FIRST LOOK: Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE
by Wesley Fink on November 9, 2004 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
We compared the performance of the Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE with the 1066 FSB 3.46EE to performance results with the Intel 925X motherboard. We tested the 925X with the fastest 800FSB processor available, which is the 560 at 3.6GHz. Since the fastest gaming performance we have tested is with the Athlon 64 processor, results were included for the fastest current A64 processors - the FX55 and the 4000+ on the nForce 4 PCI Express Reference board. To remove the video card as a performance factor, all benchmarks were run with the PCI Express nVidia 6800 Ultra.The configuration was kept as close as possible between the 3 motherboards, but we are forced to compare apples to oranges in some cases. This means using DDR400 memory at 2-2-2-10 on the AMD systems and DDR2-533 at 3-3-3-10 on the Intel systems, but as we saw in the DDR vs. DDR2 review, the performance of fast DDR400 and DDR533 is very close.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | Intel 3.46EE (1066FSB) Socket 775 Intel 560 (3.6GHz) Socket 775 AMD FX55 (2.6Ghz) Socket 939 AMD 4000+ (2.4GHz) Socket 939 |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Crucial DDR2-533 2 x 512MB OCZ 3200 Platinum Rev. 2 DDR |
| Hard Drive(s): | Maxtor 250GB MaXLine III (16MB buffer) |
| Video Card(s): | nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra PCIe |
| Video Drivers: | nVidia 61.77 Graphics Drivers |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ Power Stream 520 (520W) |
| Motherboards: | Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE (Intel 925XE) Intel 925XCV (Intel 925X) Socket 775 Intel 915GUX (Intel 915G) Socket 775 |
At stock settings, Fatal1ty is overclocked to 271 FSB. For a fairer comparison, the FSB was set to 267. Since most will want to see gaming benchmarks with this gaming board, the Game Accelerator was left to the default "Enabled" mode. Unfortunately, the only 1066 processor currently available is the $1000 3.46EE that we used for benchmarking.
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Badash7 - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link
Does it have or will it have through a bios update support for ddr2 667mhz or faster memory like the asus 925xe p5ad2-e does?jonmcc33 - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
The "real" Jonathan Wendel is uncovered!http://www.eeob.iastate.edu/faculty/WendelJ/jonath...
jonmcc33 - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Number 1 in talentless games like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and that makes him respected? A 5 year old could play those games.Maybe if he played Call of Duty or something else that requires skill then I'd think he deserves a motherboard named after him.
knitecrow - Friday, November 12, 2004 - link
those numbers don't matter for this boardthis board is targeted towards hard core gammers... who are slightly smarter than the average dell buyer.
the break down between AMD and Intel is very different for the performance gamming market. My guess is 60-40 (amd:intel)
Even Intel fanboyz are being persuaded by hard facts... for gamming Athlon64 is king.
OzMowerman - Friday, November 12, 2004 - link
AMDx86: 14.9%
notebook: 8.4%
server: 4.8%
Intel
x86: 83.6%
notebook: 90.1%
server: 96.9%
"a flea in the crack of an elephants arse" is the only thing that springs to mind
Its not hard to see why the amd fanboys get upset....LOL
when it comes to the end of the day, they make crap products and are untrustworthy.
Isnt it funny that its always the tight arse low income that sprulk amd the hardest.
If Intel made a chipset for amd processors, i would seriously consider buying one, but while our only choice is the backyarders via, and the incompetant nvidia, no thanks.
cryptonomicon - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
sorry, hard to resist flaming this board for some reason.cryptonomicon - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
so this board is really killer at.. uh.. what? media encoding and workstation performance? drool!Concillian - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#36:If those gamers are only overclocking the video card and do not overclock the CPU, they are potentially doing the right thing. What game fully utilizes an FX55 at the resolutions people actually use?
Games in general are not CPU bound at this point, so why fret over 5% here and there if the video card is going to limit your frame rates anyway? Get what's cheap for CPU and pimp out on the graphics card.
It would be nice to eventually see a review that exhibits just how GPU limited most games are even with the highest end GPUs. We always see CPU articls with the highest end GPUs to try to remove that side fo the equation and vice versa. But for a consumer they often have to take their budget and decide what gets spent where between CPU, RAM, and video cards. Probably the single most common decisions among gamers focus on these types of decisions, yet there are surprisingly few articles that focus on how to approch realistic purchasing decisions for these three critical components.
vailr - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#25: A serial port can be added to any USB port, using a USB-to-serial port adapter.$14.99 here: http://www.svc.com/usbsead.html
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#35 - My experience has been that ENTHUSIASTS know about water and phase-change cooling, but gamers usually don't know much about overclocking systems. If they overclock anything it's the video card. There are exceptions to every rule, but this is a GAMING system and I think our comments are apropos.If you believe the FX55 (2.6GHz) are not overclockable, you are not reading many articles. Most are reaching 2.9Ghz to 3.OGhz at stock voltage with air cooling. Those using water and phase-change are getting much higher results. The 90nm die-shrink will likely open the high-end even more for A64.