abit IP35-Pro: Houston, We Have a Winner
by Gary Key on November 1, 2007 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Thoughts
We are quite pleased with the performance of the abit IP35-Pro board. Our expectations were set high after seeing an early sample in action at Computex 2007. We listened intently to everyone from engineering to marketing harping about the change of direction in product quality, engineering support, and industrial design that abit was introducing with their P35 lineup. We bought into the hype before and were certainly disappointed with the P965 product launches. We even started to write off abit after the delays of their P35 product - it was not even near being market ready at a time when Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS were already shipping products in volume.
When the IP35 series finally started shipping, it was met with enthusiasm from users and an almost universal acceptance as a group of products that offered the right balance of features, performance, and support for the price. We initially had some growing pains with the BIOS and 4GB memory support, not to mention an overindulgence of Vdroop when overclocking Intel's latest and greatest quad core processors. Other minor problems such as the heat pipe system not fitting firmly on the MCH and PWM areas had us a little scared also.
We kept looking for problems - or rather, we kept expecting problems to show up as they had on previous products. However, the more we used the board, the more we became enamored of it. It was not any single feature (although the excellent µGuru technology does stand out in the crowd) that eventually won us over but the combination of several features and renewed commitment to support that had us eventually singing praises for this board.
With praises come accolades, and AnandTech is proud to present the Gold Editors Choice to the abit IP35-Pro. abit has come a long way in the last two years and the result is an exceptionally stable motherboard, full of useful features, along with being one of the most consistent performing products we have tested recently. abit's µGuru technology clearly stands out as the best platform tuning and monitoring tool currently offered by any motherboard manufacturer; it sets the standard that other brands would do well to emulate. Except for µGuru, there is not a single feature on the board that really stands out from the crowd. However, every feature that abit has included on the IP35-Pro along with the board layout, color selection, BIOS design, accessories, support, and consistent performance certainly leads us to believe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in this case.
Not all is perfect, however; we still need to nag about the Vdroop exceeding that of other board manufacturers when overclocking quad cores, but how much that really matters is clearly debatable depending upon your overclocking objectives. We are still not pleased with overclocking when utilizing 4GB of memory and exceeding DDR2-1100 speeds. Overall, the positives of the board greatly outweigh the negatives, and while we have expressed these concerns to abit, the IP35-Pro remains one of our favorite P35 boards.
With that said, abit is launching their IX38 QuadGT board shortly and potentially its greatest competition will at first will be the IP35-Pro. We just hope that abit does not overlook the continued need for first tier support on this board, especially with Yorkfield and Wolfdale launching shortly. The P35 chipset still has a lot of life left in it and is certainly our choice at this time for most Intel users. We congratulate abit on getting back up to speed with its product designs and look forward to reviewing the IX38 QuadGT. However, we need to warn abit as we now have higher expectations after seeing the results of the IP35-Pro. In the meantime, we have a winner.
We are quite pleased with the performance of the abit IP35-Pro board. Our expectations were set high after seeing an early sample in action at Computex 2007. We listened intently to everyone from engineering to marketing harping about the change of direction in product quality, engineering support, and industrial design that abit was introducing with their P35 lineup. We bought into the hype before and were certainly disappointed with the P965 product launches. We even started to write off abit after the delays of their P35 product - it was not even near being market ready at a time when Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS were already shipping products in volume.
When the IP35 series finally started shipping, it was met with enthusiasm from users and an almost universal acceptance as a group of products that offered the right balance of features, performance, and support for the price. We initially had some growing pains with the BIOS and 4GB memory support, not to mention an overindulgence of Vdroop when overclocking Intel's latest and greatest quad core processors. Other minor problems such as the heat pipe system not fitting firmly on the MCH and PWM areas had us a little scared also.
We kept looking for problems - or rather, we kept expecting problems to show up as they had on previous products. However, the more we used the board, the more we became enamored of it. It was not any single feature (although the excellent µGuru technology does stand out in the crowd) that eventually won us over but the combination of several features and renewed commitment to support that had us eventually singing praises for this board.
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Not all is perfect, however; we still need to nag about the Vdroop exceeding that of other board manufacturers when overclocking quad cores, but how much that really matters is clearly debatable depending upon your overclocking objectives. We are still not pleased with overclocking when utilizing 4GB of memory and exceeding DDR2-1100 speeds. Overall, the positives of the board greatly outweigh the negatives, and while we have expressed these concerns to abit, the IP35-Pro remains one of our favorite P35 boards.
With that said, abit is launching their IX38 QuadGT board shortly and potentially its greatest competition will at first will be the IP35-Pro. We just hope that abit does not overlook the continued need for first tier support on this board, especially with Yorkfield and Wolfdale launching shortly. The P35 chipset still has a lot of life left in it and is certainly our choice at this time for most Intel users. We congratulate abit on getting back up to speed with its product designs and look forward to reviewing the IX38 QuadGT. However, we need to warn abit as we now have higher expectations after seeing the results of the IP35-Pro. In the meantime, we have a winner.
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crimson117 - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
And if http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">this is the fix, then it's even more complicated than I had expected!Personally, I would RMA a board with this sort of defect present.
takumsawsherman - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
I love how these pro boards rarely have Firewire800. It's really a shame that others did not jump on the Gigabyte bandwagon a few years back when they started putting it on their high-end boards. If I remember correctly, they were cheaper than the current crop as well.Of course, I will wager that someone will say that people should use eSATA instead. There are only a few enclosures that have both FW and eSATA, and eSATA is not available on most PC's, and no Macs that I have seen have a eSATA port. I'm not even sure if you can daisy chain eSATA, and I like the FW800 connector better (feels more sturdy). Recently, I looked around for an enclosure to replace one of my old trusty FW400/USB2 enclosures with built in power supply. I ended up not finding the one I wanted, and was very sad, as my requirements were not great.
1. FW800
2. eSATA
3. USB2
4. 5 1/4" drive capacity
5. Built in AC/DC converter (no bricks)
6. Fan if neceaary, I don't care as this is a service drive, not involved with audio
The closest I could get was a NewerTechnology MiniStack V3 from eshop.macsales.com.
1. FW800
2. eSATA
3. USB2, including hub
4. 3.5 inch drives only
5. fan
6. Stupid brick power supply
It cost me $120 empty. It's a great enclosure, meant for stacking under a Mac Mini (and would be awesome for that, though I personally have no mini). There were also the mercury series from OWC at that store, but none had the built in PS, so I figured at that point who cares about 5 1/4.
The end result is that I tried it for a week. It now stays at home. While I used it, I got insane speeds when backing up customer systems over FW800 (Macs doing CarbonCopyCloner clones in a flash, despite the clones being around 30GB. USB2 was as expected (kind of lame), and FW400 was acceptable (but a downer after FW800). For anyone who is interested, the drive I put in it was a Seagate 320 SATA with the crazy SCSI-sized jumper removed. I never got to use eSATA, as I have found no systems that have the port, except one production server that I am not going to test on. I'm sure it's nice and fast.
Of course, with all the back and forth, carrying a brick around is annoying, when previously all I needed to carry was a firewire or usb cable. Of course, this has nothing to do with Abit's board, except that if more boards were made that included FW800, more varieties of enclosures would be available, and someone would make my above list come true.
Gary Key - Saturday, November 3, 2007 - link
I have always been disappointed with the lack of Firewire 800 on the upper end boards but it appears the users requesting it are in a very small minority (which includes me) according to the suppliers. We do have USB 3.0 and Firewire 1600 to look forward late next year. :)sheared - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
It should be noted that the Abit forums are, while not full, scattered with threads regarding incompatibilities between this MB and various PSU's. For now at least, you should be careful to select a PSU from a manufacturer that is known to work with the board. I selected a Seasonic thinking that a good, reputable manufacture such as that would have no issues. Wrong. POST code 8.2.Just be careful in the selection, and you'll do fine with this board.
Gary Key - Saturday, November 3, 2007 - link
PSU-We tried everything from a Seasonic S12 II 430W to the OCZ 1000w without a problems including a couple of "inexpensive" 500w power supplies out of generic cases without a problem. We tried to recreate some of the problems that users have noticed and could not with three different boards.
feraltoad - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
My X-fi xtreme music works great fortunately, it didn't crackle in my old Asrock DualSATA2 which some people reported as being a problem.I have a ZerDBA psu that works fine and a WD5000AAKS & WD3200KS & 36gb Raptor that works great, no raid though.
I've been very happy with the ip35 pro. I think editors choice is very well warranted. I use the uGuru program to OC in windows! How often can you OC in windows and have it be stable?
My heatsinks were OK, but I have heard some problems but the fix is super easy. Just replace the plastic pushpins in the sinks with bolts. That's an easy fix, sure you shouldn't have to paying that much for a mobo and they need to fix it, but if I had to saddled with a problem and I'm a pessimist(read: realist) and expect things to go bad I would rather have a problem that I can easily fix myself. So really it's a pessimist dream come true even if it comes out as the worse case scenario!
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
there are also scattered reports of the larger Raptor HDDs not working under certain circumstances with these boards, as well WD SE16 HDD issues(mainly with RAID I think), and possible X-FI incompatibilities.ABITs forums though is one good example as to why their products still sold well, despite for having a 'bad rep' compared to other companies. Its these Forums that helps ABIT customers solve, and potential avoid issues with any given product.
For what it is worth, I have read about certain Seasonic PSUs being an issue with these boards, but the PSU I am using; an Antec EA500(EarthWATTS 500) *is* supposed to be built by Seasonic as well . . . it also works very well. However, I am also using the IP35-E, not the Pro.
yyrkoon - Thursday, November 1, 2007 - link
that it is about time you guys did a write up of this board, but I am mystified as to why you guy did not mention the IP35-E(the IP35 Pros 'little brother'). Sure it does not have all the bells and whistles, but on an extreme budget, the IP35-E is very hard to beat.My IP35-E is running an E6550 @ 3.33Ghz with stock cooling and stock voltages, and 100% stable for the last 1.5 weeks or so. Just being able to drop the FSB:DRAM ratio to 1:1, bumping up the MCH one notch, and setting the external clock to 475Mhz makes for very simple overclocking. I have a very hard time imagining any other board being easier than this when overclocking. All this, and superb functionality(everything worked straight out of the box) without updating the BIOS. I can imagine never updating the BIOS, the functionality for me is that good.
Now if I could only fit a thermalright cooler into my case, I would be in 'hog heaven'.
Gary Key - Saturday, November 3, 2007 - link
abit did not supply the IP35-E for review, but we bought one anyway and will show it against the MSI NEO2 and DFI Bloodiron shortly.