Abit shows of new Fatal1ty AN9 based on the nForce 590

[Darksaber]

Abit has been thru some tough times, and they do have some interesting boards for us in the near future, that may turn the tides again. The Board features two PCIe x16 lanes, 1x PCIe x1, single UltraATA-133 and six SATA-II slots, hardware RAID-5. You get HD-audio as well. Another trend seems to be that single lonely PCI slot these days. First Sapphire with their Crossfire board, now ABIT with this one. Another interesting thing to note are the DIP switches in the bottom right corner. I wonder what they are for.


View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[boruvka]

Well, not bad, but... the board I would like Abit to release LIKE NOW!!!! is the UL8pro with that last screaming Uli1697 chipset. They (Abit) do react to customer mails (that's already more than half of the other manufacturers manage) but claim not to be able to report a release date. Excuse: All those who would know(?) are currently eyeing fairground beauties at CeBit (world's largest IT fair in Hannover, Germany).
Oh, well.

 

[overcast]

I wonder if this is actually HARDWARE based RAID and not that fake bios software whatever is nonsense that shows up on all these boards. I bet it's the latter, RAID5 is very complex and expensive.

 

[oldschool]

From the problems on Abit's AT8 mobo it looks like they have lost all of their competent engineers due to the financial woes they have experienced in recent years. My e-mails to them went unanswered so I doubt they have the ability or desire to produce a quality mobo and deliver good customer support.

 

[INSTG8R]

The trend towards 1 PCI slot bothers me I need 2 slots so I can run my Snd Card and my Wireless NIC, I hope to be upgrading soon and planned to go with another ABit board but simple factors like that will influence my decision

 

[Thermopylae_480]

I agree. I don't like this trend of going to one PCI slot. Why do you need three PCI-E X1 slots when you can't even buy a worthwhile card to put in it. PCI-E X1 has been out for quite some time now, and no major card manufactures have released any kind of expansion card into the mainstream market for it. You can find a few network cards, and the like, but they are all made by companies I have never heard of. Why can't just one of those PCI-E slots be substituted for a normal PCI.