Abit AW9D-MAX: When "Beta" MAX is a good thing
by Gary Key on September 8, 2006 3:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
High-Resolution Gaming Performance
For high-quality gaming performance, we also tested at 1600x1200 with 4xAA /8xAF. As just about anyone familiar with current games can tell you, benchmarking with a single high-end graphics card at these stressful settings will make just about any recent game GPU limited. That brings up one of the flaws with Intel's 975X chipset as it does not "officially" support NVIDIA SLI and these users will have to look for another solution. At this time that solution is the 7950GX2.
This card works fine on the 975X chipset except for a couple of anomalies in our test scores on the ASUS board that is under investigation currently. The charts below only includes single GPU performance using a 7900 GTX currently, but you can refer to our Conroe Buyers Guide results to see the performance improvements that SLI/CrossFire and a E6700 bring to the table. We will update our results with the 7950GX2 shortly and will have ATI CrossFire results in our next 975X review.
If you're serious about gaming at a high resolution with all the eye candy enabled, you will most certainly want to run a multi-GPU configuration (with NVIDIA's 7950 GX2 counting in our book as a multi-GPU solution). Looking specifically at the Abit board, its relative positioning did not change at the higher resolution settings. The spread among these motherboards is extremely minor with differences up to 1% at most due to our GPU limitation. Really, you would still be hard pressed to tell the difference between these boards in gaming performance.
Quick Take
Our preview of the Abit AW9D-MAX now shows a motherboard capable of living up to its heritage. In fact, this is probably the best performing Abit board we have tested since the IC7-MAX3 board that was one of our all time favorite Intel 875 boards. While we noticed a few minor issues with the BIOS during a rigorous test schedule, we have to state once again that the overall performance of the board is extremely impressive at this time. However, our enthusiasm is curtailed by the layout and expansion options on the board. While the minimalist and almost legacy free nature of the board may appeal to some, we found the lack of useable PCI slots to be a major drawback during operation with this board. We did come to accept this limitation as we found the on-board audio solution to be very good for most purposes and accepted the fact that this board would probably not be used in a home theater setup. That still does not excuse Abit for not including more PCI slots or at least changing the location of the single slot provided.
If the typical enthusiast utilizes a CrossFire arrangement then you lose both a PCI Express X1 slot and the only PCI slot. This will probably not be acceptable to most enthusiasts as that PCI slot usually contains an aftermarket sound card or possibly a TV tuner card among other things. Even with a single PCI slot open your choices are still limited if you want to use the system as a media station unless you upgrade to a PCI Express based TV tuner card or plan on utilizing the on-board audio solution. Our other issue has to do with the location of the floppy connector (it could just go away in our opinion) and the 4-pin 12V molex connector (needed for CrossFire) at the bottom of the board next to the audio max connector. The location of the first two SiL3132 SATA ports could be debated but we did not have any issues in using the ports if they were plugged in before we installed our Creative X-FI card. The same holds true for the first two Intel ICH7R SATA ports as our ATI X1900XT card almost blocked these two ports.
We do commend Abit on providing Dolby Master Studio support via the Realtek ALC-882M, dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers that use the PCI-E interface, an e-SATA port, a very effective silent OTES 2 cooling system, and their impressive µGuru technology for overclocking and full system monitoring/control capabilities. Abit has made great improvements in their BIOS capabilities since we last reviewed a motherboard from them. They ensure us we will have a public release BIOS shortly so we can provide a full report on the board's capability and compatibility with a host of components. We found the current overclocking capabilities to be excellent for a 975X based motherboard and stability at the maximum overclocks were superb. We expect continued refinement of the BIOS along with additional performance and overclocking improvements in the near future. It appears after a couple of years of disappointments that Abit has finally delivered a board worthy of the MAX name; we just wish they would have maxed out the PCI slots also.
For high-quality gaming performance, we also tested at 1600x1200 with 4xAA /8xAF. As just about anyone familiar with current games can tell you, benchmarking with a single high-end graphics card at these stressful settings will make just about any recent game GPU limited. That brings up one of the flaws with Intel's 975X chipset as it does not "officially" support NVIDIA SLI and these users will have to look for another solution. At this time that solution is the 7950GX2.
This card works fine on the 975X chipset except for a couple of anomalies in our test scores on the ASUS board that is under investigation currently. The charts below only includes single GPU performance using a 7900 GTX currently, but you can refer to our Conroe Buyers Guide results to see the performance improvements that SLI/CrossFire and a E6700 bring to the table. We will update our results with the 7950GX2 shortly and will have ATI CrossFire results in our next 975X review.
If you're serious about gaming at a high resolution with all the eye candy enabled, you will most certainly want to run a multi-GPU configuration (with NVIDIA's 7950 GX2 counting in our book as a multi-GPU solution). Looking specifically at the Abit board, its relative positioning did not change at the higher resolution settings. The spread among these motherboards is extremely minor with differences up to 1% at most due to our GPU limitation. Really, you would still be hard pressed to tell the difference between these boards in gaming performance.
Quick Take
Our preview of the Abit AW9D-MAX now shows a motherboard capable of living up to its heritage. In fact, this is probably the best performing Abit board we have tested since the IC7-MAX3 board that was one of our all time favorite Intel 875 boards. While we noticed a few minor issues with the BIOS during a rigorous test schedule, we have to state once again that the overall performance of the board is extremely impressive at this time. However, our enthusiasm is curtailed by the layout and expansion options on the board. While the minimalist and almost legacy free nature of the board may appeal to some, we found the lack of useable PCI slots to be a major drawback during operation with this board. We did come to accept this limitation as we found the on-board audio solution to be very good for most purposes and accepted the fact that this board would probably not be used in a home theater setup. That still does not excuse Abit for not including more PCI slots or at least changing the location of the single slot provided.
If the typical enthusiast utilizes a CrossFire arrangement then you lose both a PCI Express X1 slot and the only PCI slot. This will probably not be acceptable to most enthusiasts as that PCI slot usually contains an aftermarket sound card or possibly a TV tuner card among other things. Even with a single PCI slot open your choices are still limited if you want to use the system as a media station unless you upgrade to a PCI Express based TV tuner card or plan on utilizing the on-board audio solution. Our other issue has to do with the location of the floppy connector (it could just go away in our opinion) and the 4-pin 12V molex connector (needed for CrossFire) at the bottom of the board next to the audio max connector. The location of the first two SiL3132 SATA ports could be debated but we did not have any issues in using the ports if they were plugged in before we installed our Creative X-FI card. The same holds true for the first two Intel ICH7R SATA ports as our ATI X1900XT card almost blocked these two ports.
We do commend Abit on providing Dolby Master Studio support via the Realtek ALC-882M, dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers that use the PCI-E interface, an e-SATA port, a very effective silent OTES 2 cooling system, and their impressive µGuru technology for overclocking and full system monitoring/control capabilities. Abit has made great improvements in their BIOS capabilities since we last reviewed a motherboard from them. They ensure us we will have a public release BIOS shortly so we can provide a full report on the board's capability and compatibility with a host of components. We found the current overclocking capabilities to be excellent for a 975X based motherboard and stability at the maximum overclocks were superb. We expect continued refinement of the BIOS along with additional performance and overclocking improvements in the near future. It appears after a couple of years of disappointments that Abit has finally delivered a board worthy of the MAX name; we just wish they would have maxed out the PCI slots also.
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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