ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE – Ultimate Hardware by OC Tools
The most overclockable Intel P4 board that money can buy

February 16, 2005 Fremont, CA - Continuing in the trend of excellence, the ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE earns an Ultimate Hardware Award from OCTools.com. Here are the highlights from a very detailed review:

"ABIT is one of the most respected board manufacturers that caters mainly to the gamer, enthusiast and overclocker. For so many years ABIT has provided this niche market with the latest and greatest tools in pushing their systems to the limits. Combining the latest in motherboard technology with Fatal1ty's gaming experience and knowledge, ABIT gives us an Intel LGA775 platform that is designed to meet the needs of both gamer and extreme user."

The ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE board boasts some of the most innovative thermal solutions we have seen to date.

ABIT Dual OTES Technology - This is an exhaust system designed to extract heat away from the mosfet and the socket area. It acts as a vent where warm air is sucked out by dual fans located at the back of the I/O panel. Works with ABIT FanEQ to automatically adjust fan speeds for the optimal balance of thermal and acoustic performance.

ABIT OC Strips Technology - This is the first time we have come across such form of PCB cooling. Specially designed copper strips are embedded at the back of the motherboard to help draw heat away from the PCB area directly below where the mosfets are. Shows you the lengths ABIT would go just to make sure that this Fatal1ty board is the coolest it can be.

Onboard Audio utilizes Intel's High Definition Audio CODEC via the Realtek ALC880D chip. It supports new entertainment formats such as 7.1 surround sound, Dolby* Digital, and DTS*. Audio codec support for 192 kHz quality, multiple streams, and better voice input for speech recognition and voice-over-IP. It also supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF In/Out. This is also the first motherboard with Dolby Digital Live support bringing games to life. An included Audio Riser card that houses all digital and analog inputs and outputs is provided in the package. AudioMAX technology reduces noise interference from high frequency signals with this independent audio riser card for outstanding 7.1-channel quality.

Case modders delight: This board also features on-board ultra-bright red LEDs integrated underneath the PCB that lights up the board's surroundings. LEDs are also located around the inners of the OTES cooling system. This gives a great light effect for those with windowed cases.

Another feature that will surely be welcomed by the hardcore enthusiast is the placement of a power-on and reset button on the board itself. No more shorting of the pins with the screwdriver or attaching seperate power-on and reset buttons. This makes it easy for hardware testers to power up the Fatal1ty board.

You will also find a 2 digit LED display attached to the board. It is a diagnostic tool aimed at providing vital information on what's happening to your board. It is located just below the uGURU chip. Enthusiasts will find this tool very helpful when subjecting the board to extreme overclocking. The LED displays a corresponding number, hex code, for every task and error that will occur on the board. There is a list of the meanings of each number on the user's manual as reference.

Impressive Overclocking

"With the aid of an unlocked processor, Corsair's XMS2 DDR2 modules, and some Asetek watercooling, we were able to achieve a maximum rock solid overclock of 4.4Ghz with our Pentium 4 3.6Ghz running with a 14x multiplier. That's an 800mhz overclock.

This ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE board is running at 314MHz FSB giving a dramatic 1256MHz Bus Speed. Note that at this speed, we were also running our memory at 838MHz DDR2 dual channel. This was possible through the board's 3:4 DDR ratio available in the BIOS.

We are confident that we have not reached this board's ceiling yet. We are pretty sure that it was our processor that's holding us back. You see we're already running our 3.6GHz processor at 4.4GHz with water and we cannot lower our processor multiplier anymore. Had we have access to an Intel P4 processor with a much lower multiplier like 12-13, we could have pushed the Fatal1ty AA8XE board further. But at this speed though, we have achieved the highest rock solid FSB overclock of any board we have used or tested to date."

…and Conclusion? "Intel fans rejoice! This is the most overclockable Intel P4 board that money can buy to date. Finally, here's an extreme board that can go the distance as long as you have the right components to go with it. We've never seen any board that can overclock like this out of the box and with such ease. Stability wise, the ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE board is short of spectacular. We have been using this board 24/7 for a whole month now and I tell you it is rock solid, overclocked or not.

ABIT's first Fatal1ty board has showed the public what the teamup between ABIT and Fatal1ty can do to an Intel based chipset. This only makes us more excited on what this partnership can do with an AMD based gaming board. ABIT has once again proven to the world that when it comes to producing high performance motherboards, they are a force to be reckoned with."

The complete review can be found here:
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/abit/Fatal1ty/AA8XE/fatal1ty.html

Also, check out what Fatal1ty AA8XE can do, when pared with some extreme Corsair memory:
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/corsair/twin2xpro/revisited.html

For more information on the Fatal1ty AA8XE, go here: ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE



  Would you recommend this page to others?  
 

Thanks for you vote
Top News

 

Universal ABIT Computer Corporation designs and sells a complete family of award-winning mainboards and multimedia products that support industry-leading technology and provide leading quality and performance for system integration of computer components supporting a broad range of PC applications, such as e-commerce, e-business, entertainment and education. Corporate headquarters are located in Taiwan. For more information, visit the Company's web site at http://www.abit.com.tw

Universal ABIT Computer Corporation Tel: (02)8751-3380
Universal ABIT Corp. Web Site: http://www.abit.com.tw/
Editors and Public Relations: market@abit.com.tw

Copyright © 2006 Universal ABIT Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.