Abit AW9D-MAX

Verdict: Awesomely overclockable, but the layout is flawed

Confusingly, Abit produces two types of high-end motherboards in addition to its bog-standard boards. The Fatal1ty series, such as the AN9 32X is supposedly aimed at gamers, while the MAX series is aimed at overclockers, although we're not sure what the difference is.

The AW9D-MAX is based on the Intel 975X chipset, so it supports CrossFire, but not SLI. There are two high-speed PCI-E slots and two 1x PCI-E slots, but only one PCI slot. This PCI slot's positioning is such that installing two dual-slot Radeon cards in CrossFire will obscure it, so you'll be unable to have a CrossFire setup plus an X-Fi sound card or PhysX card. As the AW9D-MAX is a high-end gamer's board, it's likely that many buyers will want CrossFire, so this oversight restricts the AW9D-MAX's potential. After all, most hardcore gamers will want an X-Fi sound card, in addition to CrossFire dual graphics. It also seems that the second PCI slot has been sacrificed in favour of a seventh S-ATA II port, which few people will need.

All of the AW9D-MAX's seven S-ATA II ports are RAID-capable, as is the single eS-ATA II port on the back panel. The AW9D-MAX has a surfeit of USB 2 and FireWire ports too, plus two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Northbridge and Southbridge are both fitted with heatsinks, which have heatpipes that link up to one large heatsink at the rear of the board.

At the default BIOS settings, the AW9D-MAX pre-overclocked the FSB of our test Core 2 Duo CPU from 266MHz to 272MHz, which gave it an edge over the other 975X motherboards in this Labs test. If you want to overclock manually then you can set the vcore to 1.725V, the RAM to 2.65V and the Northbridge to 2V. Thanks to the excellent voltage options in the BIOS, the AW9D-MAX lived up to its MAX name; it overclocked stably to a 360MHz FSB, which is higher than any other 975X motherboard in this test.

While the AW9D-MAX is the fastest and most overclockable 975X board on test, it's expensive and the inclusion of only a single PCI slot near to the second high-speed PCI slot is a major flaw. In our view, the Asus P5W DH Deluxe is a better overall 975X motherboard.