FIRST LOOK: Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE
by Wesley Fink on November 9, 2004 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Our Take
Abit and Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel have partnered to produce what is arguably the fastest Intel gaming motherboard that you can buy. We say "arguably" because there are other 925XE boards in the lab that do offer additional features or capabilities. However, there is no denying the incredible array of tweaking controls with broad ranges that are available on Fatal1ty. For gaming and overclocking, the AA8XE was a joy to use. It is a fast Intel board that was also remarkably stable in every thing that we attempted in out tests.It is hard also to not be impressed by the fact that we reached a new overclocking record FSB with the Fatal1ty board of 323X12. Keep this in perspective, however, as our starting point was 266 and the overclock was really 21%. Tests with the 800FSB Prescott were also impressive, although we could go no further with our 14 multiplier Prescott than we had achieved on the 925X Asus P5AD2 in the past. We are confident that the board can do it; we just couldn't find a Prescott with multipliers lower than 14.
We have already seen a few incredible overclocks with water and phase-change cooling with the new 3.46EE. For those inclined to use more exotic cooling, this board would be a great choice for your P4 system. But CPU blocks may be a challenge with the good-looking, but constricting, OTES cooling shroud.
In addition, the Abit Fatal1ty is undeniably impressive in the "looks" department. Owners will get lots of "wows" with the red backlighting. The board certainly looks the part of the best gaming board that you can buy. We would even be inclined to say that Fatal1ty could well be the best INTEL gaming board which you can currently buy, as it's extremely flexible and stable. If you insist on an Intel board for your gaming rig, this is certainly one you need to consider. But that is where our praise would end.
While we might agree that the Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE is possibly PC gaming hardware without equal among Intel boards, the claim that it is a gaming board without equal is laughable. The execution is impressive, but the choice of gaming platform is not. Frankly, the FX55 and 4000+ on the nForce4 wipe the floor with the Fatal1ty/3.46EE in gaming performance. Abit and Fatal1ty simply started with the wrong gaming platform. We'd love to see what they can do with an nForce4 or ATI RADEON Xpress 200 design, as it would probably be the best gaming rig that you can buy.
If your thoughts about gaming performance begin and end with Intel, then the Abit Fatal1ty is very easy to recommend. Many buyers will only consider Intel, and for them, this is a fantastic board. It is solid, stable, wonderfully flexible, and an outstanding performer compared to other Intel boards. But if you really want the best gaming performance that you can buy today, then a top Socket 939 Athlon 64 system should be your choice.
The Fatal1ty AA8XE is the first product in the Fatal1ty line. Abit tells us they will release an Athlon 64 Fatal1ty board called the AN8 in December. It will be very interesting to see what Fatal1ty and Abit can accomplish with that board!
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Badash7 - Monday, November 22, 2004 - link
Does it have or will it have through a bios update support for ddr2 667mhz or faster memory like the asus 925xe p5ad2-e does?jonmcc33 - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
The "real" Jonathan Wendel is uncovered!http://www.eeob.iastate.edu/faculty/WendelJ/jonath...
jonmcc33 - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Number 1 in talentless games like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and that makes him respected? A 5 year old could play those games.Maybe if he played Call of Duty or something else that requires skill then I'd think he deserves a motherboard named after him.
knitecrow - Friday, November 12, 2004 - link
those numbers don't matter for this boardthis board is targeted towards hard core gammers... who are slightly smarter than the average dell buyer.
the break down between AMD and Intel is very different for the performance gamming market. My guess is 60-40 (amd:intel)
Even Intel fanboyz are being persuaded by hard facts... for gamming Athlon64 is king.
OzMowerman - Friday, November 12, 2004 - link
AMDx86: 14.9%
notebook: 8.4%
server: 4.8%
Intel
x86: 83.6%
notebook: 90.1%
server: 96.9%
"a flea in the crack of an elephants arse" is the only thing that springs to mind
Its not hard to see why the amd fanboys get upset....LOL
when it comes to the end of the day, they make crap products and are untrustworthy.
Isnt it funny that its always the tight arse low income that sprulk amd the hardest.
If Intel made a chipset for amd processors, i would seriously consider buying one, but while our only choice is the backyarders via, and the incompetant nvidia, no thanks.
cryptonomicon - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
sorry, hard to resist flaming this board for some reason.cryptonomicon - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
so this board is really killer at.. uh.. what? media encoding and workstation performance? drool!Concillian - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#36:If those gamers are only overclocking the video card and do not overclock the CPU, they are potentially doing the right thing. What game fully utilizes an FX55 at the resolutions people actually use?
Games in general are not CPU bound at this point, so why fret over 5% here and there if the video card is going to limit your frame rates anyway? Get what's cheap for CPU and pimp out on the graphics card.
It would be nice to eventually see a review that exhibits just how GPU limited most games are even with the highest end GPUs. We always see CPU articls with the highest end GPUs to try to remove that side fo the equation and vice versa. But for a consumer they often have to take their budget and decide what gets spent where between CPU, RAM, and video cards. Probably the single most common decisions among gamers focus on these types of decisions, yet there are surprisingly few articles that focus on how to approch realistic purchasing decisions for these three critical components.
vailr - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#25: A serial port can be added to any USB port, using a USB-to-serial port adapter.$14.99 here: http://www.svc.com/usbsead.html
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#35 - My experience has been that ENTHUSIASTS know about water and phase-change cooling, but gamers usually don't know much about overclocking systems. If they overclock anything it's the video card. There are exceptions to every rule, but this is a GAMING system and I think our comments are apropos.If you believe the FX55 (2.6GHz) are not overclockable, you are not reading many articles. Most are reaching 2.9Ghz to 3.OGhz at stock voltage with air cooling. Those using water and phase-change are getting much higher results. The 90nm die-shrink will likely open the high-end even more for A64.