ABIT AA8-DuraMAX receives Editor's Choice Award from PC Perspective

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., September 9th, 2004 - PC Perspective; the reference hardware review site of choice for all readers regarding the PC industry recently took a look at ABIT's Intel LGA775 socket based motherboard; AA8-DuraMAX. Here are the highlights:

Let's hear what PC Perspective says about AA8-DuraMAX's layout "The AA8-DuraMAX supports 4 DIMM slots of DDR2 memory in two channels. For the Abit board, the colors do not indicate different channels, instead you should install memory in both the orange slots first and then the green slots, should you have that many memory modules. The theory behind dual channel memory needs to be solidified in my mind, as in some other motherboards, you are required to install memory modules in other fashions. I think a clearly defined method for memory should be defined and stuck with, and I think the seperation between two DIMMs like Abit has done is probably the best way to do it. Here is the CPU socket pictured with the north bridge heatsink that Abit has installed. The unit is pretty beefy and very effective at cooling the north bridge, which is good for overclockers."

ABIT uGuru; the ultimate Window tweaking software that offers OC Guru, ABIT EQ, Black BOX and Flash Menu. Let's hear what PC Perspective has to say "This is one of the best features for motherboards, in my humble opinion. With the Abit FlashMenu program you can download a new bios and update your motherboard all through windows. By clicking the LiveUpdate, the program will even fetch the latest bios; no more hunting through websites to find the bios and downloading it yourself. Of course, if you still wish to do that, you can update your bios from a file you have on your PC as well. Thanks to apps like this, we are another step closer to throwing away our floppy drives."

The most powerful Overclocking By Application tool developed by ABIT engineers; AutoDrive. Let's hear what PC Perspective has to say "Clicking on the AutoDrive icon takes us here, where we can select an OC Guru mode for an individual application. Here you can see that we have set up Content Creation Winstone to use our "Quiet" mode. The Abit OC Guru software notes when we start this EXE file and dynamically changes the overclocking settings to whatever I have defined in the "Quiet" settings. You can do this with any number of applications including games, where you might want to overclock a bit more than normal."

PC Perspective was able to reach an amazing 264Mhz front side bus on a 2.8Ghz P4 CPU! "The results were pretty amazing, easily reaching a FSB of 264 MHz for a total core speed of just under 3.7 GHz. Considering this was done with just stock cooling and minor voltage increases, taking the 2.8 GHz processor up 900 MHz is awesome. Prior to testing with the AA8-DuraMAX, our Asus P5AD2 motherboard was able to overclock the FSB to 245 MHz, but this Abit board easily overshadows our success there. Simply put, the Abit boards offer the user all the tools they could possibly need to overclock their system and get every last MHz squeezed out of it."

Conclusion, "The motherobard layout was well done by Abit's engineers leaving room where it was necessary to cater to the high end user. The inclusion of a good quality heatsink and fan on the north bridge gives the overclocker a bit more room when tweaking the motherboard and having some fun with it. The uGuru software is another good addition to this motherboard package, especially for users that have been interested in overclocking their systems but have either been timid about it or didn't know where to start. The OCGuru software gives them a good place to start that is usually pretty safe but still shows some results. Abit's tech support in the US is growing with the addition of software like BlackBox and buyers should definitely pay attention to things of that nature when buying PC products. The ability to flash the BIOS from Windows is another good feature for everyone including those like myself who have been trying to get away from the dreaded floppy drive for some time. Abit has succeeded where no other motherboard manufactuer has yet by making a motherboard available for the 775-pin platform that is both high performance, loaded with features, and low cost!"

We are honoured to received the Editor's Choice award from PC Perspective. "Just like the Abit AV8 motherboard for the AMD performance platform, the AA8-DuraMAX is a blazing fast motherboard with all the extras overclockers and enthusiasts are looking for. Anyone planning to make the jump into the PCI Express graphics world with Intel's new platform will definitely want to give the Abit AA8-DuraMAX motherboard strong consideration. Due to their great feature set as well as the outstanding overclocking experience we had, not to mention the best priced Intel 925X motherboard we could find, we once again offer Abit our Editor's Choice award for their AA8-DuraMAX motherboard."

For the full review go here:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=69&type=expert&pid=2

For more information on the ABIT AA8-DuraMAX, go here:
ABIT AA8-DuraMAX

For more on ABIT go here:
http://www.ABIT.com.tw

ABIT's Advanced Durability brings greater responsibility to the motherboard manufacturers in creating durable products with quality, reliability and stability engineered for long-term, problem-free use. All of ABIT motherboards are Advanced Durability tested and approved. ABIT looks to all motherboard makers to make a similar durability commitment to the end-user.

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