Abit is a very reputable brand that is now known for their Fatal1ty branded product lines in graphics cards and motherboards. In the last 16 years, Abit has made numerous advances in the motherboard market including SoftMenu (the first jumperless motherboard technology), standard RAID support, and in 2002, they introduced their legacy-free series motherboards known at the ?MAX?series.

In recent months, Abit announced several new motherboards based upon the latest Intel and nVidia chipsets including the AW8 and AW8-MAX. Today, I will be taking a look at Abit's AW8 motherboard which sports Intel's 955X express chipset, SATA II support, the Abit AudioMAX HD 7.1 audio technology, Abit's latest uGuru 2005 overclocking technology and last but not least, Abit's SilentOTES technology. When you put all these things together on a single motherboard, you end up with the AW8. Not quite the simple motherboard you were expecting.

Table of Contents
Page 1: Specifications of the Abit AW8 / What's in the box?
Page 2: Up close and personal with the Abit AW8
Page 3: Up close and personal with the Abit AW8 (cont'd)
Page 4: Taking a brief look at the Intel 955X Express Chipset / Features of the Intel 955X Chipset
Page 5: Test System Specifications / Benchmarks Performed / SiSoft Sandra Results
Page 6: SiSoft Sandra Results (cont'd)
Page 7: PCMark 2005 Results / HDTach Results / SuperPi Results / PiFast Results

Specifications of the Abit AW8
Here are the manufacturers specifications of the AW8 motherboard;

Processor Designed for Intel?Pentium?4 / Pentium?D LGA775 processors with1066/800MHz FSB Supports Intel?Hyper-Threading / XD-bit / EM64T / EIST Technology Chipset Intel?955X / 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 8GB PCI-Ex16 Graphic Delivers up to 8GB/s per direction for 3.5 times more bandwidth than AGP8X PCI-E Gigabit LAN On board PCI-E Gigabit LAN controller supports 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet SATAII 3G RAID Intel?Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0/1/5/10 Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing and native hot plug Audio (Dolby Master Studio support) ABIT AudioMAX HD 7.1 channels Intel?High Definition Audio with Dolby Master Studio Supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF In/Out Abit Engineered ABIT ?Guru?2005 Technology (ABIT OC Guru / ABIT EQ / ABIT Flash Menu / ABIT Black Box) ABIT CPU ThermalGuard?Technology ABIT AudioMAX HD 7.1 Technology Internal I/O Connectors 1 x PCI-E X16 slot, 2 x PCI-E X1 slots 2 x PCI slots 1 x AudioMAX slot 1 x Floppy port 1 x UDMA 100/66/33 connector 4 x SATA connectors 2 x USB 2.0 headers 1 x FP-Audio header, 1 x CD-IN Back Panel I/O ABIT SilentOTES?Technology 1 x PS/2 keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse 4 x USB 2.0 1 x RJ-45 Gigabit LAN Dimensions ATX form factor 305 x 245mm

What's in the box?
You might be wondering what comes packaged with the Abit AW8. I know I would be, so I thought it would be nice to include a list of all the included components.

• Abit AW8 motherboard
• 1x IDE round cable
• 1x Diskette drive round cable
• 4x SATA cables
• 1x SATA power adapter
• I/O shield
• Motherboard user manual
• uGuru user manual
• Quick installation guide
• 1x SATA RAID driver diskette
• 1x driver / software CD