The Tech Report says the ABIT AG8 is an affordable, overclockable and very tweakable platform for an LGA775 processor

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., September 27th, 2004 -Exploring the world of Personal Computing, The Tech Report website recently took a look at ABIT's AG8; the only Intel 915P chipset based motherboard with a 2nd processor onboard. Here are the highlights:

A lot people concerned about the clearance between the PCI-Express slot and the memory, let's hear what Tech Report has to say about the AG8 "Clearance definitely won't be an issue around the board's PCI Express X16 graphics slot. There's plenty of room between the PCI-E slot and the board's DIMM tabs to allow memory modules to be swapped in and out without removing the graphics card. The board's low-profile south bridge heat sink and stubby capacitors shouldn't get in the way of longer graphics cards, either."

Why is using Rubycon capacitors on a motherboard is so important? Tech Report will you all about it. "The Rubycon capacitors are Japanese-made and purportedly of higher quality than other capacitors. If you've ever lost a motherboard to leaky caps, the Rubycons should provide some peace of mind. The AG8's POST code display is pretty self-explanatory. Rather than trying to decipher obscure beep codes, you can easily diagnose board initialization problems by reading the two-digit display. I can imagine that Abit's tech support division is just as fond of the POST code display as tweak-happy enthusiasts."

The Tech Report had great overclocking results with the AG8 and an Intel P4 2.8Ghz LGA775 CPU "Well, maybe not a little. With only 1.4V, I was able to push our Pentium 4 520 to over 3.5GHz on the AG8 with a 255MHz front-side bus. At those speeds, the system was rock solid. However, the board refused to boot with a 260MHz front-side bus. It would post, but during the boot process, the AG8 failed to recognize the system's Serial ATA system disk. Still, 255MHz ain't bad, especially when you consider that we're running the processor nearly 800MHz above stock with only a modest voltage boost and a stock Intel cooler."

Conclusion: "If you're looking for an affordable, overclockable, and very tweakable platform for an LGA775 processor, the AG8 is an excellent choice. The board is fast, its BIOS is loaded with tweaking options and hardware monitoring, and Intel's one-two punch of the 915P MCH and ICH6R south bridge is tough to beat. Oh, and you don't need to switch to DDR2, which given current performance and pricing, is a nice bonus. At the end of the day, Abit's done a great job with the AG8. The board delivers much of what makes Intel's 900-series chipsets so exciting and the AG8 has all of Abit's usual uGuru bells and whistles."

For the full review go here: http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q3/abit-ag8/index.x?pg=1

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