by Doors4ever
05/23/2008 | 05:31 PM
Last summer we posted our review of abit IP35 Pro mainboard that received our prestigious Editor’s Choice award.
<%BANNER[article]%>We are not going to correct anything in that review, and we really don’t have to, because abit IP35 Pro mainboard is a true success. It is so good that we are still using it within our test platform for LGA 775 processors overclocking. Other mainboards in Intel P35 Express, new mainboards on Intel X38 Express as well as even newer mainboards on Intel X48 Express couldn’t oust abit IP35 Pro from this position. However, a lot of time has passed since then and we did find a few drawbacks in the remarkable abit IP35 Pro, so our opinion about it has obviously changed reflecting the current situation.
Speaking of drawbacks, we can recall a few not very significant ones that nevertheless cause certain problems during the work with this mainboard. For example, we couldn’t find the key that would launch the boot-up menu. abit IP35 Pro doesn’t allow changing the boot-up device “on the fly”, like many other mainboards. You have to access the BIOS Setup, change the device order save the settings and reboot. A real trifle, isn’t it? Yes it is, but it is an inconvenience.
There are some more serious drawbacks: abit IP35 Pro is not as flexible with the memory, as some of its competitors. Even some of the budget mainboards offer more memory dividers than abit IP35 Pro. Moreover, ASUS, DFI and Gigabyte mainboards also can change Performance Level parameter directly, and abit IP35 Pro cannot, though this parameter does have big influence on the general system performance. Of course, mainboards for office PCs will not require any of these features, but a high-performance overclocker mainboard got to have them.
However, the prestige of abit IP35 pro suffered the biggest blow from the actual manufacturer. Namely from their inertness. The BIOS version that supports new fractional clock frequency multipliers for 45nm CPUs dates back only to second half of March 2008. Until that time abit IP35 Pro owners had to put up with the fact that the clock frequency of their Wolfdale and Yorkfield processors was below the nominal values in case of fractional multipliers and that the power-saving technologies didn’t work. According to the official specs, abit IP35 Pro did support 45nm CPUs, although in reality this support was implemented only partially. This is when you start thinking if going with an abit mainboard is such a good idea, considering the manufacturer will leave you on your own for a long while (thank god not forever) without the necessary support.
There is no excuse for this attitude to users, but there might be a reasonable explanation. It turned out that abit IP35 mainboard family that used to include only three models – the top IP35 Pro, mainstream IP35 and budget IP35-E – has been expanded. They introduced a new flagship mainboard on Intel P35 Express chipset – abit IP35 Pro XE.
As you can easily see, abit IP35 Pro XE mainboard looks exactly like the IP35 Pro, differing only by the color of the chipset cooling system. However, the new mainboard is already claimed to support CPUs with 1600MHz FSB, while IP35 Pro officially supported only FSB 1333, which means that the new mainboard has more dividers available. It should also support fractional processor clock multipliers by default. So, looks like the developers were busy with the new abit IP35 Pro XE, having put the older IP35 Pro aside until better times.
Note: since both mainboards look the same, we reflashed the abit IP35 Pro XE BIOS onto our abit IP35 Pro. This experiment failed. The BIOS reflashed alright, we got new memory dividers, but they didn’t work. Moreover, the board didn’t behave that confident anymore, sow e returned to the latest BIOS version 1.6 at the time of the tests.
However, abit IP35 mainboard family expanded not only at the top, but also at the bottom. Namely they launched an even simpler mainboard than abit IP35-E – IP35P. so, our today’s article will be devoted to this particular product.
In the end of February 2008 numerous hardware web-sites posted the news about abit launching their IP35P – the latest mainboard with remarkable overclocking potential. Of course, we were extremely intrigued by the news. The manufacturer calls their mainboard “Extremely OverSpeed” in their official press-release. Well, we are going to find out how true this statement is later, and now let’s meet the new abit IP35P in person.
The front side of abit IP35P box took a bad beating on the way to us and arrived covered with postage labels and other service stickers, so we had to use an image from the manufacturer’s web-site:
There is nothing special about the package front: it is decorated with the same car typical of the entire abit IP35 family, carries the logos of all supported CPUs and offers a brief list of technical specifications. The reverse boasts much more useful info, there is a photo of the board with the list of its key features and detailed specifications.
The accessories bundle is backed without excess. It includes FDD and IDE cables, a Serial ATA cable, a power adapter for SATA devices and an I/O Shield for the case rear panel – once of each.
Besides there is also a user’s manual, a CD disk with all necessary software, a sticker with connector layout and a leaflet warning you against harsh handling of the CPU socket. Everything indicates clear economy effort: the number of bundled accessories as well as the absence of a manual cover.
Modest accessories bundle is not a drawback. We are absolutely for reasonable economy here, it is much better than superfluous extravagancy. Most users normally use only one Serial ATA cable out of six that come with majority of mainboards, so the accessories bundled with abit IP35P are ore than sufficient for the first start.
Reviewers get spoilt from dealing only with high-end mainboards all the time. So, when I first saw abit IP35P, I felt a little shocked. A lot of free empty spaces on the PCB, absence of numerous components and advanced chipset cooling system – all this makes us assume that we received not a ready mainboard, but a half-finished product, or that the board was stripped on the way to our lab.
The PCB looks especially empty around the processor socket, where triple-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry seems to be very lonely. You also immediately notice an 8-pin ATX12V power connector located unusually far away from the PCB edge:
The connector panel also makes a very sad impression. A huge gap between the PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse and an audio-jack block is decorated only with tall electrolytic capacitors. I barely noticed EZ CMOS switch that serve to reset the BIOS settings right next to them.
However, when the first shock goes away, you realize that everything is absolutely logical and makes perfect sense. The manufacturer simply sticks to their economy effort leaving only the necessary functionality and getting rid of everything else.
Chipset North Bridge needs cooling? Here you go: a heatsink. It is a simple aluminum heatsink, but it is there.
The Intel ICH9 chipset South Bridge also has a small heatsink. Besides, the lower part of the PCB looks much merrier as it contains more components. The mainboard features one PCI Express x16 slot, two PCI Express x1 slots and three PCI slots. The gap between the graphics card slot and the closest PCI Express x1 has been increased to ensure that the massive VGA cooler will not block the slot dead.
Four Serial ATA connectors will be enough for hard disk drives in most cases and a JMicron JMB368 controller provides two Parallel ATA ports. You can also connect eight USB 2.0 ports in addition to the existing four that are laid out on the rear panel. The sound is provided by an eight-channel Realtek ALC883 codec, and the Gigabit network – by Marvell 88E8056 controller.
The components layout also shows four fan connectors. We expected to find maximum two on a mainboard of this class, so it is a definite advantage.
As for the design drawbacks, there are a few, but we shouldn’t be too critical here. Some of you may not like the location of the FDD connector, but a lot of users do not really care any more. Some got to have an S/PDIF and at least six SATA connectors with RAID support, but most users do not need this functionality. These missing things on abit IP35P mainboard are not really drawbacks, but functionality purposefully limited by the manufacturer and you should keep it in mind when considering this product for your needs. If you are missing some functions, you can easily add them, but those who do not need anything extra will be very happy about the price of this mainboard. By the way, abit IP35P does have S/PDIF connector, so you can use an external bracket for the case rear panel, or connect it to a graphics card with an HDMI Out.
Taking into account everything we have just pointed out, we would like to offer you a detailed list of official abit IP35P specifications, which looks unusually short, but has everything you need in it:
Not rich accessories bundle, modest exterior design, brief list of technical specifications – all this is typical of a budget solution and is not intended to impress anyone. However, when it came to BIOS, it turned out that abit IP35P has something to boast. Moreover, in some aspects it even turned out superior to one of the top products in the lineup – abit IP35 Pro!
The abit IP35P BIOS is based on Phoenix-Award code. SoftMenu Setup section with options for voltage and frequency adjustment is the first in the list, which is typical of abit (and very convenient for overclockers):
This section looks very well-planned and convenient to work with. The first info line reports the processor model name and its current working frequency. External Clock parameter that can vary from 200 to 600MHz with 1MHz increment allows overclocking the CPU by raising the FSB frequency above the nominal value. Multiplier Factor parameter allows reducing the processor clock frequency multiplier from the nominal value down to the minimum. Moreover, fractional multipliers are supported from the very beginning, from the first BIOS version 1.0. Once you change the multiplier and the FSB frequency, the Estimated New CPU Clock info field will immediately report the resulting CPU frequency that you will get after rebooting the system.
The functioning of the DRAM Speed (CPU:DRAM) parameter is also very well arranged. This parameter sets the memory frequency. It reports the current memory frequency in brackets (DDR2-800), however, it doesn’t stay like that forever. As the FSB frequency increases, so does the memory frequency in appropriate proportion. The system will report the current memory speed and not the initial one in brackets (DDR2-800, DDR2-804, etc.). This is exactly the great feature that many other mainboards out there lack.
By the way, this is where abit IP35P mainboard appears superior to the higher-end abit IP35 Pro for the first time. We have already mentioned a few times that abit IP35 Pro has very few supported memory dividers and in this aspect it yields to several budget mainboards out there. And this is a perfect example: abit IP35P supports more dividers!
Let’s continue our side by side comparison. CPU Core Voltage parameter on abit IP35P allows increasing the processor voltage from the nominal value (in our case it is 1.175V) up to 1.95V with 0.02V increment, while abit IP35 Pro supports maximum 1.775V. As for the memory voltage, both boards support the same values: 1.8-3.0V with a small increment of 0.05V.
CPU VTT Voltage parameter on both mainboards depends on the chipset North Bridge voltage. MCH 1.25V Voltage setting is responsible for this parameter. The higher is the NB voltage the higher you can set CPU VTT Voltage. abit IP35 Pro supports 1.1-1.47V interval for CPU VTT Voltage, while abit IP35P supports 1.2-1.5V interval with a variable increment.
MCH 1.25V Voltage of abit IP35P can also be adjusted within 1.25V-2.05V interval with a variable increment, while abit IP35 Pro supported maximum 1.72V for this setting.
Overclockers rarely lower the chipset South bridge voltage. abit IP35P mainboard allows changing ICH 1.50V Voltage setting from 1.5V to 2.0V first with 0.05V increment and then with 0.1V one.
The Advanced Chipset features section of abit mainboards BIOS allows changing memory timings. It is very convenient that you can only change a few selected parameters leaving all the others set to Auto.
Now let’s move on to the next section: PC Health Status. Of course, our today’s hero will not be able to outpace abit IP35 Pro with its uGuru technologies suite. However, it still boasts a remarkable set of options compared with most regular solutions out there. We can control three temperatures including the one around the processor voltage regulator circuitry. We can also monitor rotation speeds of all four fans that can be connected to the board. Besides the processor Vcore, the board also reports Vmem, CPU VTT Voltage and MCN 1.25V Voltage.
Moreover, the mainboard allows to automatically adjust fan rotation speed depending on the temperature readings. Unfortunately, this option exists for only two of the four fans, however, we can do it right from the BIOS and not through some sort of additional utilities or tools. Even the rotation speed of processor fans with a three-pin connector can be adjusted here – a feature that is missing from many overclocker mainboards these days, unfortunately.
Summing up at this point we can say that despite its budget positioning abit IP35P boasts absolutely remarkable BIOS functionality. Of course, there are a few things that can be added, such as BIOS settings profile saving, a key to access boot-up device menu like on other abit mainboards. As for the main functions, everything is practically perfect here. Don’t be discouraged by the first impression (not very rich accessories bundle, pretty modest PCB layout, short list of supported technologies and functions): the board has very rich “inner world” (excellent BIOS features). Now all we have to do is check out how well this board can put all these capabilities to good use in real life, namely, how well it can actually overclock processors.
We put together the following open testbed for our experiments:
We used Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor during the first part of our test session. This CPU works at 3.0GHz nominal frequency and can overclock over 4GHz. As for the maximum FSB frequency, it proved operational and stable at maximum 540MHz (540x7.5). So, how well will abit IP35P do here?
To find out what our mainboard is capable of we lowered the processor clock frequency multiplier to x6, set the memory frequency to its minimal value using 1:1 divider, increased the voltages. Here are the obtained results:
The saddest thing here is that there was no stability even at 500MHz FSB. Looks like the maximum operational FSB frequency for abit IP35P lies somewhere around 490MHz, because it passed all the tests successfully at 483MHz FSB. The processor clock frequency multiplier was set to x8.5, i.e. the CPU was overclocked to its maximum possible frequency of 4.1GHz.
This is a good result for a mainstream mainboard on Intel P35 Express chipset, but not for a super overclocker mainboard like abit IP35P was promised to be. Maybe the board will do better when overclocking a quad-core CPU? Unfortunately, our expectations didn’t come true. Having started to overclock our Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processors at 470MHz FSB, we had to go down to 440MHz, but still failed to achieve stability…
This is where we have to recall the story of our Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 test CPU. We got it not so long ago and quickly overclocked on abit IP35 Pro mainboard. The result was truly impressive: the CPU conquered 475MHz FSB with the default x7.5 clock multiplier. We couldn’t get it run stably at 480MHz FSB right away so we continued trying on other new mainboards that arrived in our lab. However, none of them could even get close to the result achieved on abit IP35 Pro, not to mention hitting higher speeds. So, the question that seems quite logical in this case is: did we actually reach 475MHz FSB or it was all illusion? And if it was real, then maybe processor went bad with the time, “degraded” as they say these days and cannot demonstrate the same remarkable speed any more?
To dot all i’s we replaced our abit IP35P mainboard with an abit IP35 Pro. We wanted to take a screenshot with available memory dividers anyway, so why not recheck the Core 2 Quad Q9300 overclocking results, just to make sure? We set the FSB to 475MHz and the remaining parameters to the following values:
So what do we see? abit IP35 Pro mainboard once again proved its excellent overclocking potential having repeated the same successful Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 overclocking.
As you understand, we didn’t set any record by overclocking our processor to 3.56GHz. What amazed us, was the ability of our system to work stably at high FSB speed of 475MHz. This is a definite merit of abit IP35 Pro mainboard.
Having confirmed that our Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor didn’t lose its overclocking potential, we had to admit that we could only blame not very impressive overclocking results on our abit IP35P mainboard. No wonder, actually. If the board couldn’t really overclock dual-core processors that well, why should it be better at overclocking of more complex quad-core CPUs? But this is where another question pops up: where do the rumors of abit IP35P’s unprecedented overclocking potential come from? They could have emerged as a result of incorrect translation from marketing to normal human language.
The answer to this riddle was a sticker on the front of the IP35P mainboard package that suffered on the way to our lab, as we have already said. Actually, you can see this logo not only on the box front but also on the back and even sides, in the press-release and on the company web-site. abit pays so much attention to it that they even put DDR2 1066 OC support in bold font in the list of the mainboard technical specifications. Yes, all these great sounding phrases like "Extremely OverSpeed" and "OverSpeed Edition" refer to the support of those few additional dividers available on abit IP35P that allow the memory to work at 1066MHz frequency.
We have been waiting for these dividers for a long time, this is great! However, other mainboards out there have been using these dividers for a long time now. Moreover, some mainboards like the recently reviewed Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4, for example, set the memory at 1066MHz right away without any agitation. So, in this case we are not talking about any break-through or significant achievement: abit IP35P simply caught up with the competitors’ mainboards at this point.
It is pretty ironic that these dividers have nothing to do with CPU overclocking. Yes, if your DDR2 memory modules can work at 1066MHz frequency, then these dividers will allow you to get them to work at this speed. However, you can only do it if your CPU runs at nominal frequency. Dividers set the memory frequency too high, so it will rise even more during overclocking, so you will not be able to actually use them in this case.
So, looks like many newsmarkers spread the marketing word that new abit IP35P mainboard boasts excellent overclocking potential without actually checking it out. According to our test results, the mainboard’s overclocking potential is pretty average, even a little lower than that.
Although we started this review not in the most positive manner towards the good old abit IP35 Pro mainboard, we are happy to still finish it on a positive note. Overclocking is not only about higher performance, but also about satisfaction and joy. After a number of mainboards with absolutely unremarkable overclocking functionality that I had to deal with lately, abit IP35 Pro brightened at least half of my day :)
As for abit IP35P, unfortunately we have to look for other sources of inspiration. Despite excellent BIOS functionality, the board failed to really take advantage of it in practical tests. Of course, the board is fairly new and was tested with an early BIOS version 1.1, so when new BIOS revisions come out its overclocking potential may improve significantly. At this time, however, the primary advantage of this solution is its low price.
However, if low price seems an attractive feature to you, then you should definitely check out another simple mainboard from abit – abit IP35V:
The unique thing about this board based on Intel P35 Express is that it uses ICH7 instead of ICH9 for the South Bridge. It will definitely overclock as good as abit IP35P, but its price will undoubtedly be lower.