Several points I d like to stress out regarding this board. Some points I mention in this comment may be due to my misunderstanding or mistakes, so I m open to corrections and discussions.
To make a long story short, I upgraded an old comp. by changing MB, CPU, mem, HD and graphics card (and power supply). Wanted to go ATI (1900XT) so I decided for a crossfire board with a decent set of features : Abit AT8. Received it like 2 weeks ago, and assembled without any problem. AT8 package is great, and everything is included in the nice boxes. Some remarks to begin with : ATA cables could have been rounded and not flat cables which would have made for a cleaner machine interior.
Concerning the board design, huge disappointment. If you use a large graphic board (ie 2 slots), you are supposed to have 1 PCI slot left. But the Ventirad of the XT1900 is flush with the PCI slot. So if you want to plug like let s say a sound board - as suggested by anand - with any electronic component on the reverse side, you can t.
In the BIOS, uGuru section, multiplication factor is limited to 11x for my processor 64X2 4400+, which is already the factor used by this CPU (11x 200). So just able to upgrade the bus speed, not the multi. factor.
Regarding the software package, two remarks : there is no live-update for this award bios (u got to flash it from DOS), and driver CD does not include the Microsoft fix for Intel HD Audio on x64 : you have to download and install it prior installing the realtek sound driver.
And finally, there are those memory troubles : BIOS doesn t recognize the memory correctly. And there I d like to ask a question : for this rig I bought a Corsair TWINX 2048 (basic one, not C2). After 3 days of testing and gaming, one of the memory stick died completly, which, according to Corsair, happens very rarely. At this point, I don t want to think that this may be correlated with the board problems regarding memory. But I will keep an eye open on this issue.
Don t get me wrong, this board appears solid and from anand benchs, seems to be a very good performer against other corssfire and even against top Nvidia-chipset boards. But I have mixed feelings towards this board.
I d like to hear from other owners of this board, to know if they have the same experience that I have with this one.
To make a long story short, I upgraded an old comp. by changing MB, CPU, mem, HD and graphics card (and power supply). Wanted to go ATI (1900XT) so I decided for a crossfire board with a decent set of features : Abit AT8. Received it like 2 weeks ago, and assembled without any problem. AT8 package is great, and everything is included in the nice boxes. Some remarks to begin with : ATA cables could have been rounded and not flat cables which would have made for a cleaner machine interior.
Concerning the board design, huge disappointment. If you use a large graphic board (ie 2 slots), you are supposed to have 1 PCI slot left. But the Ventirad of the XT1900 is flush with the PCI slot. So if you want to plug like let s say a sound board - as suggested by anand - with any electronic component on the reverse side, you can t.
In the BIOS, uGuru section, multiplication factor is limited to 11x for my processor 64X2 4400+, which is already the factor used by this CPU (11x 200). So just able to upgrade the bus speed, not the multi. factor.
Regarding the software package, two remarks : there is no live-update for this award bios (u got to flash it from DOS), and driver CD does not include the Microsoft fix for Intel HD Audio on x64 : you have to download and install it prior installing the realtek sound driver.
And finally, there are those memory troubles : BIOS doesn t recognize the memory correctly. And there I d like to ask a question : for this rig I bought a Corsair TWINX 2048 (basic one, not C2). After 3 days of testing and gaming, one of the memory stick died completly, which, according to Corsair, happens very rarely. At this point, I don t want to think that this may be correlated with the board problems regarding memory. But I will keep an eye open on this issue.
Don t get me wrong, this board appears solid and from anand benchs, seems to be a very good performer against other corssfire and even against top Nvidia-chipset boards. But I have mixed feelings towards this board.
I d like to hear from other owners of this board, to know if they have the same experience that I have with this one.