Abit AT8 32X Crossfire Xpress 3200 Motherboard Review

ABIT’s ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200 ‘RD580’ Motherboard

ABIT, now abit, has slowly been making their way back into the enthusiast market with some very nice releases of good performing motherboards. The AN8 32X SLI that we reviewed here was a great performing board, and after we got a few bugs worked out of the bios, it overclocked to decent levels as well. We were certainly glad to see abit back in the saddle and gearing themselves to the enthusiast side of the market. abit has continued to try and reach that market with their latest release that includes an ATI chipset, the RD580 for s939 CPUs. Today we will take a look at the abit AT8 32X and see if abit is able to cintunue the climb back into the enthusiast heart with what might be their last board produced for s939.

Before we look at the layout of the board, let’s take a look at the specs:

Processor
– Socket 939 for AMD Athlon 64X2/ 64FX/ 64/ Sempron Processors
– 2000MT/s System Bus
– AMD CPU Cool ?n? Quiet Technology

Chipset
– ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200 + ULI1575 chipset
– Support Dual Full PCIE x16 bandwidth to graphic

Memory
– Four 184-pin DIMM sockets
– Dual Channel DDR 400/333/266 ECC memory
– Supports maximum memory capacity up to 8GB

Graphics
– Two PCI Express X16 slots support Dual Graphic card by ATI CrossFire? Technology
– Two X16 graphics links for high performance Crossfire configurations

ABIT Engineered
– ABIT uGuru? Technology
– ABIT Silent-OTES? Technology

Audio
– On board 7.1 Channel HD Audio CODEC
– Support S/P DIF In/Out
– Dobly Digital Live technology

GbE LAN
– On board 10/100/1000M PCIE controller

Serial ATA
– 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s (RAID 0/1/0+1/5)
– Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing and native hot plug
– Dual on board Silicon Image Sil3132 PCIE SATA 3Gb/s RAID controller

IEEE 1394
– Supports IEEE1394 by PCI controller

Expansion Slots
– 2 x PCI Express X16 slots
– 2 x PCI Express X1 slots
– 2 x PCI slots

Internal I/O Connectors
– Floppy Port supports up to 2.88MB
– 2 x Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 Connectors
– 6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s Connectors; 2 x USB headers, 1 x IEEE1394 header
Back Panel I/O
– 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse
– Silent OTES, 1 x S/P DIF Output, 1 x S/P DIF Input
– 7.1 CH Audio connector (Front, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Surround, Rear Surround)
– 4 x USB2.0, 1 x IEEE1394, 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector

Dimension
– ATX form factor 305 x 245mm (12 x 9.6 inch)

Package
– SATA cable x 6, Ultra DMA cable x 1, FDD cable x 1, I/O shield x 1
– USB2.0 & IEEE1394 bracket cable x 1, External SATAll bracket cable x 1
– Support CD x 1, SATA Utility Disk x 1, Jumper Setting Label x 1
– A5 User?s Manual x 1, B5 Multilingual QIG x 1, uGuru B5 handbook x 1