Reviews of ABIT’s Top-of-the-Range Fatal1ty Mainboards Emerge

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 02/19/2005 | 08:39 AM ]

ABIT’s “dream” mainboards dubbed Fatal1ty AA8XE mainboards that were announced back in mid-October, 2004, have reached reviewers and received affirmative critical acclaims from web-sites like ExtremeTech and HotHardware.

The Fatal1ty AA8XE supports Intel Pentium 4 processors in LGA775 form-factor with 1066MHz processor system bus, will allow to install up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR2 memory, support 4 Serial ATA ports with RAID, 1 Parallel ATA-100 port, PCI Express x16 port, 2 PCI Express x1 slots, 2 PCI slots, Dual LAN, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 3 FireWire ports and other.

The mainboard comes with numerous enhancements, such as Fatal1ity gaming panel that is an upgraded version of ABIT’s 3rd Eye which displays all the current information available on the 3rd Eye and also provides USB, audio, FireWire, Serial ATA power/connector as well as CMOS reset button with safety cover.

In addition to Fatal1ty gaming panel, the AA8 Fatal1ty is supplied with numerous additional features, including OTES “Fatal1ty Signature Edition” – a special cooling system that cools-down components of mainboards, such as MOSFETs and capacitors with installed heat-sinks, redesigned Pulse Width Modulation system for advanced power stability and signal strength as well as uGuru with Fatal1ty Game Guru system – a complete system monitoring and management with a game configuration utility.

“The Fatal1ity AA8XE is one of the best 925XE based boards we’ve tested. Its layout works well, and it has some nice extra features, including the audio jacks on a riser card to help reduce noise. The extra cooling on the northbridge and power circuitry deliver what overclockers need. We pumped up the front-side bus speed by 15% with a stock Intel cooler, and the system was rock solid through several days of tests. With more exotic cooling, there's no telling how high you can go: Your CPU is likely to give out before the motherboard runs into problems,” ExtremeTech web-site said concluding its article.

“Throughout our entire battery of benchmarks, the ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE posted scores that were comparable to, or slightly better than two other i925XE based motherboards, including the Asus P5AD2-E which we granted an ‘Editor's Choice’ award a few weeks back.  When its performance is compared to competing Intel chipset based motherboards, the ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE should be considered among the best,” reviewers from HotHardware believe.

• ExtremeTech: A Motherboard for Enthusiasts.
• HotHardware: ABIT’s Fatal1ty AA8XE.