[W1zzard]

Introduction

For several years ABIT has been THE motherboard maker if you are looking for a top overclocking board.



Now ABIT has released the "Fatal1ty" series of motherboards.
Fatal1ty is one of the most successful professional gamers in the world. ABIT hired him to give his name and a few design ideas to the new boards.

Here is a quote from ABIT's website: "Engineered by ABIT. Game-tested and approved by Fatal1ty. The Fatal1ty AA8XE motherboard represents the culmination of ABIT Engineering with the gaming prowess and experience of the world’s number one professional gamer, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. The result of this collaboration is a gaming platform with no equal, specifically engineered for the gamer that demands nothing less than the very best."

Features

ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE
Processor	Intel Pentium 4 LGA775
FSB	533 MHz / 800 MHz / 1066 MHz
Chipset	Intel 925XE/ICH6R
Memory	4x 240 Pin DDR2, up to 4 GB
BIOS	Phoenix AwardBios
Slots	1x PCI-E x16 2x PCI-E x1 2x PCI 1x Audio daughter card port
HDD Connectivity	1x ATA-100 4x SATA 150
Networking	10/100/1000 Mbps - Intel Pro/100 VE 10/100 Mbps - Intel Pro/1000 MT
Ports	8x USB 2.0 (4 on Back Panel) 3x IEEE1394 (1 on Back Panel)
Audio	7.1 Realtek HD Audio, optional S/PDIF
Form Factor	ATX 305 x 245mm

Specifications from ABIT

Processor

• Designed for Intel® 90nm Pentium 4 LGA775 processors
• Supports 1066/800MHz FSB
• Supports Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology

Chipset

• Intel® 925XE/Intel® ICH6R Express Chipset

Memory

• Four 240-pin DIMM sockets
• Supports Dual channel DDR2 533/400 Unbuffered Non-ECC memory
• Supports maximum memory capacity up to 4GB

ABIT Engineered

• ABIT uGuru™ Technology
• ABIT CPU Accelerator Technology
• ABIT ThermalGuard™ Technology
• ABIT TweakGuard™ Technology
• ABIT Dual OTES™ Technology
• ABIT OC Strips Technology
• ABIT MOSFET Thermal Solution
• ABIT OTES AeroFlow™ Technology
• ABIT OTES RAMFlow™ Technology
• ABIT AudioMAX Technology with Dolby® Digital Live Support
• ABIT On-board ultra-bright LEDs
• ABIT Bold Design color management system for easy installation
• ABIT Guru peripheral product link

PCI-E X16 graphic

• Delivers up to 8GB/s per direction for 3.5 times more bandwidth than AGP8X

SATA RAID

• Intel® Matrix Storage Technology supports 4 ports SATA 150 RAID 0/1
• Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing & native hot plug

Dual LAN

• Intel® Gigabit LAN
• Intel® 10/100Mbps LAN

IEEE1394

• Supports 3 Ports IEEE 1394 at 100/200/400Mb/s transfer rate

Audio (Dolby Digital Live support)

• On board 7.1 channels Intel High Definition Audio CODEC
• Supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF In/Out

Internal I/O Connectors

• 1 x PCI-E X16 slot
• 2 x PCI-E X1 slots
• 2 x PCI slots
• 1 x Audio daughter card port
• 1 x Floppy port
• 1 x UDMA 100/66/33 connector
• 4 x SATA 150 connectors
• 2 x USB 2.0 headers
• 2 x IEEE1394 headers

Back Panel I/O

• ABIT Dual OTES™
• 1 x PS/2 keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse
• 1 x IEEE1394
• 4 x USB 2.0
• 1 x RJ-45 LAN (Gigabit), 1 x RJ-45 LAN (10/100)
• 1 x BP-Audio (S/P DIF in/out, Line Out, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Rear Surround, Surround Speaker)

ABIT Guru Panel I/O (Option)

• 2 x USB 2.0
• 1 x IEEE 1394
• 1 x Headphone
• 1 x Microphone
• SATA power/connector
• CMOS reset button with safety cover
• Guru LCD display
• Easy OC button

Dimension

• ATX form factor 305 x 245mm

Packaging Content

• 1 x 7.1 channels Intel HD audio daughter card
• 1 x Back I/O shield
• 4 x SATA signal cables
• 1 x Rounded ATA 100 cable
• 1 x Rounded floppy cable
• 1 x ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE Owner’s Manual
• 1 x ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE Multilingual QIG
• 1 x ABIT uGuru User’s Manual
• 1 x ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE Installation CD
• 1 x SATA RAID Driver Disk
• 1 x ABIT Case Badge
• 1 x Jumper Setting Label
• 1 x 2 ports USB2.0 + 2 ports IEEE194 Cable
• 1 x SATA Power cable

Packaging

The Fatal1ty AA8XE does not come in your average motherboard packaging.


First, the package is a bit bigger, compared to a standard motherboard package.


What is also nice, is that you can open a lid on the package and take a look at the board through some holes that look like they were ripped into the packaging by bullets.


The color scheme of the box could be best described as dark industrial - DOOM style.


On the backside you can get a quick glance at the features and read a message from Fatal1ty.

Contents

The motherboard, together with the audio riser card is in a box with a transparent lid.


Under that box you will find two more boxes with the usual standard things like rounded cables, manual and drivers.



You will receive:

• Motherboard
• Audio Riser Card
• Software & Drivers CD, SATA RAID controller floppy
• Rounded ATA100 cable, rounded FDD cable
• 4x SerialATA cable, 1x SerialATA Power Adapter
• User's Guide, Quick Setup Manual, both in English
• uGuru Manual
• 2x IEEE1394 + 2x USB Header
• SP-DIF cable
• Jumper layout sticker, ABIT Case Badge
• Rear Panel Cover
• RAMFlow cooler

The package is pretty complete, except that I would prefer to see more SATA Power Adapters and a COM port adapter would be nice as well.

Board Layout

Click here for a 3000x2500 high-res shot of the board (3 MB download).


When you look at the board, the first you will notice, is the massive OTES cooling system which helps to keep the power regulation MOSFETs cool. A problem I see here, is that the OTES takes a lot of space on the board and makes installing CPU coolers difficult. Also some of the huge new coolers might not fit. Mounting screws for waterblocks are a bit harder to get in there as well.


On the backside you can spot something ABIT calls "OC Strips". These copper strips are designed to draw heat away from the CPU socket area.


A lot of the backside connector space is taken away by the two OTES fans, but the all important connectors are there.

Connectors

Both the ATX 24-pin motherboard power connector and the ATX12V power connector are placed very conveniently. Actually I would say they are in the best imaginable location.


The only Parallel ATA connector is located right below the ATX power connector, also in a good location, because it is not far from there to the harddisks in a standard ATX case.
Personally I do not like the angled connector because it is rather hard to get the cable out, when there is little space next to the motherboard. But that is personal preference. Other people praise this style of connector, since it reduces cable cluttering a bit and makes cable origami even easier.


A bit uncommon is the placement of the FDD connector, but since not many people use floppy drives anyways, this is no issue at all.


The color scheme of the Reset/Power/LED connectors helps finding the right pins when installing the board the first time.


I find the numbering scheme of the SATA connectors a bit odd, but not really a problem.


A really nice feature for overclockers are those small buttons on the motherboard, which work as power and reset button. Finally, no more need to have a screwdriver lying around to power on the motherboard.

Slots

The PCI-Express x16 slot has a latch, which holds the video card securely on quick builds outside of a case. When using a two slot video card cooler, you will probably lose access to the PCI-E x1 slots.


The last slot on the bottom is for the add-in audio card. This was neccessary because the OTES cooling takes so much space on the rear panel, that there was no space left for the audio ports. ABIT also claims that this improves sound quality.


This is the uGuru controller chip. It monitors voltages, fan speeds, temperatures and manages the clock generator and fan outputs.


The POST display helps you track down problems with your system when it is not booting or hangs at early initialization stages.

Cooling

The Northbridge fan air flow is 90° angled, which should improve CPU and video card temperatures.


On the southbridge you find a rather small passive heatsink. It will only get warm during use.


The RAMFlow cooling helps keeping your DDR2 memory cool. I find this is overkill for day to day use, since it considerably increases fan noise, but extreme overclockers will sure like it.


Dear ABIT, where are we supposed to plug in the RAMFlow fan? The only available fan header on the motherboard is right across the whole board.

Chips

The AA8XE Fatal1ty uses an IDT CV115-4 clock generator which is controlled by the uGuru chip.


Also controlled by uGuru is the Winbond monitoring chip 83627HF.


Network connectivity is provided by Intel, who have a very good reputation for building solid high performance network chips. Dual Gigabit would have been nice, but on the other hand, increasing the price even more for a feature not too many people will use does not make sense.


The Realtek ALC880 High-Definition Audio Chip is responsible for sound.


IEEE1394 is provided by a chip from Texas Instruments.

BIOS

ABIT has put considerable extra work into the BIOS.

A feature I have been missing for years, is to create different profiles which can be loaded easily.


On the BIOS main screen, press F6 to save all current BIOS settings into a profile, optionally with a name. Pressing F7 loads the profile again. What is very important to note here, is that a CMOS reset or removed battery does not delete the profiles.

But let's cover the standard things first, before we go into more detail on how ABIT pimped that BIOS.


Standard CMOS Features is like the page in any other AwardBios.


Interesting things in Advanced BIOS Features are CPU Feature, which lets you enable/disable certain functions of your CPU like EIST, C1E and Execution Disable Bit.

Memory Timings

In Advanced Chipset Features you find options to change your memory timings settings between Manual, By SPD and Auto.


You can change CAS Latency (tCL), Active-to-Precharge Delay (tRAS), Rad-to-Cas Delay (tRCD), and RAS Precharge Time (tRP), which are all settings the i925XE chipset offers internally. Game Accelerator is the PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology) Mode found first in the i875 chipset.

Integrated Peripherals

Integrated Peripherals has options to change, how the SATA ports appear to the system and to enable/disable USB, Audio, LAN, Firewire, Floppy and the Serial Port.

Nothing special is to be found under Power Management and PNP/PCI configuration.

uGuru Utility Page

What is really exciting is the uGuru utility page. Here you can change all overclocking related setttings.


CPU FSB can be adjusted from 100 to 500 MHz.


VCore adjustments go from 1.3875V to 1.7375V. I would have loved to see some lower voltages as well. The FSB termination tracking voltage is selectable between 1.0V and 1.8V.


Up to 2.5V for DDR2 memory - this is DDR1 area. Make sure you have good cooling. The RAM OTES cooler will sure help.
Lowest setting here is 1.60V. VDDR VTT is automatically set to 1/2 VDDR when VDDR is changed, but can be manually adjusted between 0.8V and 1.8V.


The Northbridge voltage options range from 1.3V to 2.1V, and 2.3V to 3.0V for its 2.5V Voltage.


Certain usage statistics are also available here, a way to reset them to zero would be nice.

ABIT EQ Monitoring

When overclocking, it is important to monitor your system, to spot problems as early as possible. That's what the ABIT EQ page is for.


You can monitor CPU Temperature, System Temperature and the temperature of the four MOSFETs under the OTES.


Voltage monitoring lets you monitor all voltages you can change in the BIOS, and 3.3V, 5V and 12V supplied from the PSU.


Fan Speed monitoring shows you how fast your system's fans are spinning. I think monitoring and independantly controlling both OTES fans is a bit overkill.

An issue I found here, is that the "Shutdown enable" and "Beep Enable" settings for CPU fan default to on. At first this sounds like a good idea, but watercoolers will hate this setting.
As watercooler, every time you clear your CMOS, you get some very annoying loud beeping from your system until you turn this option back off. Sometimes the system does not even start. A better solution would be to ignore this setting when the CMOS is cleared, or to default it to disable and just watch CPU temperatures. All Pentium4 CPUs have built-in thermal protection anyways.

ABIT FanEQ

FanEQ control allows to exactly define a temperature when which fan turns on and how fast its speed ramps up depending on temperature.



Another issue for watercoolers here: After CMOS reset the setting for the OTES fans is to control the fan based on CPU temperature. With watercooling the CPU temperature will always be low, so the fan never starts. After a few minutes of high CPU load, the MOSFETS are getting hot, your CPU is cool - the OTES fans are off - the annoying beep alarm will start and not end until you set the "Reference Temperature" setting to "PWM Average Temp." which makes much more sense than "CPU Temperature", in all cases I can think of.

uGuru Software

ABIT's uGuru Software basically mirrors the BIOS' overclocking and monitoring functionality.


The ABIT FlashMenu BIOS flashing program, which is included with the motherboard CD just exits with "unsupported board" when it is started. I could find a newer version of the uGuru software on the internet which now support BIOS flashing on the AA8XE Fatal1ty.

What I find very odd, is that there are specialized versions of uGuru for most boards. It's not that one software will work for them all. If ABIT had proper information on their page, this would not be too much of an issue. But right now, there is only the version number listed and you have to download and try a few version till you find the one which is right for you. Yes, you can get the "right" version from the motherboard's product page, but this is the old version which is included on the CD anyways.


With ABITEQ you can monitor voltages, fan speeds and temperature and define alarms for each of them.

OCGuru

In OCGuru you can get a quick glance at the current settings the board is running at.


Changing your frequencies and voltages is also possible from within Windows. Changing settings like DRAM Ratio requires a reboot tho, which is a limitation of the Intel chipset.


It is also possible to define application specific overclocking profiles. I like this method of choosing the target application very much.

Overall I must say that, I do not like the layout of the uGuru software. Why is part of the applications skinned, but once you open a subwindow it comes up in standard Windows style?
Also a few minor bugs were seen.

Test System "AA8XE"
CPU:	Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)
Motherboard:	ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE, Bios 1.4
Memory:	2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB 4-2-2-8
Video Card:	ATI X800 Non-Pro PCI-E
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB
Power Supply:	HEC Power475
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.4
OC 4500 is 15x300 FSB, Mem Ratio 1:1 (=300 MHz)

Test System "PX925XE"
CPU:	Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)
Motherboard:	Albatron PX925XE PRO-R, Bios 1.12a
Memory:	2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB 4-2-2-8
Video Card:	ATI X800 Non-Pro PCI-E
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB
Power Supply:	HEC Power475
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.4
OC 4350 is 15x290 FSB, Mem Ratio 1:1 (=290 MHz)

Test System "P4 2.4C"
CPU:	Intel Pentium 4 2.4C (S478; 512KB; Northwood)
Motherboard:	ABIT IC7, Bios 2.8
Memory:	2x 256MB Generic PC3200 2.5-3-3-6
Video Card:	ATI X800 XT
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB
Power Supply:	Antec TrueControl 550W
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.4
OC 3400 is 15x283 FSB, Mem Ratio 2:3 (=188 MHz)

Test System "Athlon64 3800+"
CPU:	AMD Athlon64 3800+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)
Motherboard:	DFI Lanparty nForce4 SLI-D
Memory:	TwinMOS Twister PC3200 Pro (TCCD)
Video Card:	2x Pine XFX 6800 GT SLI @ 450/1200
Harddisk:	2x 74GB WD Raptor RAID 0
Power Supply:	OCZ ADJ 520W
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Forceware 76.44

SiSoftware Sandra

Raw CPU performance is the same between both i925XE boards (within margin of error).

Lavalys Everest

While the Abit board has the better read performance, the Albatron board is faster when it comes to writes.


It is interesting, that the P4 at 2400 MHz has better latency - PAT was enabled on all Intel Systems.
The integrated memory controller of the Athlon64 leads the pack without doubt.

SuperPi

In SuperPi's calculation tests the Albatron board is a bit faster than the board from ABIT, but not much.

PCMark 2004

In PCMark both i925 boards show the same performance. The Athlon64 is very weak here.

3DMark 2001

Here we see the ABIT board take a slight advantage. The Athlon64 dominates this benchmark.

CineBench

There is no performance difference between both boards. Intel systems are clearly at an advantage here, because of their HyperThreading Technology.

KribiBench

ABIT says the Fatal1ty AA8XE is optimized for games - this benchmark clearly shows that there is some truth in that.

Comanche 4

Again we see the Athlon64 lay waste to the Pentium4.

Quake 3 Arena

Same picture in Quake3 Arena, and again ABIT's board offers faster gaming than the competition.

Rightmark Audio Analyzer

We used Rightmark Audio Analyzer together with a loop-back cable to analyze the quality of the on-board audio solution.

Summary

Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB:	+0.28, -0.32	Good
Noise level, dB (A):	-82.1	Good
Dynamic range, dB (A):	81.9	Good
THD, %:	0.0073	Very good
IMD, %:	0.053	Good
Stereo crosstalk, dB:	-79.5	Very good
IMD at 10 kHz, %:	0.155	Average

General performance: Good

---

I am a bit dissapointed by that result. If a board claims to be a top notch gaming board, it has to offer better sound quality than "Good".

Frequency Response

Frequency range	Response
From 20 Hz to 20 kHz, dB	-1.42, +0.28
From 40 Hz to 15 kHz, dB	-0.32, +0.28

Noise Level

Parameter	Left	Right
RMS power, dB:	-74.9	-71.3
RMS power (A-weighted), dB:	-82.1	-81.8
Peak level, dB FS:	-62.0	-59.5
DC offset, %:	0.49	-1.59

Dynamic Range

Parameter	Left	Right
Dynamic range, dB:	+73.6	+69.6
Dynamic range (A-weighted), dB:	+82.2	+81.9
DC offset, %:	0.49	-1.58

THD + Noise (at -3 dB FS)

Parameter	Left	Right
THD, %:	0.0074	0.0073
THD + Noise, %:	0.0512	0.0692
THD + Noise (A-weighted), %:	0.0210	0.0212

Intermodulation distortion

Parameter	Left	Right
IMD + Noise, %:	0.0542	0.0526
IMD + Noise (A-weighted), %:	0.0295	0.0296

Stereo crosstalk

Parameter	L <- R	L -> R
Crosstalk at 100 Hz, dB:	-72	-71
Crosstalk at 1 kHz, dB:	-78	-78
Crosstalk at 10 kHz, dB:	-81	-80

IMD (swept tones)

Parameter	Left	Right
IMD + Noise at 5 kHz, %:	0.0468	0.0464
IMD + Noise at 10 kHz, %:	0.1708	0.1697
IMD + Noise at 15 kHz, %:	0.2496	0.2502

Quake 3

Comanche 4

Overclocking

In order to find out the overclocking potential of the AA8XE Fatal1ty we put a Dangerden TDX waterblock on our CPU and set the multiplier to 14x using EIST.

The maximum 100% stable FSB we could reach was 323 MHz. Further testing showed strong evidence that the CPU was the limiting factor here. My guess is, that this board can take you well into the 350 FSB region.

Settings for reaching that overclock were: Multi: 14x, Memory: 4:3, VCore: 1.5875, FSB VTT: 1.35, DDR: 2.20, DDR VTT: 1.10, NB: 1.85, NB2.5: 2.55

While I am not sure how much overclocking headroom the OTES MOSFET cooling adds, it sure helps keep your board alive. Once you heavily overclock motherboards which do not have proper MOSFET cooling, it is not uncommon, that they reach over 100°C.

	With a street price of about $160 this board is one of the most expensive Pentium4 motherboards. But you get excellent performance and great overclocking for that.
	Excellent Performance Huge overclocking potential Well thought out layout OTES
	Expensive UGuru Software could be improved Can be noisy On-Board-Audio not that great No SLI No Dual-Core support Minor BIOS issues
9.0	If you are looking for a top overclocking board for Pentium4 LGA775, you have found the right one. The layout is well thought out and the board has ample overclocking headroom - more than most people would ever need. Compatibility issues could not be spotted and gaming performance is rock solid. However, if you are going to overclock only a little, you will not need the load of features the Fatal1ty AA8XE offers and could sure save some money by buying a cheaper motherboard, like ABIT's AA8XE (without Fatal1ty), which is about $50 less. The lack of SLI and Dual-Core support are not Abit's fault. Intel's i925 chipset does not support either of it, so there is nothing Abit could have done. There might have been some other very minor issues, but I still love this board.