nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream
by Wesley Fink on July 5, 2005 10:28 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
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.
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.
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Andreos - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Wesley - That helps, thanks for educating me on this stuff.Wesley Fink - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#51 - We reviewed the K8NXP-SLI in the SLI roundup and the Ultra counterpart is the K8NXP-9. If you will look closely at the Gigabyte website pictures of the K8N Ultra-9 you will see it is the same board with a passive heatsink and fewer features. For information on how your Gigabyte performs at stock speeds (which is all that interests you) then please refer to the single video benchmarks for the K8NXP-SLI in the SLI roundup. We report all benchmarks at stock speeds so you and other readers can compare performance. Overclocking is covered as a separate feature. If you do not choose to overclock that is your business, but the information you are asking for is fully covered in our reviews. ALL the nForce4 Ultra boards perform almost the same at stock speeds, which should not really come as a surprise since the memory controller is on the CPU. If you were expecting the Gigabyte K8N Ultra-9 would perform better at stock speeds that anything else then you are badly misinformed. The Gigabyte boards do very well at stock speeds, but all the nF4 boards are close in performance at stock speeds.#53 - The BFG VNF4 Ultra is a rebadged (relabeled) Chaintech VNF4 motherboard. We did review the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra in this roundup.
VinnyS - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
I would have liked to have seen the BFG NF4 Ultra board included in this round-up, it got high marks in a [H]ardOCP review. Any chance for an update to this review with this board included?TheGlassman - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
Well I was tired, You were using the 6-3-05 bios, should have quit while I was ahead. So now I have no idea what the problem was.At any rate the 6-3-05 bios is a dual core bios, so no flashing to a beta is needed for dual core.
Andreos - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
I don't think you guys know your audience all that well. Not everybody is into overclocking to the hairy edge. Some of us wnat a fast and quiet board with dead-nuts solid reliability. For that reason, it is incomprehensible that the Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9 was not included in this so-called "roundup". This board has no SLI counterpart, but it is of extreme interest to a lot of folks planning workstations based on X2 processors (and for which overclocking is of lower interest than reliable operation). Wake up dudes - the game is changing! Clock speed is no longer the Holy Grail. Other sites are savvy to this and will soon be eating your lunch!Palek - Thursday, July 7, 2005 - link
#49, no worries. I don't work for Anandtech, by the way. :)By my "far more than a day" remark I intended to say that I figured a review like this would take more like a week at a minimum - quite possibly even longer - to put together, so by the time the article was released some BIOSes would be outdated, since BIOS updates seem to pop up every other day these days. That is all.
TheGlassman - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Sorry Palek, you didn't write the review, oops. My apologies to you and time for bed.Wesley, can you look into that?
Thanks, and I'm sure glad the over a day remark wasn't yours.
TheGlassman - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Thanks for your comments Palek, especially the latest and greatest comment. I checked the bios you used for the chaintech, it is a dual core only beta, ANY release bios including the 6-03-05 official dual core support (a month older than either of the winning (because they over clock TCCD better?) boards, and older than any dated bios) will perform much better in overclocking and probably every other test.If Chaintech shipped you a board with that bios it wasn't a wise move for a single core test. I think it would be fair to retest the chaintech vnf4 with a release bios, and if the results are different to note that.
As far as the time taken to prepare this round up, much less time could have been used running bench mark after benchmark that shows apprx the same performance, and I would expect it take more than a day to write up such a comprehensive review. To take a few days to do testing that can benefit people who will base their buying decisons on your results, I think would be worth while.
I am happy that I could pinpoint the problem with the Chaintech VnF4 Ultra results, as you may have guessed I am quite familliar with it. In the past, Anandtech has always explained why a beta bios was being used, I guess that it wasn't noted this time because you felt rushed.
PS I know the DFI's are excellent boards, but their site lists a march date for their most recent bios, so maybe you should have used that one instead of their latest and greatest TCCD overclocking beta bios, and since you were using a beta, you should, again, have listed why.
I'm sorry, saying it took more than a day is not good enough for the anandtech standards that have been so high for so long.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
We have corrected the CPU and Memory voltage adjustments for the Abit AN8 Fatal1ty. This version only has voltage adjustments to 2.8V for memory, while the later Ultra and SLI versions do support memory voltages to 3.55V.Palek - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Wesley, that would be "proofreading" - one word! ;) Is that a job offer? :)#41, TheGlassman, you shouldn't have unreasonable expectations. I'm sure this review took far more than a day to put together, so of course some of the BIOSes used will not be the latest and the greatest. Adding three different types of RAM to the mix would require even more time. Then if you want to test them with different divider etc. settings, suddenly you have over a hundred combinations, a benchmarking nightmare. You have to draw the line somewhere. This was not an article focused on overclocking, but a comparison of 7 motherboards. I would have liked to see the new Abit boards included as well, but I guess that review will come soon enough, too.