ABIT AV8 Motherboard

Overclocking/Conclusion

Overclocking:

Many of you just skipped over the first several pages and came right to this point: HOW DID IT OVERCLOCK? Well, I encourage you to read the rest of the review, but this board did not disappoint in the overclocking area. Let me stress something one more time before I show you the results though. The setting of 1T on the DRAM command rate showed to be of great importance. Sure, you can run things with a higher fsb, but the 1T command rate is going to get you your ultimate performance. Now, even though I just said that, we did set the command rate at 2T for our ultimate overclock so we could see how high we could go. Once again, more vdimm would have been welcomed, as we would love to see what this board could do with the 3.2v option and 1T command going a little further. So, do you want to see what we got? Ok, here is our best 1:1 overclocking. Our ram was the hindrance here, as it could go no further with the vdimm available.

And finally, using a divider, we were able to reach this:

Conclusions:

This board brought me a lot of satisfaction! Once I got the ABIT AV8 set up and running, it was fast and enjoyable to work with. ABIT has built another quality board that is a great performer! The board overclocked very well, and with faster ram, I am sure we could have even pushed it higher with the memory at 1:1. Using the divider, it was nice to see this board take off. 300 fsb is not out of the question at all with this board and the right ram/CPU combo. The only gripe I have, and I am sorry to beat a dead horse, but the lack of higher VDIMM options just leaves me frustrated. I just wonder what this thing would do with 3.2v! This board kept up with the nf3 chipset it was matched against, and if you compare it to our earlier review of the Asus Socket 939 offering, it also matched up very well against that. The bundle was satisfactory, but in this day, there is going to be little to make a board stand out other than the bundle. With the A64 having the memory controller right on the chip, it looks like most of these boards are going to perform right at the same level. That said, ABIT has a name that stands for confidence, and this board does nothing to hurt that reputation in my book.

Legit Bottom Line:

If you are ready to take the plunge into the world of A64 and a 939 pin motherboard, we would not hesitate to recommend you buy the Abit AV8. You will not be disappointed with its performance, or with the company that stands behind it!

The Abit AV8 is definitely worthy of the Editor’s Choice Award