abit IP35-Pro: Houston, We Have a Winner
by Gary Key on November 1, 2007 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Thoughts
We are quite pleased with the performance of the abit IP35-Pro board. Our expectations were set high after seeing an early sample in action at Computex 2007. We listened intently to everyone from engineering to marketing harping about the change of direction in product quality, engineering support, and industrial design that abit was introducing with their P35 lineup. We bought into the hype before and were certainly disappointed with the P965 product launches. We even started to write off abit after the delays of their P35 product - it was not even near being market ready at a time when Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS were already shipping products in volume.
When the IP35 series finally started shipping, it was met with enthusiasm from users and an almost universal acceptance as a group of products that offered the right balance of features, performance, and support for the price. We initially had some growing pains with the BIOS and 4GB memory support, not to mention an overindulgence of Vdroop when overclocking Intel's latest and greatest quad core processors. Other minor problems such as the heat pipe system not fitting firmly on the MCH and PWM areas had us a little scared also.
We kept looking for problems - or rather, we kept expecting problems to show up as they had on previous products. However, the more we used the board, the more we became enamored of it. It was not any single feature (although the excellent µGuru technology does stand out in the crowd) that eventually won us over but the combination of several features and renewed commitment to support that had us eventually singing praises for this board.
With praises come accolades, and AnandTech is proud to present the Gold Editors Choice to the abit IP35-Pro. abit has come a long way in the last two years and the result is an exceptionally stable motherboard, full of useful features, along with being one of the most consistent performing products we have tested recently. abit's µGuru technology clearly stands out as the best platform tuning and monitoring tool currently offered by any motherboard manufacturer; it sets the standard that other brands would do well to emulate. Except for µGuru, there is not a single feature on the board that really stands out from the crowd. However, every feature that abit has included on the IP35-Pro along with the board layout, color selection, BIOS design, accessories, support, and consistent performance certainly leads us to believe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in this case.
Not all is perfect, however; we still need to nag about the Vdroop exceeding that of other board manufacturers when overclocking quad cores, but how much that really matters is clearly debatable depending upon your overclocking objectives. We are still not pleased with overclocking when utilizing 4GB of memory and exceeding DDR2-1100 speeds. Overall, the positives of the board greatly outweigh the negatives, and while we have expressed these concerns to abit, the IP35-Pro remains one of our favorite P35 boards.
With that said, abit is launching their IX38 QuadGT board shortly and potentially its greatest competition will at first will be the IP35-Pro. We just hope that abit does not overlook the continued need for first tier support on this board, especially with Yorkfield and Wolfdale launching shortly. The P35 chipset still has a lot of life left in it and is certainly our choice at this time for most Intel users. We congratulate abit on getting back up to speed with its product designs and look forward to reviewing the IX38 QuadGT. However, we need to warn abit as we now have higher expectations after seeing the results of the IP35-Pro. In the meantime, we have a winner.
We are quite pleased with the performance of the abit IP35-Pro board. Our expectations were set high after seeing an early sample in action at Computex 2007. We listened intently to everyone from engineering to marketing harping about the change of direction in product quality, engineering support, and industrial design that abit was introducing with their P35 lineup. We bought into the hype before and were certainly disappointed with the P965 product launches. We even started to write off abit after the delays of their P35 product - it was not even near being market ready at a time when Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS were already shipping products in volume.
When the IP35 series finally started shipping, it was met with enthusiasm from users and an almost universal acceptance as a group of products that offered the right balance of features, performance, and support for the price. We initially had some growing pains with the BIOS and 4GB memory support, not to mention an overindulgence of Vdroop when overclocking Intel's latest and greatest quad core processors. Other minor problems such as the heat pipe system not fitting firmly on the MCH and PWM areas had us a little scared also.
We kept looking for problems - or rather, we kept expecting problems to show up as they had on previous products. However, the more we used the board, the more we became enamored of it. It was not any single feature (although the excellent µGuru technology does stand out in the crowd) that eventually won us over but the combination of several features and renewed commitment to support that had us eventually singing praises for this board.
 |
Not all is perfect, however; we still need to nag about the Vdroop exceeding that of other board manufacturers when overclocking quad cores, but how much that really matters is clearly debatable depending upon your overclocking objectives. We are still not pleased with overclocking when utilizing 4GB of memory and exceeding DDR2-1100 speeds. Overall, the positives of the board greatly outweigh the negatives, and while we have expressed these concerns to abit, the IP35-Pro remains one of our favorite P35 boards.
With that said, abit is launching their IX38 QuadGT board shortly and potentially its greatest competition will at first will be the IP35-Pro. We just hope that abit does not overlook the continued need for first tier support on this board, especially with Yorkfield and Wolfdale launching shortly. The P35 chipset still has a lot of life left in it and is certainly our choice at this time for most Intel users. We congratulate abit on getting back up to speed with its product designs and look forward to reviewing the IX38 QuadGT. However, we need to warn abit as we now have higher expectations after seeing the results of the IP35-Pro. In the meantime, we have a winner.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
29 Comments
View All Comments
Crafty Spiker - Sunday, July 27, 2008 - link
This board should be called the Catch-22. I'm on my 4th day and 2nd chassis (and peripherals) trying to find some combination of hardware that this piece of crap will handle properly.Catch #1: Trying to get an LSI SCSI RAID card and a Promise SX4000 to work at the same time. Far as I can see, can't be done. No diagnostic messages at all. Great BIOS engineering
Catch #2: Tried a smaller rig - just one Adaptec SCSI RAID card. Won't work at all.
Catch#3: IDE does not work. The BIOS sees the attached devices but the OS won't/
Catch #4: Digital audio output is optical ONLY. How do you spell "reconfigure the home theater"?
Catch #5: the onboard NIC's are crap. Won't do 9KB jumbo frames.
All in all I'd say that unless you are doing a completely dirt simple build that you look elsewhere. And reviewers should look a bit more carefully at what they're reviewing.
Dacalo - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
I notice that under Bios UGuru, your screen shows 1.25V. Mine MB's lowest option is only 1.3175(?) around there. I thought this was odd. Do you think it's because I have older BIOS?Cybertori - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
I have one of these boards, and its been very good and reliable. Works with my new dual-core CPU, the BIOS is amazingly accomodating, and no problems whatsoever. This is my first purchase of an Abit product, but I am impressed. CPU and MB temps have been very cool, even under load, so I'd have to say the passive cooling is working well. Apart from the placement of some connectors, a really good motherboard - one of the best available for Intel processors, and a good value too.Zak - Monday, November 5, 2007 - link
A couple of years ago I had so many problems with abit mobos (and MSI by the way), like 4 lemons in a row, that I will never ever touch their mobos no matter what they do, my distrust for their quality is too deep. I'll stick to Asus (despite their horrible support) and Gigabyte.Zak
MichaelD - Friday, November 2, 2007 - link
So, there's a "trick" or "tweak" that fixes a deficiency and makes the board more stable and reliable...yet you don't tell us what that is? Why not just link directly to the webpage showing the fix? OR just TELL US what said fix action is? "A quick Google search" yielded me nothing but other reviews of the board. I could not find the fix. Great article and review, but you fell short by not linking directly to the fix action.
Gary Key - Saturday, November 3, 2007 - link
The hot link was in the article if you mouse over "user" - but here it is in case that does not work - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p... .Shimmishim - Friday, November 2, 2007 - link
This board has been out since about July? X38 reviews have been popping up all over the web. Anyway.I've owned this board for over 3 months now and it has been one of my all time favorite boards. It o/c's 4x1GB of ram very nicely and quadcores (with a bit of tweaking).
Bozo Galora - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
for those who cant wait another month for AT to achieve a good enough review so as not to threaten ad revenues - here's a fairly good overview from Tomshttp://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/31/x38_compari...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/31/x38_compari...
goinginstyle - Saturday, November 3, 2007 - link
You are an arse. I have not seen any ads on AT with abit so that blows your statement. Also, they had the one of the first X38 previews on the web and at least they are doing the reviews right instead of some photos and a couple of tests while declaring any and all boards to be the greatest. AT's X38 launch article was the only one that told the truth about this not ready for prime time chipset. I guess they did that to improve ad revenues in your book.
Anonymous Freak - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
I mean, who doesn't have a router nowadays? Even goofier are the boards with Wi-Fi and "built-in routers". Call me old fashioned, but I actually want my router separate from my PC.What I want is a micro-ATX board, dual PCI-E x16 slots, (not that I actually expect to use SLI/CrossFire anytime soon, but what if I want to slap a RAID card in there?) onboard "HD Audio" with optical in and out, eSATA, onboard FireWire on the backplane (some of us still use FW camcorders,) and ONE Gigabit NIC. No need for a second, really.
Is that too much to ask?
It's like they now equate "enthusiast" with dual NIC. (A few years ago, before decent Wi-Fi routers could be had for http://shop1.outpost.com/product/3635275">less than $30, it might have made sense. But not any more. There are even http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5117566">multiple http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4832150">under http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4863030">$100 http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5232917">802.11n http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5284527">wireless http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5192516">routers.