Accessories
The Abit AG8 contains a basic assortment of accessories and enough to take advantage of all the onboard connections. There are four SATA cables, single IDE and floppy cables, and finally a bracket with two USB 2.0 ports and with two Firewire ports (one 6-pin, another 4-pin).

The entire package is attractively boxed inside the main carton which helps keep things looking tidy. It really takes out the guess-work involved when trying to put all the contents back into the box. :)

On the software side there is just a single CD containing drivers and uGuru utilities. There isn’t any “bonus�software CDs like DVD players or trial-version utilities which helps keep costs down.

uGuru
The uGuru software tools are particularly interesting as they have become ABIT’s cornerstone to enthusiast options on their motherboards. We have already discussed the uGuru features in the BIOS, so let’s take a look at how you can use it in Windows.

Like the BIOS uGuru appears as two distinct pieces: OC Guru, and ABIT EQ. The OC Guru software looks familiar to anyone who has used it on other ABIT boards. There are three predefined performance settings (Turbo, Normal, Quiet), as well as three user-definable settings. From this software, you can adjust voltages and frequencies as you would in the BIOS (with exception of the CPU multiplier).

Though I’m sure some of you will prefer the old-school method of tweaking through the BIOS, OC Guru in Windows is very handy in making a quick tweak without having to reboot.

OC Guru also has a “AutoDrive�feature which allows you to queue a list of programs to run in succession with a click of the AutoDrive button. You can add benchmarks and burn-in programs to help diagnose stability after changing settings.

ABIT EQ controls all your monitoring and temperature settings. Like OC Guru, you can adjust your settings on the fly without having to restart.

Also bundled with the ABIT AG8 is a Windows-based BIOS flashing program which is easy to use and safe from what I've experienced.