rare, or hard to trace.
I'm finding that more, and more, that motherboards dont really go bad (short term), but often 'broken' motherboards are configured improperly by the user, that has limited experience with that brand, or a user that really hasnt a clue how to properly setup a motherboard. This doesnt include the rare chance of a dead out of the box motherboard, or the random hard to troubleshoot other than motherboard issues, and I've recently experience the latter here myself (an Asrock board that would lock up within three days, no BSoD, and nothing standard fixed the problem).
The main reason why I like ABIT, is that usually ABIT boards have stability that is second to none, and they perform very well.
granulated - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
I know that the Scyhte Infinity is approx 12cm x 12cm but blimey !It's looks massive !
yyrkoon - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
Gary, was wondering if yo ucould confirm if ABIT boards with eSATA, and a SIL 3132 controller will in fact work with a SATA port multiplier. From all the researching Ive done for the last year or so would indicate so, but I would like ot make sure before investing loads of cash in an external RAID 5 array, only to have it not work.