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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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.