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.
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LoneWolf15 - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
My MSI K8N Neo-4 Platinum came with eight SATA ports, FireWire, dual gig nics, and a full complement of every port and feature I can think of, as a top-of-the-line Socket 939 board.I bought it very shortly after first release --for $140 from ZipZoomFly. That was going on two years ago, but by then, top-of-the-line boards all had onboard sound, network, USB, and multiple hard drive controllers with raid capability. And while that price is two years ago, a $100 price hike for flagship boards (Intel, ASUS, Abit, and the like) isn't just inflation taking its toll.
Current mainboard prices truly are a joke. I think it is truly an attempt to capitalize on Intel's really cool new processor --the idea that we all want to run it badly enough that we'll pay beaucoup bucks for a new flagship board.
The review was good, but any company who thinks I'll spend $200-plus for a mainboard with only one PCI slot (blocked in a dual-vidcard scenario, so useless in that case) needs a major reality check. Abit did a lot right with this board, but that one slip makes this board utterly useless as an enthusiast product, IMO. The only way they could have rescued it was to put a real sound chip on the riser card instead of an ALC solution, and they failed that too.
yyrkoon - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
You get what you pay for, and usually for ABIT boards thats stability / performance. Not to mention that RIGHT_NOW, this platform is the top perfomer. I also hav a problem with paying too much for current tech motherboards, however, you dont really have much of a choice, you can buy one now, at a premium, or you can wait 6 months, when the prices have come down alot.Look at ABITs top AM2 motherboard, it was in the $200usd range not long ago when released, but because of shipping issues damaging the boards, and bad publicity because of this, the boards are now down to around $150usd. Anyhow the ABIT AN9 32x (non fata1ity) has features comparable to this board, and some (mainly because of chipset) that are better. However, I think we all know which platform is preffered by enthusiasts at the moment. . .
LoneWolf15 - Saturday, September 9, 2006 - link
However, I think we all know which platform is preffered by enthusiasts at the moment. . .Yep, that'd be the ASUS Core 2 Duo boards. ;)
Seriously though, if I bought now (which I have no need to do, but for sake of argument) I could buy an ASUS board with all of Abit's features, great performance, and the PCI slots enthusiasts need for the same price. I really think that if Abit wants to regain lost market share, they either have to not miss silly things like this, or if they make that decision, to beat their competition in price. Failing to do either, I can't see why one would choose them.
Madellga - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
True, but the difference is much smaller than the CPUs or GPUs. You need almost 100 bucks to go from E6400 to E6600. That's the mobo difference. And without a good mobo, you can't do 50% overclock - look at ASRock, for example: cheap but low overclock.Madellga - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
Hi Gary,It seems most people didn't get your joke.
Nice review and thanks for posting VCore and MCH. I think it is essential in the current socket 775 platform to inform the readers about such settings.
I noticed also on the pictures that the board has only solid capacitors, like the Gigabyte DQ6/DS4/DS3 family. That's a good trend.
I use myself a SB Audigy 2 ZS and would be a pitty to give up using it.
This new board seems to be available for sale next week:
http://www.alternate.de/html/shop/productListing4C...">http://www.alternate.de/html/shop/produ...evel2=In...
This store is pretty reliable for delivery lead time (currently 3 working days).
I might give it a go with an E6600. I'm also thinking about a pair of 7950GT's and hacked drivers.....if the 7950GT price is around 250 bucks.
Doormat - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
Any chance that this board selling for $225 or so would push the prices of other 975X boards down? I see the Asus P5W for $270+ everywhere and its just rediculus to spend that much money on a motherboard. I'm holding off on Conroe until motherboard prices go down..Madellga - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
It is listed at 219 euros, above 270 dollars. I hope you guys can get it at a better price.yyrkoon - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
Parts in Europe often cost more than in the states. Compared to US prices, Europe purchases seem to cost an additional 20-30% premium. I find it highly unlikely that this board will be more than $230-$250 USD, if so, it wont sell good for awhile (until the price comes down).Gambit2K - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
What's the retail color theme? Black and red or Black and blue? Im hoping for red, it looks wicked.Gary Key - Friday, September 8, 2006 - link
The official color scheme will be blue and black. http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?c...">Abit Link