Hot Hardware says the ABIT AL8 to be the most attractive 945P based motherboard!

August 26th, 2005 Fremont, CA Hot Hardware – the hottest PC hardware review site around the internet has recently reviewed the ABIT AL8 motherboard and gave it 8.5 out of 10 scores. Here is a quick summary. "Overall, we found the AL8 to be the most attractive 945P based motherboard to come our way thus far. ABIT did a fine job of dotting their I's and crossing their T's with the AL8, showing a particular attention to detail, over and above what we've seen up until now."

Hot Hardware was really impressed with the ABIT uGuru suite; especially OC Guru – ABIT's Windows based overclocking ability. "OC Guru also comes with several preset modes for those who want a quick overclocking experience. The Normal Mode runs the board at the manufacturer's stock settings, in this case running the FSB at 204MHz as ABIT clocks the AL8 slightly more aggressively by default. Turbo Mode clocks the board more aggressively, while Quiet Mode reduces system speeds to help keep the product running quiet by sacrificing some performance in the process. Overall, ABIT uGuru is one of the more comprehensive tweaking utilities we've come across in a long time, delivering an excellent degree of control over how the system board is configured to operate."

ABIT AL8 comes with 4 SATAII ports that support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 along with native command queuing and hot-swap capability. On top of that, AL8 also supports Intel HD 7.1 with SPDIF in and out. "The AL8 brings Intel HD 7.1 integrated audio to the table, with excellent input and output options. The rear console has Line-In, Line-Out and Mic ports as well as Forward, Rear and Center Channel outputs. Additionally, the AL8 provides a SPIDF-01 port for optical output while a second SPIDF-11 port provides optical input."

ABIT AL8 maintaines to score higher over other 945P boards thru out all the benchmarks! "3DMark05's CPU module was a strong point for the AL8. Here we see the board top the Gigabyte and Foxconn models by roughly 3%. In most cases, the ABIT AL8 offered the best performance out of the three models tested, but its lead was fractional at most. It seems that most quality motherboards based on the 945P chipset are going to offer comparable performance across a variety of benchmarks. This leaves features and price to be the deciding factors, rather than benchmark performance results."

Summary and final thoughts "ABIT did a fine job with its uGuru utility software package, which works in conjunction with the integrated processor of the same name. Whether you accessed uGuru from the BIOS or through ABIT's custom Windows-based applications, uGuru proved to be an excellent tool with an extensive feature set. From a stock performance standpoint, the board competed well with similarly equipped models. The AL8 also had a quality feature set, with an excellent collection of integrated components and quality details such as ABIT's OTES cooled Northbridge and OC Strips applied to the underside of the board for heat dissipation around the CPU. Throw in the optional uGuru Clock and the ABIT AL8 definitely separates itself from the pack."

We Give The ABIT AL8 a Hot Hardware Heat Meter of 8.5...

Excellent Features Dual RAID OC Strips Software Complement Active Cooling	Weak Overclocking ABIT

For the full review, go to: http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=716

For more information on the ABIT AL8, go here: ABIT AL8

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