X-bit labs

ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 mainboard on NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra Chipset: Built to Kill (page 11)

Category: Mainboards

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 03/22/2005 | 06:16 PM ]

Software

ABIT started paying special attention to the software they bundle with their products long time ago. ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 just like other flagship products from this manufacturer are supplied with a set of ABIT uGuru utilities. On the hardware level the uGuru utilities set is supported by a uGuru onboard chip, which is none other but a Winbond W83L950D.

The utilities set includes the following programs:

• ABIT EQ: ABIT’s brand name hardware monitoring tool.
  

  

• ABIT FlashMenu: the BIOS reflashing utility for Windows. This program grabs new BIOS versions from the file or from the manufacturer’s web-site in the Internet.
  

  

• ABIT BlackBox: this utility creates a patterned system configuration description to be reported to the manufacturer’s technical support service.
• ABIT OC Guru: this is the major interface for communication with the ABIT uGuru processor in Windows. Besides the system overclocking from Windows, this utility offers seven frequency, voltage and FanEQ profiles. You can switch between them manually or they can launch automatically when the special user-defined programs run.
  

  

  

Besides ABIT’s own utilities, Fatal1ty AN8 also supports the following NVIDIA’s own software: nTune, nvMixer, nvRAID and Network Access Manager run without any problems on ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 mainboard. However, nTune utility offers the user very limited functionality. It definitely doesn’t know anything about ABIT uGuru. That is why nTune utility is not even included onto the CD disk accompanying the board.