Abit AB9-Pro: Mainstream P965 Performance and Pricing
by Gary Key on July 24, 2006 4:45 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 those stressful settings will make just about any recent game GPU limited. That brings up one of the critical flaws with Intel's 965 chipset: as it only supports a single PEG slot with full X16 bandwidth, anyone looking for maximum gaming performance by running two cards in SLI/CrossFire will have to look elsewhere. The charts below only include single GPU performance using a 7900 GTX, but you can refer to our Conroe Buyers Guide results to see the performance improvements that SLI/CrossFire bring to the table.
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; unfortunately, the 7950 GX2 is not supported on the P965 chipset yet. That means you should go with either a 975X motherboard for CrossFire, the nForce4 based P5N32-SLI SE for SLI, or wait for the nForce 500 series boards to show up on the Intel side of things.
Looking specifically at the Abit board, its relative positioning has improved somewhat at the higher quality gaming settings. With the exception of Serious Sam 2, performance is typically close to the top in the charts. The spread among these motherboards is also larger this time, ranging from 1%-6%, although a couple results in F.E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2 are the primary reason for the change. Really, you would still be hard pressed to tell the difference between any of these boards in gaming performance (again with the exception of the ASRock budget board).
Quick Take, Core 2 Version
Our latest preview of the Abit AB9 Pro now shows a motherboard capable of living up to its full performance capability. While we only noticed a couple of minor issues with the BIOS during a rigorous test schedule, we have to state once again that the overall board layout is unusual if not chaotic. This may appeal to some, but 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 ensured 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, but perhaps a less critical flaw for Core 2 Duo users. 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.
We do commend Abit on providing Dolby Digital support via the Realtek ALC-882D, 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. Abit has made great strides with the latest BIOS release and ensures us we will have an improved public release BIOS shortly. However, in the future, we would prefer seeing a BIOS that's more feature complete before retail availability begins. We have been assured by Abit that this situation will not occur again.
We expect continued refinement of the BIOS along with additional performance improvements. Our main concern at this time is trying to figure out what the true overclock capability will be with Abit's current BIOS implementation. We know it has great potential; let's see if Abit can take advantage of it. We look forward to testing the board [Ed: one last time!] with the released BIOS and will post full results in the near future in our P965 shootout article.
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 those stressful settings will make just about any recent game GPU limited. That brings up one of the critical flaws with Intel's 965 chipset: as it only supports a single PEG slot with full X16 bandwidth, anyone looking for maximum gaming performance by running two cards in SLI/CrossFire will have to look elsewhere. The charts below only include single GPU performance using a 7900 GTX, but you can refer to our Conroe Buyers Guide results to see the performance improvements that SLI/CrossFire bring to the table.
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; unfortunately, the 7950 GX2 is not supported on the P965 chipset yet. That means you should go with either a 975X motherboard for CrossFire, the nForce4 based P5N32-SLI SE for SLI, or wait for the nForce 500 series boards to show up on the Intel side of things.
Looking specifically at the Abit board, its relative positioning has improved somewhat at the higher quality gaming settings. With the exception of Serious Sam 2, performance is typically close to the top in the charts. The spread among these motherboards is also larger this time, ranging from 1%-6%, although a couple results in F.E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2 are the primary reason for the change. Really, you would still be hard pressed to tell the difference between any of these boards in gaming performance (again with the exception of the ASRock budget board).
Quick Take, Core 2 Version
Our latest preview of the Abit AB9 Pro now shows a motherboard capable of living up to its full performance capability. While we only noticed a couple of minor issues with the BIOS during a rigorous test schedule, we have to state once again that the overall board layout is unusual if not chaotic. This may appeal to some, but 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 ensured 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, but perhaps a less critical flaw for Core 2 Duo users. 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.
We do commend Abit on providing Dolby Digital support via the Realtek ALC-882D, 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. Abit has made great strides with the latest BIOS release and ensures us we will have an improved public release BIOS shortly. However, in the future, we would prefer seeing a BIOS that's more feature complete before retail availability begins. We have been assured by Abit that this situation will not occur again.
We expect continued refinement of the BIOS along with additional performance improvements. Our main concern at this time is trying to figure out what the true overclock capability will be with Abit's current BIOS implementation. We know it has great potential; let's see if Abit can take advantage of it. We look forward to testing the board [Ed: one last time!] with the released BIOS and will post full results in the near future in our P965 shootout article.
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Zebo - Monday, July 31, 2006 - link
I do not understand not finding the MAX FSB of these Conroe Boards by lowering multiplier to say 6-7. Many of us want to buy a Yugo(E6300) and make a Mercedes (3000Mhz +) and with these crappy sub 400Mhz bus speeds shown here: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/abitab9proupdat...">http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/abitab9proupdat...We will be unable to do so. The very best board there can crank a E6300 up to 2800Mhz? Yes or No? No probably but we will never know based on your limited info.
Tujan - Tuesday, July 25, 2006 - link
What is the least wattage power supply that would be used with these boards. For examples sake,the Abit board just reviewed ?700 watts is fairly large wattage. I would like to use a 450 watt high efficiency unit. Or 500 watt at the most.
Whats the 'least' wattage power supply that you might use.? Considering you wouldn't be doing any of the tweaks,that is running the board at factory stats. [1]?
This board is going to cost how much ? [2] Is this board in the same range as the 975s from Intel ? Or within the same range as the 945 MBs wich run the Pentium,Pentium Ds (Prescotts)?
Gary Key - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
What CPU? Conroe/Pentium D and a X1900XT would still justify 500w range if you expect to upgrade to the next generation video card and also overclock. Conroe and a 7800GT as an example would be fine with a high quality 400~450w power supply and still allow decent headroom for overclocking.
A high quality 400w power supply would be fine, depending on the 12V rails a 350w might suffice with zero overclocking and a 7600 / X1600 level video card, all of this depends on the number of drives, cooling, and cards you add-on.
At this point, $140, probably come down $125 as more boards are introduced in this price range.
Tujan - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
Thanks for reply. Yes probably an Antech power supply. True Power,or Smart Power HE unit. Most of my regards in builds doesn't dismiss the overclocker market. Still it is good to know what the normal configuration will require.7600GT,or 1600XT, Maybe a single large Sata,or two high-end Sata 3s in Raid 0. USBs in use,keyboard etc. 2 gigs of Ram. Core Duo 6300 . Creative latest sound card. DVD /DVD writer.
144$,.. not bad for sure.
xsilver - Monday, July 24, 2006 - link
does this uguru bios allow on the fly overclocking without reboot? (in windows)actually do all motherboards pretty much allow that these days?
Gary Key - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link
It normally does, testing a new version now that works with the latest bios and P965. Hopefully, I can report on it before the 965 roundup.DigitalFreak - Monday, July 24, 2006 - link
7 slot motherboards? First it dropped to 6 slots, and now it's down to 5! With dual slot GPU coolers becoming commonplace, we need all the slots we can get.monsoon - Monday, July 24, 2006 - link
I know you CONROE overclocking dedicated article is still on the way; I just wanted to mention I'm one among those who would rather see the E6600 results rather than the E6700 or other, if we have to choose one CPU only....Also, do you think an overclocking comparison between MEROM and CONROE ( and YONAH ) is coming in the future ?
Thanks for another great article; I'll be drooling until one of those chips is in my hands...
;)
JarredWalton - Monday, July 24, 2006 - link
Right now, E6600 chips would top out at the same spot on most motherboards. The boards are holding back the E6700, not the CPU - except for the ASUS P5WDH, of course. So until the companies can get better OC'ing BIOS versions out, you're limited to 9x367 (roughly) with this Abit board.As far as comparing Merom and Conroe overclocking, that will be a bit difficult since Merom is going to fit in a different socket and won't be available for a few months more. The most we got out of Yonah on the AOpen motherboard was about 2.8 GHz, Conroe is clearly the better choice for overall performance since high end cooling is allowing people to reach 4.0 GHz and beyond. Merom could be interesting in that it will have higher multipliers so you won't need the high FSB speed support, but the inability to run Merom chips in socket 775 boards means you'll have to go for something like the AOpen board we reviewed, which is very expensive, though granted it's about the same price as most of the 975X Conroe motherboards.
dugbug - Monday, July 24, 2006 - link
Do you really think it will be two+ months before we see a merom laptop? What about sneek-preview laptops for review sites? Info on merom can't get here fast enough :)