![]() ![]() The AA8’s overclocking menu does have one quirk that bothers me. This option allows the would-be overclocker to try out a particular set of options without rebooting and without saving those options to the BIOS. The one thing that you don’t see in the picture is the “OC on the fly” option. You can see that the OC Guru screen offers lots of flexibility for overclocking, and it really is fairly easy to use, provided you know what you’re doing. After having scrolled endlessly through 1MHz bus increments in other boards’ BIOS menus recently, I’m pleased to be able to just key it in here. ![]() The picture above shows the bus speed options, which range from 100 to 300MHz in 1MHz increments, or 400 to 1200MHz quad-pumped. That’s fancy enough to get you into trouble in some crowds, I’d think. Most folks shouldn’t encounter the particular problem I did, but the POST code readout is often helpful when things don’t go as planned.įinally, check out that funky Abit heat sink that rides atop the ICH6R south bridge chip. Turns out an early AA8 BIOS didn’t like P4 Extreme Edition processors, as I learned by swapping in a Prescott Pentium 4 instead. I sent the POST code to Abit, and they were able to pinpoint the problem as something related to the CPU. In fact, when I first fired up the AA8, it wouldn’t complete the power-on self test (POST) process completely. This wondrous invention can help mightily with diagnosing problems. You can also see the two-digit LED readout that shows POST codes as the system boots up. They pack four SATA cables, a floppy cable, and an ATA cable in the box with the AA8. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, Abit doesn’t skimp on the cables to attach to those ports. The picture above shows a whole host of goodies, including the AA8’s quad Serial ATA ports and its sole ATA/100 connector. Let’s look at the board’s highlights a little closer. However, Abit has kindly included a pair of PCI slots, so users aren’t forced to discard everything and start over. You’ll notice there’s no AGP slot, so AA8 owners will need a PCI Express graphics card, in addition to some new DDR2 memory and an Intel LGA775 processor. Voltage, fan status, and temperature monitoring North bridge: 1.50-2.05V in 0.05V increments LGA775 Intel Pentium 4 processors with 800MHz front-side busĤ ports Serial ATA 150 via ICH6R south bridge with RAID 0,1 supportĨ -channel HD audio via ICH6R integrated audio and ALC880 codecġ IEEE 1394 port via TI TSB43AB23 Firewire controller with headers for 2 moreġ RJ45 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet via Realtek 8110S-32ġ00-300MHz in 1MHz increments (400-1200MHz quad-pumped) Not only that, but the board is fast, stable, and robust enough to handle some abuse.Īs a result, we’ve seen the 925X Express chipset in a new light, and we like what we see. Second, the Abit AA8 is a true enthusiast’s mobo, with more tweakage options, voltage settings, and overclocking facilities than your average button-down corporate motherboard could even contemplate. We’ve had some time to tweak and tune the AA8, and we’ve discovered a surprising amount of headroom in both the chipset and its associated DDR2 memory. First, Intel’s 925X review kit didn’t arrive at Damage Labs until a couple days before Intel pulled the curtain back on the product launch, so we didn’t get time to tweak the Intel D925XCV mobo as we’d have liked. Now comes Abit’s AA8 DuraMax motherboard, and things look different for a couple of reasons. Even the high-end 925X, with fast internal timings and 533MHz DDR2 memory, couldn’t outrun its predecessor in our tests. But for all the new goodies, they haven’t shown much performance advantage over the 875P chipset that preceded them. These new core-logic bad boys pack in all kinds of novel features, including PCI Express, DDR2 memory, and high-definition audio. The most recent chipsets for Intel, of course, are the 915 and 925X Express series, which we reviewed not long ago. We follow up our evaluations of new Intel chipsets with reviews of third-party motherboards based on those chipsets, and the third-party mobos shed new light on the Intel chipsets.
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