Socket 775 motherboards are coming out left and right since new technologies such as PCI-Express and DDR2 are improving. Abit has released a motherboard which they have called the AA8-3rd Eye. This motherboard is the same thing as an AA8-DuraMAX with a new accessory addition. This 3rd Eye refers to the µGuru clock that is included with the bundle and is quite a nice feature. Much has already been said about the new LGA775 processors, PCI-Express, and DDR2 so knowing all that lets take a look at what this motherboards specifications.
LGA775 CPU Socket
– Designed for Intel® 90nm Prescott LGA775 processors with 800MHz FSB
– Supports Intel Hyper-Threading Technology
Express Chipset
– Intel 925X/Intel ICH6R Express Chipset
– Supports Hi-Speed Universal Serial Bus (USB 2.0)
Flexible Memory
– Four 240-pin DIMM sockets (Un-buffered Non-ECC DIMM)
– Supports Dual channel DDR2-533/400 (Max. 4GB), Up to 8.5GB/s bandwidth
PCI Express x16 graphics
– PCI Express x16 graphics delivers up to 8GB/s per direction for 3.5 times more bandwidth than AGP8X at 2.1GB/s
PCI Express x1 I/O
– PCI Express x1 I/O offers 500MB/s concurrently, over 3.5 times more bandwidth than PCI at 133MB/s
SATA Matrix RAID
– Four ports SATA 150 RAID 0/1, deliver higher performance and data protection
– Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing and native hot plug
High Definition Audio
– On board Theater-class 7.1 Channels Intel® High Definition Audio
– Professional digital audio interface supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF In/Out
IEEE 1394
– Supports 3 Ports IEEE 1394 at 100/200/400 Mb/s transfer rate
Gigabit LAN
– On board GbE Gigabit LAN controller supports 10/100/1000 BASE-T Ethernet
ABIT Guru Clock inside
– Instant Overclocking & H/W Monitoring & PC On/Off
– MSN/E-mail Notification
– Large LCD Screen & Room Temperature Display
Internal I/O Connectors
– 1 x PCI Express x16 slot
– 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
– 2 x PCI slots
– 1 x Floppy Port supports up to 2.88MB
– 4 x SATA 150 Connectors
– 1 x Ultra ATA 100/66/33 Connector
– 2 x USB 2.0 headers
– 2 x IEEE 1394 headers
– 1 x FP-Audio header
– 1 x CD-IN
Back Panel I/O
– 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
– 1 x Serial Port connector, 1 x Parallel Port connector
– 1 x S/PDIF IN/OUT
– 1 x Audio connector (Center/Subwoofer, Rear Surround, Surround Speaker)
– 1 x Audio connector (Line Out, Line-in, MIC-in)
– 2 x USB Connectors, 1 x IEEE1394 Connector
– 2 x USB Connectors, 1 x RJ-45 GbE LAN Connector
Miscellaneous
– ATX form factor (305 x 245 mm)
Since this motherboard the same as the AA8-Duramax with the addition of the µGuru clock the are about the boxes are also quite similar. There is a good amount of information on the motherboard and all of the features that come along with it. I didn’t include a picture but the packaging inside of the box is excellent. All of the accessories provided were in a box and the clock was in another. There were no lose items that were floating around in the box which was nice to see.
The motherboard comes with a good amount of documentation, all of which is well written. You get a motherboard manual, µGuru manual, quick installation guide, and motherboard jumper settings sheet. Also included is a CD with the motherboard drivers, µGuru software, and a few other programs while the floppy disk provided contains the SATA drivers.
The µGuru clock comes in its own box as I mentioned before and contains the clock, USB cable, and small manual. The USB cord is designed specifically for the clock so don’t try and use it with anything else. The LCD screen is protected by a piece of plastic so it doesn’t get scratched during shipping which it didn’t. From the back view of the clock you can see the USB port as well as the three buttons on the top of the clock which have different functions. The µGuru features and clock will be looked at in much more details later in the review.
This motherboard uses the orange PCB that is becoming Abit’s trademark color. I remember the nice orange from my NF7-S motherboard a few years ago. The overall design of the board looks to be good and will be dissected as the review moves along. One thing to note from this top level view is that all of the capacitors are made by Rubycon. Nearly two years ago, in response to an industry-wide problem with faulty capacitors Abit decided to make the change to these high quality capacitors which provide a more stable power output and stable electrical wave form for overclocking. Although the cost of the Japanese capacitors are several times more expensive than competing capacitors made in China, the quality level is much better.
The I/O back panel looks to have just about every connection needed. Many of the connections are pretty standard but I like seeing the gigabit LAN, firewire, S/PDIF IN/OUT and the 7.1 sound. The socket is of course one of the biggest changes to these LGA775 motherboards moving the pins from the processor to the socket. The 12v connector is at the very top of the motherboard near the back panel which is a good location for it.
The northbridge is cooled by a pretty unique looking active heatsink. Rather than using a traditional design where the air would push down onto the heatsink this one is blowing horizontally through the heatsink. This has been done with some CPU heatsinks however this is the first time I have seen it done for a northbridge. The southbridge will not get as hot as the northbridge but it does have a small passive heatsink on it to keep it cool. Just to the right of the southbridge are four SATA ports and a single IDE connection for your drives.
This motherboard has 1 x16 PCI-Express slot, 3 x1 PCI-Express slots, and 2 PCI slots. This should be a good slot configuration which will give you enough PCI for your current cards and enough x1 PCI-Express slots for future cards. Directly to the left of the x16 PCI-Express slot is the Realtek RTL8110S-32 chip which is the gigabit Ethernet controller. The DDR2 slots are color coded for dual channel setups just incase you forget your memory doesn’t go directly next to each other.
The floppy drive connector is at the bottom of the motherboard which isn’t the best place for it. It would be better if it was up near the DDR slots, then again floppies will be phased out complly with the BTX form factor. From the picture of the bottom left of the motherboard you can see the I/O chipset which is a Winbond W83627HF-AW. You can also see the RealTek ALC880 chipset for your 7.1 high definition audio. Furthermore there are two 3-pin fan headers for you to connect your fans to. The bottom right hand side of the motherboard is where you will find the µGuru chip which controls all of its features, and right below the chip is a red USB header for the µGuru clock. There is also a Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 chip which is the 1394a Link Layer Controller for the onboard firewire.
This AA8-3rd Eye is using a Phoenix AwardBIOS which is pretty standard. The main screen of the BIOS is pretty similar to the rest of the motherboards on the market with the exception of having the µGuru menu. In the advanced chipset features section is where you can adjust your DDR2 timings. The following are the timings available; CAS latency time: 3-5, Act. to precharge delay 4-15, RAS# to CAS# delay: 2-5, RAS# precharge time: 2-5.
The µGuru utility menu has two sections to it, OC Guru which is for overclocking and Abit EQ which is a health monitor. The external clock is the front side bus and can be set to 100MHz – 300MHz. If you have an unlocked Pentium 4 you will be able to change the multiplier which will be an advantage while overclocking, since I have a retail 2.8GHz Pentium 4 I am unable to change it.
The N/B Strap CPU can be set to By CPU(PS800), PSB533, or PSB800. The DRAM frequency (CPU:DRAM divider) can be set to Auto, DDR400 (1:1), DDR533 (3:4), or DDR600(2:3). These dividers will be extremely helpful when overclocking since the multiplier is locked.
You can set your PCI-Express clock to 99MHz – 255MHz and the PCI clock to either 33.33MHz, 36.36MHz, or 40.00MHz. The voltage control section allows you to set the CPU to: 1.3375v – 1.6875v, DDR2: 1.80v – 2.25v, and northbridge: 1.50v – 2.05v. The last great feature to this OC Guru section is the power cycle statistics. This displays your PC uptime, PC up time total, PC power cycles, PC reset button cycles, AC power on total time, and AC power cycles.
The temperature monitoring section allows you to view all of your current temperatures. You can also set it up so that your system will beep or shutdown if something gets too hot. The voltage monitoring section displays all of your voltages and also has the ability to beep or shutdown if they get too low. This is the most advanced monitoring section I have seen with any motherboard and am quite impressed.
The FanEQ control section is where you can take full advantage of the new PWM fans. With this enabled you give control of your fan speeds to the BIOS. Depending on the temperature of your processor or northbridge the voltage to the fan will be increased or decreased. When they are running hot the fans will speed up and get louder and when they are running cool they will slow down and be quieter. This is a great new feature for these LGA775 motherboards and Abit has given you enough settings for you to fine tune your system. The fan speed section displays your fans RPM and can beep or shutdown your computer if the speeds drop too low.
The advanced BIOS features is where you can enable/disable Hyper-threading, set your boot order, and enable/disable the full screen logo among a few other things. There is one option in the power management section you should be aware of which is CPU THRM-throttling. When you keep this enabled, if your CPU gets too hot the BIOS will throttle down the speed of the processor to reduce the heat. This will obviously decrease performance if you need the processing power at that moment. If you have adequate cooling I would suggest turning this off.
µGuru combines the latest PC technologies, providing users with an unforgettable PC experience. µGuru integrates a hardware microchip which interacts with Windows-based software applications to maximize PC performance and stability, while allowing for zero CPU usage. Furthermore, ABIT’s new Guru Clock brings users prompt overclocking and monitoring hardware status without the need to enter Windows-based utilities. Users no longer have to worry about being interrupted while they’re playing games or applications in full screen when they want to increase the system speed.
OC Guru AutoDrive is a great overclocking software which is designed specifically for Abit motherboards. The first thing this application does is displays all of your overclocking, BIOS, and Audio status. OC Guru also allows you choose from 6 overclocking profiles the first three are preset to turbo, normal, and quiet. The remaining three you can define to whatever settings you desire, these are user 1, user 2, and user 3. With AutoDrive you can have your system automatically launch a desired profile upon application launch.
This is extremely helpful if you want to have your system overclocked while gaming but quiet when idle. Without this feature you would need to reboot, go into your BIOS to configure everything, and wait for your operating system to reboot. Finally if you want to do all of your overclocking by hand you can use the SoftMenu. This section of OC Guru will give you control of all your voltages, FSB, multiplier, divider, and so on.
EQ is a hardware monitoring application which allows you to see all of your temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds. Not only does this application monitor all of your critical information but you can enable it to beep or shut down if there are warnings. While doing all of this EQ automatically records your system information which BlackBox can use to generate a detailed working log to send it to Abit technical support.
FlashMenu is a Windows based BIOS flashing utility which means you don’t have to boot into DOS to update your BIOS. FlashMenu has taken something that can be complicated for newer users and made it simple. With this application you have three ways to choose from to update your BIOS. You can choose the “One Click LiveUpdate” which will check Abit’s website, download the appropriate BIOS, and automatically update it for you. This is such a great feature which will remove the possibility of doing a bad flash and rendering the motherboard useless. You are also able to do the LiveUpdate step by step which will take you through the process rather than automatically doing everything. Finally you are able to update from file which allows you to choose the BIOS you want to use rather than letting Abit decide.
Last but not least is BlackBox which this assists technical support in quickly and correctly diagnosing and fixing problems you might have. BlackBox auto-detects hardware info for quick communication between users and Abit tech support. If you encounter problems, just click “SendMail to Abit” and Abit tech Support should respond in 24 hours.
The newest additon to the µGuru family is Abit’s Guru Clock which allows you to access and overclock your system while playing game or using applications in full screen without the need to stop or close the applications you are running. In addition, Guru Clock allows you to power on your PC then displays hardware monitoring status, room temperature, time, and even notifies you of new MSN/E-mail all from its LCD display. All of the these settings are configured thorough
The Guru clock installs just like any other typical USB device and requires no drivers. Once installed all of the settings that have been configured with the software will then display on the clock. I found this clock to be very useful, especially while benchmarking and testing. Being able to monitor temperatures, voltages, and time is very helpful during the times when a full screen application was running. A feature like this is something that an overclocker would highly appreciate especially if they are also a gamer.
The test systems that will be used which are outlined are below are almost identical. The only thing that is different between the Abit AA8-3rd Eye and Asus P5GD2 Deluxe is the motherboard. The Albatron PX915G Pro setup is of course a different motherboard and original DDR.
Test systems
Abit AA8-3rd Eye, Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz LGA775, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair TWIN2X1024-5400C4PRO (4-4-4-12), Albatron PCX5750 (425/500), 30GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive, Windows XP SP1a.
Asus P5GD2 Deluxe, Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz LGA775, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair TWIN2X1024-5400C4PRO (4-4-4-12), Albatron PCX5750 (425/500), 30GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive, Windows XP SP1a.
Albatron PX915G Pro, Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz LGA775, 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair TWINX1024-3200LL DDR400 (2-2-2-5), Albatron PCX5750 (425/500), 30GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive, Windows XP SP1a.
SYSmark 2004 Internet Content Creation
The overall score for SYSmark 2004 internet content creation the same for the Abit AA8-3rd Eye and Albatron PX915G Pro. The Asus P5GD2 Deluxe was 4 points lower.
SYSmark 2004 Office Productivity
With the office productivity section of SYSmark 2004 the Abit AA8-3rd Eye and Albatron PX915G Pro are also the same with the P5GD2 Deluxe a little behind.
RealStorm Benchmark 2004
RealStorm does not test the video card at all which makes it a great benchmark for motherboards. All of the options were left at the default except I changed the resolution to 640×480. With this benchmark the Asus P5GD2 Deluxe pulls a few points head of the Abit AA8-3rd Eye which leaves the Albatron PX915G Pro behind.
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
This Abit AA8-3rd Eye has the best memory bandwidth scores of the three motherboards tested. The Albatron PX915G Pro is obviously behind these DDR2 boards since it is using original DDR.
Everest Home Edition Memory Benchmark
Everest is a free and good benchmarking tool for memory bandwidth. Again with this benchmark the AA8-3rd Eye has higher memory bandwidth compared to the other two baords.
dBpowerAMP
dBpowerAMP is a free music converter which I used to convert a wav to mp3. All three motherboards completed the conversion in 34 seconds.
FarCry v1.1
Using the Fort demo at 640×480 the Asus P5GD2 Deluxe was a little more than a single FPS higher than the AA8-3rd Eye. The Albatron PX915G Pro was a little slower than both the AA8-3rd Eye and Asus P5GD2 Deluxe.
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003 runs a flyby and botmatch, and was run at 640×480. With the flyby portion of the benchmark all three motherboards were almost the same with the Asus P5GD2 Deluxe one FPS faster. The botmatch results were identical at 67.8 FPS for all three.
Comanche 4
The Abit AA8-3rd Eye outperformed all the other motherboards with Comanche 4 at 640×480. The Asus P5GD2 also does a little worse than the Albatron PX915G Pro.
3DMark03
The AA8-3rd eye is almost identical to the Albatron PX915G Pro with 3DMark03 at 640×480. The Asus P5GD2 Deluxe does a little better being 128 3Dmarks higher.
Let me start out by saying that µGuru is the best feature I have seen in a motherboard for quite sometime. I left the memory at its rated timings of 4-4-4-12 and started increasing the FSB while adding more voltage to the CPU, memory, and northbridge as needed.
After successfully overclocking to 265 FSB I then used the OC Guru in Windows to push the FSB of 270 taking my 2.8GHz Pentium 4 to 3784MHz! To achieve this overclock I first flashed the BIOS to version 15 using Abit’s FlashMenu which worked flawlessly. I then and set the CPU to 1.5875v, DDR to 1.9v, and northbridge to 1.65v.
I did not lock the PCI-Express bus but did lock the PCI to 33.33MHz. If I locked the PCI-Express bus to 100MHz it would cause the system not to boot for some reason. I could tell that the motherboard had a much more in it but my processor was maxed out which is not surprising since it was running almost 1000MHz faster than stock.
I also used the Abit EQ to monitor my temperatures and voltages while overclocking which was extremely useful. Also as a final note I was only using the retail heatsink that Intel provided with the Pentium 4, so imagine what you could do with some serious cooling.
| CPU | Memory |
Conclusion
Knowing Abit and how innovative they are with new technology I had high expectations for this motherboard. Of course being Abit they had no problem surpassing what I expected and just blowing me away.
I don’t think that any overclocker could really ask much more from a motherboard when it comes to the BIOS, voltages, dividers, and stability. With this motherboard I was easily able to overclock my 2.8GHz to almost 3.8GHz while running the memory at 360MHz. The onboard features such as firewire, gigabit LAN, 8-channel audio, and four USB 2.0 make it basically unnecessary to buy anything but a video card.
µGuru is something Abit really did a great job on and I can’t stress enough how useful and powerful this suite of applications is within the BIOS and Windows. Finally to top it all off Abit throws in their new µGuru clock which is such a simple idea but so very useful and helpful. I don’t know how many times I have been gaming and have either needed some overclocking power, wanted to know my CPU temperature, and simply see what time it was.
Without rambling on too long you also have a whole host of other excellent features such as DDR2, PCI-Express, PWM fan control, and more. I am very impressed with this motherboard, and with that it has earned a 10/10 and is awarded the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Abit for making this review possible.
Pros
- Extremely overclockable
- BIOS is robust and lacks nothing
- µGuru is an excellent innovation
- The clock adds to µGuru greatness
- Features DDR2 & PCI-Express
- Impressive memory scores
- High definition 8-channel audio
- Onboard firewire and gigabit LAN
- PWM CPU and northbridge control
Cons
- None