Abit AW9D-MAX

very good review, that board looks hot.

pitty about the pci slot.

i'll be sticking with an asus board i think

Nothing about overclocking?

And can I just say that the advert on the first page is VERY annoying. It seems like BiT is trying to go into Hexus with far too many ads. The current 3 adverts on every page are fine and relevant (I frequently click on many of them), but the ad on the first page made it hard for me to concentrate on the first paragraph.

Tim....do u sleep?

Another review after what can only be called a half dissertation? your mad.

Oi, I wrote this :P

No Tim doesn't sleep, we keep him on a Caffiene drip.

Doug, there are only 5 adverts on the page and it's the same size as the Inq uses also and we're still less than Hex. It's a fair point, but noone wants to pay a subscription and everyone wants it for free :(

lol just realised mate!

unlike Tim I have been caffine deprived today
and thats with a free starbucks in the office too DOH

Originally Posted by DougEdey
Nothing about overclocking?

Final page under my thoughts. ;)

The ad goes away after a couple of pages :)

some of the graphs have the wrong legend underneath - some of the gaming ones which should say "fps" say "seconds - lower is faster". Aside from that, great review (as usual)!

Originally Posted by DougEdey
adverts

Couple of things - they are frequency capped; you'll only see those three times before they disappear completely. We also only place them on pages where it 'makes sense' to have them. If the page layout doesn't suit, there will be no ad. Lastly, we have to offer these ads to stay competitive - if people can't buy what they want here, they will take their entire business elsewhere (and stops us having to resort to irrelevant ads / text link ads / whatever). I think the first two points kinda 'prove' were not out to piss you all off. :)


Please keep this thread on topic. There is now a dedicated thread for discussion of advertising here

Would be nice to see the 1333 strap option finally emerge on boards. However it'd need to be a use set option rather than an auto option above 400 FSB IMO. The performance hit from the increased chipset latencies takes a fair FSB increase to overcome (looking at 30 or so FSB) for most people running at or around 400 FSB the 1066 strap is more than sufficient. Those wanting more could make good use of the extra strap selectable in bios.

If the thermal crap on the max is anything like that used on the AB9 then applying new paste should allow you to clock higher still.
FWIW, managed ~ 480 FSB on a AB9 which also runs a 1066 strap (all be it i'd assume slightly looser timings being 965 chipset based) vMCH helped to a certain extent but above 1.8 or so the chipset seems to overheat due to shoddy cooling. Keep the chipset cooler and you should be able to hit a higher FSB :)

Originally Posted by mclean007
some of the graphs have the wrong legend underneath - some of the gaming ones which should say "fps" say "seconds - lower is faster". Aside from that, great review (as usual)!

Thanks, fixed - I don't know why that wasn't picked up on...

Originally Posted by Tim S
Thanks, fixed - I don't know why that wasn't picked up on...

Bindi did it!

Originally Posted by DougEdey
Bindi did it!

I always mess up the graphs and they take ages to do :'(

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
I always mess up the graphs and they take ages to do :'(

Control panel -> Add/remove programs -> Microsoft office ;)

something i meant find out on, i notice that this board is quad core compatible.. how do we know wether a board will work with kentsfield?, is it any 975X or just some 965's and 975X's

This board has the worst, bar none, layout I've ever seen. It's absolutely atrocious! I would rather have that audio-max thing sitting in an x1 slot or a PCI slot and remove that proprietary connection but add a hardware limitation so it can only be used on abit boards. And the SATA ports! Sweet jesus this is downright atrocious on so many levels! abit is still not worthy of the ABIT name.

Originally Posted by M4RTIN
something i meant find out on, i notice that this board is quad core compatible.. how do we know wether a board will work with kentsfield?, is it any 975X or just some 965's and 975X's

It supports Kentsfield (or will when the next official BIOS is released) - I have no ETA on that, but will find out. I had an AW9D-MAX running a Kentsfield while I was out in Taiwan at the start of October. :)

Are the mch voltages that you mention the BIOS values or did you meter them?
The guys on XS reckon that there is significant droop (& they have a vmod) where 2.0V in BIOS for mch may only be ~1.8V.

& I'm with Highland3r on the 1333 strap , it's effects & therefore how much (if any) of an improvement it may actually yield.

Still seems to be 1 of the top 975X boards but I think that I'm going to wait on the IN9 32X-MAX & also how RD600 does.

Originally Posted by BUFF
Are the mch voltages that you mention the BIOS values or did you meter them?
The guys on XS reckon that there is significant droop (& they have a vmod) where 2.0V in BIOS for mch may only be ~1.8V.

They're actual BIOS values - metered is roughly 0.02 to 0.05V less when I was doing some testing in Taiwan.

Ach! I'm tired of flicking to page 2 of your reviews and then having to stop there since the layouts are useless. I have a single PCI-E 16x graphics card, a single PCI-E 4x raid card, a PCI soundcard and a PCI wireless card. This means I need at least two usable PCI slots and two usable PCI-E x16 slots(or a x16 and x4). Why oh why do mobo manufacturers keep sticking these POS PCI-E 1x slots on their mobos? I just spent 20 minutes looking for a PCI-E wireless cards and the things basicly don't exist, the only thing you can really buy for PCI-E 1x slots is gigabit ethernet cards, and with the commonness of gigabit ethernet, sometimes dual gigabit ethernet on modern motherboards who needs a third gigabit port anyway?

This is something that's consistantly pissing me off, because nothing seems to be changing. For absolutely no good reason(or so it feels like) those of us who use more then just 2 ad-in cards have been deprived of a large chunk of the options out there.

Is the audio max interface essentially a PCI-E?

Intersesting that you didn't compare the 6-quad Gigabyte board in testing. Twas praised so highly by you chaps a couple of weeks ago....

Originally Posted by Tim S
They're actual BIOS values - metered is roughly 0.02 to 0.05V less when I was doing some testing in Taiwan.

It appears that the retail boards may be worse in this respect than the preproduction/development boards.

Originally Posted by specofdust
Ach! I'm tired of flicking to page 2 of your reviews and then having to stop there since the layouts are useless. I have a single PCI-E 16x graphics card, a single PCI-E 4x raid card, a PCI soundcard and a PCI wireless card. This means I need at least two usable PCI slots and two usable PCI-E x16 slots(or a x16 and x4).

have you looked at the 680i mobos including the abit IN9 32X-MAX?

Originally Posted by Mighty Yoshimi
Is the audio max interface essentially a PCI-E?

It's a reversed one, but it's not PCI-E, it's the AC97 interface direct from the southbridge put through a reversed PCI-E x1 slot.

Originally Posted by Nature
Intersesting that you didn't compare the 6-quad Gigabyte board in testing. Twas praised so highly by you chaps a couple of weeks ago....

We didn't do CrossFire testing on it before we sent it back though, and it's not a "true" CrossFire board as the 2nd slot is only x4. All the boards we tested against are CrossFire boards, either RD580 or 975X.

Unfortunately the layouts are the way of the future although I WHOLEY sympathise considering I have perfectly working PCI cards and don't want to have to fork out for replacement stuff that works esentially exactly the same because add-in board companies can't pull their fingers out. At leasts with the ISA/PCI transition there were plenty of PCI cards out by the time they killed off ISA in the KT133 days.

Bindi, is slowly becoming my hero.. its scary, he has a plausible answer to everything

Bindi, what is the meaning of life?!