Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., March 2, 2004 -
When it comes to high-octane computing, it's tough to beat a system based
on ABIT Engineered hardware. Recently, top Canadian website Viper Lair
reviewed the ABIT KV8-MAX3. Here are the highlights:
"ABIT has earned the reputation as makers of some of the most innovative
motherboards on the market. Although they may not pack in as many extras
like front panels, and wacky LEDs, their innovations such as Softmenu
BIOS and OTES cooling technology serve to improve the enthusiast's experience
in areas that do matter... performance, stability and overclocking.
Layout:
| The KV8-MAX3 is laid out fairly well. You can also see above that
both IDE connections are located directly beneath the memory slots.
This location (rather than being located by the PCI slots) should
help those who have tall ATX cases and need to run IDE cables to optical
drives in the upper area of their case. |
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The diagnostic LED nearby is another bonus, as it'll help with some
basic troubleshooting. |
The ABIT OTES cooling technology finds its way to
the AMD platform with the KV8-MAX3. For this motherboard, a translucent
plastic shell surrounds the capacitors and mosfets, and the heat
generated is exhausted by a relatively silent cooling fan.
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Benchmark:
In all three SiSoft Sandra tests, we see that the ABIT board appears
to be the fastest between the three, and by a significant margin in each
of the tests. Will this trend continue as we move along in the review?
In the first of our series of real-world tests, the KV8-MAX3 completely
dominates the PiFast tests. ABIT's board is close to four seconds faster
than the other two here.
As we've seen through most of our application benchmarks, not much has
changed with the gaming tests, with the KV8 holding its lead. Though the
Q3 performance is quite extraordinary, the latter tests are a little more
reasonable as they use a modified version of the Q3 engine.
Conclusion:
The ABIT KV8-MAX3 was easily the fastest of the three K8T800 boards
tested today, and was quite stable throughout testing once we got past
the memory situation. Priced at about $146 USD, it falls in about the
middle of the pack in terms of pricing, but you do get a lot of features
and extras such as OTES cooling and SecureIDE. If you're in the market
for an Athlon 64, this would be on my list as one of the better choices.
Pros: Excellent stability, great performance, features
rich.
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