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
Final Words
Our preview of the Abit AB9 Pro shows a board with a high level of performance potential provided the production BIOS allows tweaking of the memory settings. Abit ensures us we will have a BIOS with this capability shortly and we look forward to testing the board again with our Pentium D processors and providing Core 2 Duo results in the near future. While we did not notice any other issues with the Abit system during a rigorous test schedule, we have to state once again that the overall layout is unusual if not chaotic. While this may appeal to some, we found the location of the IDE and floppy port connectors to be very difficult to work with in our test case. These port locations required the use of long cables and the partial blockage of airflow over the CPU and memory locations, certainly not what you want with a Pentium D processor.
Our other issue is the lack of a secondary PCI-E X16 physical slot that could provide PCI-E X4 capability for an additional graphics card or other PCI-E peripherals. We feel like this would have been a better option than providing two PCI-E X1 slots -- in fact, we would like to see all motherboard manufacturers begin to only use X16 physical connectors for all PCI-E slots; there ought to be at least some cost benefit in only purchasing one type of plastic connector, though of course we're simplifying things a bit. We do commend Abit on providing Dolby Digital support via the Realtek ALC882D, dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers that use the PCI-E interface, an e-SATA port, Silent OTES system, and their impressive µGuru technology for overclocking and full system monitoring/control capabilities. We will provide a full feature list and results for networking, storage, and audio in our full review of this interesting if not funky board once our Core 2 Duo NDA expires.
This was our first experience with the Intel P965 Express chipset and even with the lack of memory settings and limited overclocking capabilities due to our early BIOS, we have to say this chipset was impressive from both a performance and stability viewpoint. This has generally been the trademark of Intel chipsets and the P965 is no different. However, the lack of official dual X8 GPU capability at this time means you will have to look elsewhere for CrossFire or SLI support. This really is a huge oversight or mistake by Intel as this chipset certainly offers very good performance across the board. Our other issue is the lack of native PATA support on the ICH8R; this is not acceptable considering the almost absolute reliance on the PATA interface for optical drives at this time. Look for additional Core 2 Duo supporting i975X, P965, and NVIDIA 590/570 SLI Intel Edition motherboard previews in the near future, along with a surprise or two from VIA and SIS.
Our preview of the Abit AB9 Pro shows a board with a high level of performance potential provided the production BIOS allows tweaking of the memory settings. Abit ensures us we will have a BIOS with this capability shortly and we look forward to testing the board again with our Pentium D processors and providing Core 2 Duo results in the near future. While we did not notice any other issues with the Abit system during a rigorous test schedule, we have to state once again that the overall layout is unusual if not chaotic. While this may appeal to some, we found the location of the IDE and floppy port connectors to be very difficult to work with in our test case. These port locations required the use of long cables and the partial blockage of airflow over the CPU and memory locations, certainly not what you want with a Pentium D processor.
Our other issue is the lack of a secondary PCI-E X16 physical slot that could provide PCI-E X4 capability for an additional graphics card or other PCI-E peripherals. We feel like this would have been a better option than providing two PCI-E X1 slots -- in fact, we would like to see all motherboard manufacturers begin to only use X16 physical connectors for all PCI-E slots; there ought to be at least some cost benefit in only purchasing one type of plastic connector, though of course we're simplifying things a bit. We do commend Abit on providing Dolby Digital support via the Realtek ALC882D, dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers that use the PCI-E interface, an e-SATA port, Silent OTES system, and their impressive µGuru technology for overclocking and full system monitoring/control capabilities. We will provide a full feature list and results for networking, storage, and audio in our full review of this interesting if not funky board once our Core 2 Duo NDA expires.
This was our first experience with the Intel P965 Express chipset and even with the lack of memory settings and limited overclocking capabilities due to our early BIOS, we have to say this chipset was impressive from both a performance and stability viewpoint. This has generally been the trademark of Intel chipsets and the P965 is no different. However, the lack of official dual X8 GPU capability at this time means you will have to look elsewhere for CrossFire or SLI support. This really is a huge oversight or mistake by Intel as this chipset certainly offers very good performance across the board. Our other issue is the lack of native PATA support on the ICH8R; this is not acceptable considering the almost absolute reliance on the PATA interface for optical drives at this time. Look for additional Core 2 Duo supporting i975X, P965, and NVIDIA 590/570 SLI Intel Edition motherboard previews in the near future, along with a surprise or two from VIA and SIS.
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CYBERX1800XT - Thursday, July 6, 2006 - link
it's going to take alot to convince me that abit's quality in electroitics(resistors,capicitors,pnp transistors and voltage regulators) hasn't overshadowed there so-called new make over. all i have to say is 'anyone remember the abit be-6 revision 2?? i do,,i also remember 12 hours after buying an abit mobo,,at least 14 caps literally blew up. so all this halla-ballhooey about the product line refreshment may just be hype. i'm not scowling at anyone at anandtech,,i believe and trust there reviews. who i don't trust is abit's choice in 2nd or 3rd rate electroitics. besides,,who cares,,this is a rather whimpy board. for the cost of this mobo,,you could easily spend 20 more bucks and get a ASUS A8R-MVP,,and have crossfire to boot. i'm sorry to sound so negative,,but abit left a bad taste in my mouth in 2000. and it has yet to have left. i honestly apologize to everyone at anandtech. not demeaning any of you guys,i totally trust your revievs. but i switched to amd,,and i only bought 1 abit board. and that will never happen again. i will ONLY use ASUS!!!araczynski - Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - link
personally i find the inclusion of onboard audio on ALL motherboards to be quite the waste of consumer dollars. what kind of an "enthusiast" puts up with onboard audio? granted its more then fine for windows, but when you're aiming a mobo at an enthusiast you don't have to make him pay for some crappy soundchip that he'll never do more with then disable in the bios.and yes, get rid of the floppy connector (usb version for those that can't live without them).
Pirks - Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - link
Not quite that simple - it's actually cheaper to make mobos with audio than without it. With audio you have one manufacturing line cranking out mobos, just one model => CHEAP. If you wanna get mobos w/o audio, you gonna get TWO manufacturing lines cranking out mobos => EXPENSIVE. This is why they always produce only ONE SINGLE MOBO MODEL, EVERYTHING INCLUDED - all the floppy and legacy crap - 'cause that's CHEAP. You go to options, exclude this, exclude that blah blah - and the price -wooosh!- soars up to clouds and the blue sky :)bob4432 - Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - link
glad to see a floppy is still around. i am probably the only person that uses one, but i appreciatet the m/b manf for taking me into consideration :Dafrodite - Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - link
Say what!?!The problem here is the boneheaded optical drive manufacturers not using SATA on their drives, not Intel removing obsolete technology.
I say:
Get rid of PATA
Get rid of Floppy-drives
Get rid of mouse and keyboard ports
Then use all that lovely real estate on the board to put a digital tv receiver or bluetooth-module or wifi or firewire or just more USB-slots or whatever you want..
Please, what year is it now, 2006 or 1996.. floppydrive connectors on a "next-gen motherboard"??
mine - Saturday, July 8, 2006 - link
second thatiwhat about the following scenario.... you will never forget that :
3 young Mac videoeditors rolling on the floor with wet trousers looking @ a Windows XP install with an open case
an attached floppy and F6
these people have never seen a floppy in their whole life and these things are one click away on Mac OS X
Pirks - Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - link
Hmm, why this smells like a Mac? ;)JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - link
Until we have the replacements ready, completely removing support for older technologies is jumping the gun. We need a next-generation operating system that doesn't ever require a floppy drive (which we will get with Windows Vista). More importantly, we need SATA optical drives that are at least as good as the PATA counterparts, and with equivalent prices. Right now, I'm only aware of one company making SATA DVDR drives (Plextor), and the consensus seems to be that the drives aren't all that great. Widespread support for SATA optical drives (meaning software support -- what good is a DVDR if your favorite burning application doesn't support it?) is still lacking.The end result is that every motherboard manufacturer that uses ICH8 is pretty much forced to include another chip on the motherboard to handle IDE support. Intel isn't getting rid of IDE support; they're just placing the burden of including such support on the motherboard manufacturers. Seriously, how many transistors does it take to support IDE? Perhaps the reason it was removed was to reduce pin counts on the Southbridge, but I doubt it. We're not even asking for anything special in terms of IDE support; just include the same old IDE support that has been present on motherboards for the past decade or so.
jonp - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
Is the Zalman unit "stock"?
Gary Key - Monday, July 3, 2006 - link
We used the stock retail heatsink for all testing except overclocking. We use the Zalman for overclocking and also tried the Tuniq 120 for fitment issues.