ABIT KV8-MAX3: Athlon64 and µGuru

Final Words

The Abit KV8-MAX3 is a great addition to the MAX family, and certainly is worthy of the MAX name. It is brimming with features and provides just about every option you could want for tweaking an Athlon64 motherboard – except the ability to fix the AGP/PCI frequency to standard levels so that the board can achieve the highest overclocks. This, of course, is a VIA issue and not strictly a failing of the Abit KV8-MAX3. However, with MAX3 clearly aimed at the enthusiast and overclocker, the lack of AGP/PCI fix is not minor and must be considered a major fault. Abit has done an outstanding job in partially correcting the AGP/PCI lock problem by implementing additional multipliers that allow standard 66/33 AGP/PCI clocks at 233 and 266. Unfortunately, the Athlon64 processors we have tested do not quite reach that far, so the advantages of the new multipliers are lost on current chips. Future A64 processors will likely have more headroom — particularly once the .09 process is rolled out early next year.

As a showcase for the new µGuru chip and utility, the Abit KV8-MAX3 is almost ideal. µGuru is not a truly new idea, since MSI and Gigabyte have similar products, but Abit's implementation is incredibly complete and full-featured. We fully expected µGuru to be ho-hum “seen-that, been-there”, but in fact, we were quite impressed with its robustness and true usefulness. On a better overclocking motherboard, µGuru will truly shine.

The board layout still needs work, particularly the impossibly tight CPU socket that requires removal of the OTES shroud to mount even the HSF that comes with Athlon64 retail packages. This may be as simple as a slight redesign of the OTES cover and the Northbridge fan, but we expect better than this from the company whose reputation is built on Enthusiast motherboards. Otherwise, the design is decent if not outstanding. The stability of the board, thanks to the careful attention to power regulation, is outstanding and up to Abit expectations.

In the end, the Abit KV8-MAX3 is one of the very best Athlon64 boards we have tested. However, its overclocking capabilities with the VIA chipset and current multipliers is pretty dismal. The nForce3-based Chaintech ZNF3-150 is a much better overclocker without the handicap of missing PCI/AGP locks. The base KV8-MAX3 performs about the same when the overclocked speed at default FSB is taken into account, but the Abit as it now stands is a mediocre overclocker. We're certain there will be improvements in the BIOS that will improve the overclocking capabilities, but there is more work to be done to find ways to bypass VIA's limitations created by the lack of an AGP/PCI lock.

There is much to like about the Abit. We have no problem recommending it as an excellent full-featured board with the wonderful µGuru chip to control everything about the board. However, if you are looking for an Enthusiast board for overclocking, this is not your board. Boards based on the nForce3 chipset perform about the same at stock speeds, but they are generally better at overclocking. It is true the nForce3-150 currently has limitations to HyperTransport speed, but we have found no real performance penalties resulting from this issue, which will be corrected soon with the nForce3-250 chipset. On the other hand, the performance penalties exerted by the inability to fix the PCI/AGP bus are real and limiting. It remains a complete mystery to us why VIA continues as the only chipsets without an AGP/PCI lock after all these months and years of losing market share. The K8T800 is as good as or better than nForce3 150, but this one feature will cause most enthusiasts to choose nF3 over VIA.

If Abit can find ways to add finer multipliers and/or develop a real AGP/PCI lock on the VIA chipset, then the KV8-MAX3 could evolve into the best, or one of the best, Athlon64 boards. But as it now stands, the Abit KV8-MAX3 is an outstanding, stable, wonderfully-featured board that falls short in overclocking abilities.