[W1zzard]

Introduction

I would like to thank ABIT for supplying the tested motherboard.

Intel's i945 and i955 chipsets are the first to support dual core Pentium D CPUs. The i955 is the "Performance" part, while it's i945 counterpart is geared more towards value. Although the price difference between the two is quite big, the technical differences are rather small. I955 has support for up to 8 GB of ECC memory, while i945 can "only" support 4 GB of non-ECC memory, not really important for you, as long as you don't plan on running a high-performance server. The other difference is that the i955 features Intel's proprietary "Memory Pipeline Technology". According to the Intel Website it "enables a higher utilization of each memory channel, accelerating data transfers between the processor and system memory and resulting in higher system performance".

ABIT has engineered the AL8 to be a good compromise between features, performance and price. Apart from the standard features, the motherboard has Gigabit Ethernet, an additional two-port SATA controller, 8 Channel Audio and ABIT's uGuru overclocking and monitoring technology.

Features

ABIT AL8
Processor	Intel Pentium 4 LGA Socket775
FSB	500/800/1066 MHz
Chipset	Intel i945P
Memory	4x 240 Pin DDR2, Dual Channel DDR2 533/666, up to 4 GB
BIOS	AwardBios
Slots	1x PCI-E x16 3x PCI-E x1 2x PCI
HDD Connectivity	1x ATA-133 6x SATA
Networking	10/100/1000 Mbps - Broadcom via PCI-Express
Ports	6x USB 2.0 (4 on Back Panel) 1x Serial, 1x Parallel 2x IEEE1394 Firewire
Audio	8 Channel Intel HD Audio, ALC880
Form Factor	ATX 305 x 244mm

Specifications from ABIT

CPU

• Designed for Intel® Pentium® 4 / Pentium® D LGA775 processors with1066/800/533 MHz FSB
• Supports Intel® Hyper-Threading / XD-bit / EM64T / EIST Technology

Chipset

• Intel® 945P / Intel® ICH7R Express Chipset

Memory

• Four 240-pin DIMM sockets
• Supports Dual channel DDR2 667/533 Un-buffered Non-ECC memory
• Supports maximum memory capacity up to 4GB

PCI-E X16 graphic

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

SATA 3Gb/s RAID

• Intel® Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0/1/5/10
• Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing and native hot plug

2nd PCIE SATA 3Gb/s

• On board Silicon Image PCIE SATA 3GB/s RAID controller

PCI-E GbE

• On board PCI-E Gigabit LAN controller supports 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet

IEEE 1394a

• Supports 2 ports IEEE 1394a at 100/200/400 Mb/s transfer rate

Audio

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

ABIT Engineered

• ABIT µGuru™ 2005 Technology (ABIT OC Guru / ABIT EQ / ABIT Flash Menu / ABIT Black Box)
• ABIT CPU ThermalGuard™ Technology

Internal I/O Connectors

• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
• 2 x PCI slots
• 1 x Floppy port supports up to 2.88MB
• 6 x SATA connectors
• 1 x Ultra DMA 100/66/33 Connector
• 2 x USB 2.0 headers, 1 x IEEE 1394 headers
• 1 x FP-Audio header, 1 x CD-IN

Back Panel I/O

• 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
• 1 x Serial Port, 1 x Parallel Port
• 1 x S/PDIF In/Out(AL8 only)
• Audio connector (Line-out, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Rear Surround, Side Surround)
• 2 x USB + 1 x IEEE1394a Connector
• 2 x USB + 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector

Miscellaneous

• ATX form factor 305 x 245mm

Packaging

The AL8 comes in a typical ABIT motherboard box. On the sticker it says something with "Devastating Performance Augment" .. uh.. yes .. whatever that is..


On the backside you get a quick look at the motherboard and its features.


ABIT's internal packaging is very clean and organized. In two seperate cardboard boxes you will find manual, drivers and cabling accessories.


Under these two boxes the motherboard is stored safely, look at how the cardboard makes sure that the motherboard can not move in the package.

Contents

You will receive:

• Motherboard
• Users Manual, Quick Installation Guide, CPU Installation Guide
• 1x IDE Cable, 1x Floppy Cable, 4x SATA Cable, 1x Dual-SATA Power Adapter
• IO Shield
• Driver CD, SATA Driver Floppy Disks
• Front Panel USB Port

Even though the board is geared more towards value, the included package feels quite complete. It seems ABIT clearly favours SATA nowadays, the non-rounded IDE cable seems to be for CD-ROM, the SATA cables for HDDs.

Board Layout

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


There could be a little bit more space around the CPU socket area. While it is absolutely fine according to Intel's spec, installing the huge Thermaltake Golden Orb 2 did not leave us with much space between chipset and CPU heatsink, but it did fit.


The IO backpanel is completely standard. From left to right you have PS/2 mouse and keyboard, serial port, parallel port, SPDIF, audio, Firewire, 4x USB and Gigabit Ethernet.


It has become good-practice to color-code the memory slots to indicate dual-channel configuration. Putting both memory modules in slots of the same color enables dual-channel.


If your PC does not want to boot up, the POST LED indicator is a very useful tool to locate and fix the problem. During startup, hexadecimal numbers are displayed that show the current activity, if your system hangs now, look up the POST code in the well-written manual and you're one step closer to fixing your PC.

Connectors

Both ATX power connectors are placed in a good location. Putting the ATX12V connector further to the left (in the image) would have sure helped avoid cable length issues with some cases or PSUs.


Intel's four SATA ports are located where you would expect them, near the southbridge of the motherboard. The additional two SATA ports which are provided by a Silicon Image SATA controller are located between chipset, CPU socket and IO back panel. Quite uncommon, but the only issue I see with that is that cables can not be organized as nicely.


You can connect up to two IDE devices on the AL8's only PATA port.


Color-coded headers, with proper labels on the board, make first time installation very easy.

Slots

The board offers one PCI-E x16 slot for the video card, three PCI-E x1 slots and two PCI slots. It's about time we see more PCI-E x1 cards from manufacturers.

Cooling

ABIT's standard chipset fan is used on the board, it is not loud and its speed can be controlled by the BIOS/uGuru software.


The southbridge does not need active cooling, it barely gets warm during use, even when overclocked.

Chips

ABIT uses the IDT CV151 clock generator on their board, it is controlled directly by the uGuru chip.


This is the heart of ABIT's uGuru. A chip made by Winbond which runs the uGuru software.


Winbond's W83627's hardware monitoring chip, also directly connected to uGuru, is monitoring the system's health state.


Broadcom's Gigabit Ethernet solution is directly connected to the chipset, it does not use any PCI-Express bandwith. While most people might ask "Why no Intel chip?" I must say, in my opinion, using an inexpensive network chip, which still performs well, makes sense for this more value oriented board.


As our tests will show later, the on-board audio of the AL8 is quite good, actually among the best we have tested so far. This is accomplished by using a Realtek ALC880 HD Audio chip.


Right next to the two extra SATA ports sits the Silicon Image SiL3132 SATA controller chip.


Like on most boards the Firewire chips comes from Texas Instruments.

BIOS

ABIT uses a Phoenix AwardBios which is heavily customized to support uGuru.


The first page is called Standard CMOS and offers settings to change date/time, HDD and floppy settings.


Advanced BIOS has settings to adjust general BIOS settings like typematic rate and additional bootup-delays. Also you can disable the full screen POST image here, so that you can see the full output of the system startup. On a subpage you can change the order in which the system will try the available devices to boot from.


On another subpage you can disable certain CPU features, like the C1E power saving feature. I like to disable it when overclocking. The Execute Disable feature of the CPU can also be disabled here, when using Windows XP SP2 enabling this feature might help protect against buffer overflows in software. BIOS 1.4 for the ABIT AL8 adds an option to disable EIST here as well.

Memory Timings

In Advanced Chipset Features, DRAM Configuration, you find options to change your memory timings settings between Manual and Auto, which uses the data from the SPD chip on your memory modules.


You can change CAS Latency (tCL), Active-to-Precharge Delay (tRAS), Rad-to-Cas Delay (tRCD), and RAS Precharge Time (tRP), which are the standard timings for memory modules. Unlike Athlon64 systems, Intel's chipset does not offer any other options here.

Integrated Peripherals

On the Integrated Peripherals page you find options to control the behaviour of the SATA controllers. I like to disable the second SATA controller when not in use, since this speeds up boot time. Also you can limit the transfer mode of the PATA port and change several USB settings here.


Power Management options are like in any other BIOS - nothing special here.


PNP/PCI Configurations has no useful options either.

uGuru

On the uGuru page you can change all overclocking related settings. FSB for example, can be set from 133 Mhz to 400 MHz. Finally a board that allows underclocking.


The PCI-Express bus frequency can be changed from 100 MHz to 150 MHz. This will be a very important setting for overclockers using this board, as we will show in our overclocking tests later.


This is another important setting on the AL8. It allows you to define what the chipset thinks the CPU is: 533 MHz, 800 Mhz or 1066 MHz part.


To optimize memory speed when overclocking, you can select different ratios for the memory clock here. The available options change depending on what you selected in N/B strap CPU as.


Increasing CPU Core Voltage is a common means to improve CPU stability. There is a wide range of settings from 1.4V to 1.75V, fine for most users.


MCH voltage lets you increase the voltage the memory controller runs at. Here the options go from 1.5V default up to 2.0V.


Most memory is more stable when run at a higher voltage. The options range from 1.75V up to 2.30V. More than enough for all memories.


On the Power Cycle Statistics page you can see how long you have been running the board and how often it has been switched on and off. An option to reset these values to zero would be useful.

ABIT EQ

ABIT EQ is the fan control and hardware monitoring part of uGuru. It is accessible by pressing the left/right keys on the uGuru overclocking screen.

Monitoring

The board monitors three temperatures: CPU temperature, System temperature and PWM temperature.


The voltage monitoring part is more than complete. It monitors about every voltage that is existant on the motherboard.


All four fan connectors of the motherboard are monitored.

Fan Control

ABIT's fan control is among the best in the industry. There are two groups of fan settings, the first offering more complete options than the second one.


Group one allows you to control the three fans CPU, Chipset and System. With the available options it is very easy to define how fast a fan runs at a certain temperature.


In the second group you find options to define how the AUX fan responds to changes in temperature.

Profiles

A great feature which I miss a lot in cheaper boards is that you can save all BIOS settings to the flash rom and load them at a later time. This is especially useful when doing overclocking tests, where the CMOS sometimes gets corrupted. The saved options are not lost if you remove your battery or clear the CMOS.

Test Systems

Test System "ABIT AL8"
CPU:	Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)
Motherboard:	ABIT AL8, Bios 1.4 i945P
Memory:	2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8
Video Card:	ATI X850 Pro PCI-E
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB
Power Supply:	HEC Power475
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.8
OC is 15 x 300 = 4500 MHz, Memory 1:1 = DDR2-600

Test System "AA8XE"
CPU:	Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott)
Motherboard:	ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE, Bios 1.4 i925XE
Memory:	2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 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 "Sapphire PI-A9RX480"
CPU:	AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)
Motherboard:	Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480, Bios 07/27/05 ATI RX480
Memory:	2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5
Video Card:	ATI X850 Pro PCI-E
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB
Power Supply:	HEC Power475
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.7
OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)

Test System "ECS KN1 SLI"
CPU:	AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939; 512KB; Venice)
Motherboard:	ECS KN1 SLI Extreme, Bios 1.11a 6/20/05 nForce4 SLI
Memory:	2x 512MB OCZ PC-3200 Gold GX 2-2-2-5
Video Card:	ATI X850 Pro PCI-E
Harddisk:	Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB
Power Supply:	HEC Power475
Software:	Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.6
OC 2700 is 9x300 FSB, Mem ratio 2:3 (=200 MHz)

Test System "P4 2.4C"
CPU:	Intel Pentium 4 2.4C (S478; 512KB; Northwood)
Motherboard:	ABIT IC7, Bios 2.8 i875P
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)

SiSoftware Sandra

Raw CPU performance is the same between all boards which use the same CPU.

Lavalys Everest

I was surprised to see such a big difference in throughput between the i925XE and the i945. ABIT has probably spent more time on optimizing the BIOS of their highest-end AA8XE.


Write performance is about the same, with the AL8 at a slight advantage.


DDR2 has very high latencies already, while ABIT has hidden them quite well on the AA8XE, the AL8 sure has some room for improvement. We used the same memory modules and timings on both boards. The integrated memory controller of the Athlon64 can shine here.

SuperPi

SuperPi uses the CPU a lot, but is also dependant on memory performance. In the 1 million digit benchmark the AL8 is a tick slower, while it is faster in the 32 million digit benchmark. Interesting.

PCMark 2004

PCMark04 favors Intel CPUs a lot, while the margin is small, the AL8 seems to be a little bit faster than the AA8XE.

3DMark 2001

In 3DMark2001 all boards are pretty close together. Only the nForce4 board takes a lead, when overclocked.

CineBench

All boards using the same CPU show about the same speed. Intel systems with their Hyper-threading Technology are king here.

KribiBench

Without overclocking the AL8 is slower than the AA8XE, but the margin gets smaller, the higher you overclock it.

Comanche 4

The gaming benchmark Comanche 4 is traditonally dominated by the AMD systems. Again we see very small evidence that the AL8 gains more from overclocking than the AA8XE.

Quake 3 Arena

Quake 3 seems to love memory read bandwith, that's why the AA8XE is so much faster than the AL8.

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:	+0.25, -0.32	Good
Noise level, dB (A):	-86.9	Good
Dynamic range, dB (A):	86.9	Good
THD, %:	0.0068	Very good
IMD, %:	0.021	Good
Stereo crosstalk, dB:	-87.7	Excellent
IMD at 10 kHz, %:	0.102	Average

General performance: Good


For easier comparison we summed up the individual scores of all tested boards (1: Very poor, 2: Poor, 3: Average, 4: Good, 5: Very good, 6: Excellent). The sound quality of the AL8 on-board audio is among the best.

Frequency Response

Frequency range	Response
From 20 Hz to 20 kHz, dB	-1.68, +0.25
From 40 Hz to 15 kHz, dB	-0.32, +0.25

Noise Level

Parameter	Left	Right
RMS power, dB:	-81.7	-83.0
RMS power (A-weighted), dB:	-86.9	-86.9
Peak level, dB FS:	-68.0	-69.5
DC offset, %:	-0.00	-0.00

Dynamic Range

Parameter	Left	Right
Dynamic range, dB:	+80.5	+81.8
Dynamic range (A-weighted), dB:	+86.9	+87.0
DC offset, %:	-0.00	-0.00

THD + Noise (at -3 dB FS)

Parameter	Left	Right
THD, %:	0.0068	0.0071
THD + Noise, %:	0.0220	0.0191
THD + Noise (A-weighted), %:	0.0136	0.0138

Intermodulation distortion

Parameter	Left	Right
IMD + Noise, %:	0.0212	0.0222
IMD + Noise (A-weighted), %:	0.0164	0.0166

Stereo crosstalk

Parameter	L <- R	L -> R
Crosstalk at 100 Hz, dB:	-81	-80
Crosstalk at 1 kHz, dB:	-85	-87
Crosstalk at 10 kHz, dB:	-81	-81

IMD (swept tones)

Parameter	Left	Right
IMD + Noise at 5 kHz, %:	0.0343	0.0343
IMD + Noise at 10 kHz, %:	0.1129	0.1126
IMD + Noise at 15 kHz, %:	0.1600	0.1608

Sound Levels

In order to give a measurement of how loud this board is, we used an IEC651 Type II sound level meter on the dbA slow setting.

The distance between fan and sound level meter was 10cm. Please note that this is very little, compared to the "standard" measurements, which are made at 1m distance. We had to do this, to get proper readings with our sound level meter, because we obviously can't spend thousands of dollars on audio measuring equipment.
All tested fans were connected to an external 12V lab PSU. 12V is the maximum rated fan speed. Some motherboards/video cards use slower fan speeds and slowly ramp them up with temperatures. This is also the reason, why the X800 series seems to have such a "loud" fan. During normal usage its fan is usually running at 33% to 66%.

Common sound levels
Ambulance siren	120 dbA
Crying baby	110 dbA
Shout (5 feet)	100 dbA
Truck	90 dbA
Urban street	80 dbA
Automobile interior	70 dbA
Normal conversation (3 feet)	60 dbA
Office, classroom	50 dbA
Living room	40 dbA
Bedroom at night	30 dbA
Whispering at (5 feet)	20 dbA
Rustling leaves	10 dbA

Overclocking

ABIT's boards are well known for their excellent overclocking features. For example the uGuru overclocking technology is a unique feature of ABIT motherboards.

Before testing, I browsed a few reviews of other websites and was disapointed that they could not get more than about 220 FSB out of the board.

My initial testing confirmed this.
With our P4 3.0 CPU, which can easily run 300 FSB = 4500 MHz on other boards, everything ran fine and the AL8 was 100% stable up to 224 FSB. But once the FSB was changed to 225 MHz, the system immediately crashed. It made no difference if the clock was changed in BIOS or in Windows with the uGuru utility. Raising voltages did not help either.

After some experimenting I found out that changing the "N/B Strap CPU as" setting to PSB1066 allowed me to go to up 299 FSB, but after that there was the same instant-hang wall.

The N/B Strap CPU setting controls what kind of speed grade the Chipset thinks the CPU is. The available options are: 533 / 800 and 1066. Usually, all this option does, is change the available memory divider ratios, but in this case it seems to change something in the chipset too. My guess is that the i945 chipset has some kind of overclocking lock.

So that's it? 299 FSB maximum? No. Once you start increasing the PCI-Express bus frequency, you slowly gain more overclocking. The graphs below show how PCI-E frequency and maximum FSB are connected together.


Here are the results at N/B Strap setting 800 FSB. Looking at the graph, you can see that adding 1 MHz PCI-E clock adds 2 MHz of extra FSB.


Here is the data for the 1066 FSB setting. It starts out at 299 FSB and increases 3 MHz, every time you raise PCI-E clock by 1 MHz.

I did not test the 533 FSB setting, but I would assume the steps are 1 Mhz there.

Be advised that you can not raise the PCI-Express bus clock indefinitely. First, the board BIOS offers a selectable range between 100 MHz and 150 MHz. During my testing the SATA HDD was no longer detected at around 120 MHz, the ATI RADEON X850 did not start up beyond 125 MHz. With a Matrox Mystique PCI VGA card I could get 129 MHz, but more than that and the mobo wouldn't POST.

Based on above testing, and assuming a maximum PCI-E clock of 125 MHz, the maximum clock the board can run at is 374 FSB (= 299 + 25 * 3). At PSB 800 this would be 275 FSB (= 225 + 25 * 2).
I see no reason why you would want to run the board at the 800 PSB setting.

Now that we were able to properly overclock the board, we set out to find the maximum FSB we could actually run with our CPU. To do this the multiplier was dropped to 14x using EIST. Memory was run at the slowest divider as well, so that only the CPU or motherboard are limiting the overclock.



The maximum stable FSB was 326 FSB - the CPU's limit. With the right CPU you can sure get more out of the board.



The highest "performance" clock we could reach is 4550 MHz at a FSB of 303 Mhz. However, the board felt a bit unstable beyond 300 MHz. For example PCMark2004 tended to crash sometimes, even though the system was 24 hours Prime95 stable (two instances).

Overall I must say that the board offers solid overclocking, if you know above BIOS tweaks. Without them, a maximum of 225 FSB would make the board a hopeless overclocker.

Also be advised that for more serious overclocking adventures you should consider cooling the voltage regulation MOSFETs around the CPU area. When we tested at 4500 MHz with a waterblock (no airflow around CPU), some parts there reached temperatures of around 90°C-100°C.

	The AL8 is sold for about $150, which is a quite competitive price for a motherboard with these features.
	Good performance Dual RAID Gigabit Ethernet Good on-board Audio
	Overclocking issues
8.2	The ABIT AL8 is a very solid Intel board with great features, good performance and support for Dual-Core CPUs. ABIT's proprietary uGuru technology offers exceptional monitoring options as well. Overclocking works good, once you know how to properly change the BIOS settings for overclocking, but without them you are lost. If ABIT used their passive Silent OTES on the board, this would be an awesome media PC board - enough performance for all HDTV needs, great on-board audio with SPDIF, but still quite silent.