nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream
by Wesley Fink on July 5, 2005 10:28 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Abit Fatal1ty AN8: Features and Layout
| Specification | Abit Fatal1ty AN8 |
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | nForce4 Ultra (single chip) |
| BUS Speeds | 200MHz to 410MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| PCI/AGP Speeds | Asynchronous (Fixed) |
| PCI Express | 100MHz to 145MHz in 1MHz increments |
| Core Voltage | Auto, 1.5V to 1.85V in 0.025V increments (with 4000+ | CPU Ref Voltage | +10mv to +60mv, -10mv to -60mv in 10mv increments |
| DRAM Voltage | Auto, 2.5V to 2.8V in 0.05V increments |
| DDR Ref Voltage | +10mv to +70mv, -10mv to -50mv in 10mv increments |
| Chipset Voltage | 1.5V to 1.8V in 0.05V increments |
| Hyper Transport Ratios | Auto, 1X to 5X in 1X increments |
| LDT Bus Transfer | 16/16, 16/8, 8/16, 8/8 |
| LDT Voltage | 1.25V to 1.4V in 0.05V increments |
| PCI Synchronization | Auto, To CPU, 33.33MHz |
| CPU Ratios | Auto, 4x to 20x in 0.5x increments |
| DRAM Speeds | Auto, DDR200, DDR266, DDR333, DDR400 (Plus DDR433, 466, 500 with Rev. E Processor) |
| Memory Command Rate | Auto, 1T, 2T |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR Dual-Channel Slots Unbuffered ECC or non-ECC Memory to 4GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 x16 PCIe Slots 2 x1 PCIe 3 PCI Slots |
| Onboard SATA | 4-Drive SATA 2 by nF4 |
| Onboard IDE | Two Standard NVIDIA ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| SATA/IDE RAID | 4-Drive SATA 2 PLUS 4-Drive IDE (8 total) Can be combined in RAID 0, 1 |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 10 USB 2.0 ports supported nF4 2 1394A FireWire ports by TI TSB43AB22A |
| Onboard LAN | PCIe Gigabit Ethernet by Vitesse VSC8201RX PHY |
| Onboard Audio | Audiomax 7.1 Audio Card with Realtek ALC850 8-Channel codec with 6 UAJ audio jacks, CD-in, front audio, and optical SPDIF |
| Other Features | AMD Dual-Core (X2) Support with 1.5 BIOS |
| BIOS | Award 1.5 (6/21/05) |
The Abit Fatal1ty AN8 is a member of the Fatal1ty series of motherboards aimed at gamers. Abit claims that everything about the Fatal1ty boards is beefed up for utmost stability in gaming situations. This "beefing-up" includes a special dual-fan OTES cooling system for the power transistors, and a dual-fan cooling device for RAM that Abit calls OTES RAMflow. These are two of the biggest heat-generating areas in modern motherboards and the Abit approach is noteworthy. With this attention to features that matter a great deal to the Enthusiast, we have great expectations of the overclocking abilities of the Abit Fatal1ty. Abit also has announced an SLI version of the Fatal1ty AN8, which adds dual-video NVIDIA SLI capabilities to the AN8 feature set.
The other side of the "beefed-up" Abit is the cost, as the Fatal1ty AN8 is by far the most expensive nForce4 Ultra motherboard in this roundup with a street price of about $185. With that kind of price, buyers will certainly expect the Fatal1ty AN8 to be head and shoulders above the other boards in the roundup. If this is too rich for your blood, then Abit also sells the more basic AN8 board for about $100 street price.
Click image to enlarge.
The 24-pin ATX and 4-pin 12V connectors are at the board edges, where they work best. It is also a pleasure to see Abit place the 4 SATA connectors and PCIe slot where they will not interfere with each other. Board makers seem to be giving more thought to IDE placement lately, but SATA connectors are increasingly a mess to work with in many motherboards. Top video cards are big, and SATA connectors behind a PCIe slot can make a decent board a nightmare if you're mounting SATA devices. Abit, fortunately, gave some thought to SATA placement.
While it's not pictured, the included "Audio Max" dedicated sound card fits in the first slot - just above the 2 PCIe x1 slots. This is a good location, which clusters sound connectors near the rear panel. While the Audio Max is powered by the very common Realtek ALC850 codec, isolating the sound hardware, like we have seen DFI do on similar dedicated sound cards, should pay off in lower noise and reduced CPU overhead for the audio hardware.
Abit boards usually have quite a few fan connectors, and this would certainly be expected on a board geared to gamers, who may have many devices to cool. Unfortunately, there are just 3 fan headers on board; after the North Bridge and CPU, there is just the System Fan header. That means that if you have a Power Supply with a fan-monitoring plug, there are no spares on the Abit. A "gamers" board really needs a few more fan headers.
The storage area is basic nForce4, which is pretty good by itself, but there are no additional RAID controllers, which you might expect on a $185 board.
The BIOS options are typically Abit, meaning that they are very good. There's just about any BIOS adjustment that you might want. One particular disappointment are the memory voltage controls, which only extend to 2.8V. Abit has fixed this option in other versions of the AN8 - the Ultra and SLI extend to 3.55V for super high-voltage 2-2-2 memory like OCZ VX and Mushkin Redline. For that reason, the other Abit AN8 boards are a better choice for the Athlon 64 enthusiast than this early AN8 Fatal1ty. The Abit AN8 Fatal1ty is one of the two boards in this roundup that supports the additional 433, 466, and 500 memory speed options on an AMD Rev. E processor.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
75 Comments
View All Comments
tribbleva - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - link
Every single one of these MBs has a fan on the NB... where are the passively cooled mobos? The last thing I want is one or TWO more tiny fans just on the mobo to worry about failing...Zebo - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
"someof you take Anandtech's word as the word of GOD"It's as close as you can get without dying.:)
Zebo - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
Viper - You should come inside the forums for specfic help..dg3274 - Saturday, July 16, 2005 - link
The article states that the Abit board has a problem with 1:1 overclocking. I disagree. I think the problem is that it does not provide enough ram voltage to run the RAM at high 1:1 FSB. 2.8 volts is not enough to run ANY ram much higher than 280 or so FSB.Viper4185 - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link
No one wants to help me with my n00b questions :(Marcel - Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - link
#67 I must be a little a slow …In the test “Maximun CPU Clock ( Lower Multiplier )”
For Chaintec, Abit, etc you use the multiplier in “11”, and only for Epox and DFI you use the multiplier in “9”, then you show a diagram with nothing more than the fsb.
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/nf4%20ultra%20r...
The first question is WHY ?? there is no explanation for use different multiplier in the review. Not some guys, but ALL ones have better result in chaintec and abit with a lower multiplier.
TheGlassman - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Thanks Wesley, I did find you had checked HTT, and as I stated in my last post I don't understand what the problem was. But the deeper I looked into the review, the better job you seemed to have done, so sorry if I impied you didn't try very hard.DFI has a dual core (beta) bios available, dated 6-23-05
Epox has a dual core (release) bios available, dated 6-29-05
These were not used in testing.
Wesley Fink - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#59 and #60 - One of the first articles I did a couple of years ago about Athlon 64 was how to overclock by manipulating HTT frequencies. I ALWAYS test manual HTT dividers I know should work for certain 1:1 memory clocks as well as Auto HTT if it is an available option.#58 - I was very CLEAR in the review that I tested with the BIOS that would allow the X2 A64 to work. We did check each board with an X2. That is the ONLY reason we tested and used very recent Beta BIOS'. Also there are 2 other very recent Chaintech reviews at other websites who had test results almost equal to what I found on the Chaintech, so there are at least 2 other Chaintechs loose with less than stirring overclocking. In the end, as I stated in the review, the Chaintech is a decent board, but at about the same price as the Epox, with poorer overclocking results, it was hard to give it an Editor's Choice this time around. The results found in this roundup should remove anyone's concern that we get cherry boards from manufacturers. I am a good overclocker, and very experienced in air overclocking and memory overclocking. What I got from these boards on air is all they could do with the TCCD memory that is all but standard test memory for motherboards these days. The capabilities of the memory we used is also well known and I tweaked for TCCD if settings were available if the board was not doing well at stock memory settings and our normal test timings.
I am really pleased some of you experienced better performance than I did with the Chaintech and Abit boards, but I can only report what I actually found in my tests. I don't think you come to AnandTech for a survey of what other websites or Forums found, because I find overclockers are notorious at exagerrating what they can reach with overclocks. We try to provide a consisten test environment for overclocking that will give repeatable overclocking results. Results, of course, always vary board to board, but having said that, OC results are usually pretty consistent on better boards from sample to sample.
lefenzy - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
Sorry, wrong link. that one was for the SLI version.http://www.foxconnchannel.com/productsDownload_mot...
lefenzy - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
Foxconn has a BIOS release that allow for multiplier adjustment.http://www.foxconnchannel.com/productsDownload_mot...