Abit AB9 Pro: A sneak peek at Intel's new P965 chipset
by Gary Key on July 3, 2006 3:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Systems
All three boards we're including in the benchmarks support current socket 775 Intel processors, and the Abit AB9 Pro and NVIDIA 590 SLI Intel Edition will fully support the Intel Core 2 Duo processors upon release. We did our benchmarking with the Pentium D 805 processor but will follow up shortly with the Pentium 950D and 955XE benchmarks once we receive our production release BIOS. The Abit AB9 Pro fully supported our E6300, E6600, and X6800 Core 2 Duo processors, but we cannot provide results at this time due to NDA restrictions.
A 2GB memory configuration is now standard in the AT test bed as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory. We chose memory from Corsair that would offer a wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via MemTest 86 and our test application results for the Asus and NVIDIA boards. Our current beta level Abit BIOS locked the memory timings at 5-5-5-12 so we also tested the Asus board at this setting in order to provide a fair comparison.
All other components in our test configurations are exactly the same with the boards being set up in their default configurations. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this article at standard settings. We will not report on 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF single and SLI until we have a production ready BIOS to review. This holds true for the balance of our Networking, Storage System, and Audio benchmarks.
All three boards we're including in the benchmarks support current socket 775 Intel processors, and the Abit AB9 Pro and NVIDIA 590 SLI Intel Edition will fully support the Intel Core 2 Duo processors upon release. We did our benchmarking with the Pentium D 805 processor but will follow up shortly with the Pentium 950D and 955XE benchmarks once we receive our production release BIOS. The Abit AB9 Pro fully supported our E6300, E6600, and X6800 Core 2 Duo processors, but we cannot provide results at this time due to NDA restrictions.
| Test Systems | |
| Processor: | Intel Pentium D 805 |
| RAM: | 2 x 1GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C3 |
| RAM Settings: | 5-5-5-12 533MHZ, 2.100V - Abit 3-2-2-8 533MHZ, 2.250V - Asus/NVIDIA |
| OS Hard Drive: | 1 x WD Raptor 74GB 7200 RPM SATA (8MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | NVIDIA Platform Driver - 9.35 Intel Platform Driver - 8.0.1.1002 |
| Video Card: | 1 x EVGA 7900GTX (PCI Express) for all tests |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 91.31 WHQL |
| Optical Drive: | BenQ DW1640 |
| Cooling: | Retail Intel HSF |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GamexStream 700W |
| Case: | Gigabyte 3D Aurora |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboards: | Abit AB9 Pro NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition Asus P5WD2-E Premium |
A 2GB memory configuration is now standard in the AT test bed as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory. We chose memory from Corsair that would offer a wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via MemTest 86 and our test application results for the Asus and NVIDIA boards. Our current beta level Abit BIOS locked the memory timings at 5-5-5-12 so we also tested the Asus board at this setting in order to provide a fair comparison.
All other components in our test configurations are exactly the same with the boards being set up in their default configurations. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this article at standard settings. We will not report on 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF single and SLI until we have a production ready BIOS to review. This holds true for the balance of our Networking, Storage System, and Audio benchmarks.
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mechBgon - Thursday, July 6, 2006 - link
Peak. A summit, a maximum value, etc.Peek. A quick look, a glance.
Pique. Annoyance, such as some people experience when "peak" and "peek" get swapped in full view of 2-3 million people. ;)
That is all. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled DailyTech program. :)7
JarredWalton - Saturday, July 8, 2006 - link
It just looked so nice right next to "sneak". We were debating between a "sneek peek", a "sneak peak", and a "snique pique" and you can see which one got the vote. ;)Sorry for the error - proofing thousands of words per week, stuff does slip through occasionally. On the bright side, we can fix the errors as they're caught - revisionist publishing at its best.
zsdersw - Thursday, July 6, 2006 - link
Pique can also mean to provoke or arouse.. as in: "His flashy outfit piqued my interest."commonuser - Thursday, July 6, 2006 - link
good review. particularly so as i've become increasingly interested in the direction these new platforms will take.however, i must say that i'm finding the obsession with SLI/Crossfire a bit overemphasized in every motherboard review i've read on the web as of late. now, i really do not have the exact figures at my disposal, but i'd say with a pretty high level of assumptive confidence that a significantly lower proportion of so-called "enthusiast" cyberpopulace makes use of these solutions, compared to traditional, albeit powerful single-gpu setup (think x1900xtx, or 7900gtx). "mainstream" segment falls into a non-SLI/CF category even more so...
therefore, when we have this opening sentence: , and this sentence in the conclusion: , one has to ask him/herself: what really is the difference among "enthusiast", "mainstream", "value", and/or "entry-level" chipsets and mainboards? is it soon going to be a huge oversight or a mistake if a manufacturer leaves out SLI support on a "value" or "entry-level" MB?
JarredWalton - Saturday, July 8, 2006 - link
Note the criticism is directed at *Intel* for not allowing manufacturers to make 2x8 PCIe configurations using P965. Given the cost of making that change, I would much rather have the option of using SLI/CF even if I never take advantage of it. One PCIe X16 slot is pretty much "value oriented" in my opinion these days.Kiste - Thursday, July 6, 2006 - link
Is it even possible to install WinXP from a PATA drive if the PATA port is 3rd party?I just bought a very nice BenQ PATA DVD writer and I certainly won't get rid of it just to buy Plextor's crappy SATA DVD writer or the even more abysmal one from Samsung.
Gary Key - Thursday, July 6, 2006 - link
Yes, there is limited functionality in the bios that allows the system to recognize the PATA port upon boot and for it to be utilized to load the OS or drivers if the OS is already loaded. We have seen this operation on our first two 965 boards but have one board that would not allow the PATA port to be recognized until the drivers were loaded. We were told this would be corrected in the shipping bios.goinginstyle - Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - link
Is it possible to load Linux with this IDE controller?Kiste - Thursday, July 6, 2006 - link
Ok, I'm not sure I completely understand. I can boot up with my WinXP installation CD and then I'll have to install drivers for the 3rd party PATA controller before I can install WinXP? Is that about right? Does that mean that I need a floppy drive?JarredWalton - Saturday, July 8, 2006 - link
If the BIOS is designed correctly, it can make the base XP installation detect the 3rd party IDE without drivers. Some earlier IDE chipsets didn't work (back in nF3 and ealier time frame), but most IDE and SATA solutions will now work without a driver disk. You would still need the driver disk for RAID, and certain BIOS settings might require it as well.