Introduction

I would like to thank ABIT for supplying the tested motherboard.

Intel's i945 and i955 chipsets are the first to support dual core Pentium D CPUs. The i955 is the "Performance" part, while it's i945 counterpart is geared more towards value. Although the price difference between the two is quite big, the technical differences are rather small. I955 has support for up to 8 GB of ECC memory, while i945 can "only" support 4 GB of non-ECC memory, not really important for you, as long as you don't plan on running a high-performance server. The other difference is that the i955 features Intel's proprietary "Memory Pipeline Technology". According to the Intel Website it "enables a higher utilization of each memory channel, accelerating data transfers between the processor and system memory and resulting in higher system performance".



ABIT has engineered the AL8 to be a good compromise between features, performance and price. Apart from the standard features, the motherboard has Gigabit Ethernet, an additional two-port SATA controller, 8 Channel Audio and ABIT's uGuru overclocking and monitoring technology.

Features

Specifications from ABIT

CPU

• Designed for Intel® Pentium® 4 / Pentium® D LGA775 processors with1066/800/533 MHz FSB
• Supports Intel® Hyper-Threading / XD-bit / EM64T / EIST Technology

Chipset

• Intel® 945P / Intel® ICH7R Express Chipset

Memory

• Four 240-pin DIMM sockets
• Supports Dual channel DDR2 667/533 Un-buffered Non-ECC memory
• Supports maximum memory capacity up to 4GB

PCI-E X16 graphic

• Delivers up to 8GB/s per direction for 3.5 times more bandwidth than AGP8X

SATA 3Gb/s RAID

• Intel® Matrix Storage Technology supports RAID 0/1/5/10
• Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing and native hot plug

2nd PCIE SATA 3Gb/s

• On board Silicon Image PCIE SATA 3GB/s RAID controller

PCI-E GbE

• On board PCI-E Gigabit LAN controller supports 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet

IEEE 1394a

• Supports 2 ports IEEE 1394a at 100/200/400 Mb/s transfer rate

Audio

• On board 7.1 CH Intel® High Definition Audio CODEC
• Supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF In/Out

ABIT Engineered

• ABIT µGuru™ 2005 Technology (ABIT OC Guru / ABIT EQ / ABIT Flash Menu / ABIT Black Box)
• ABIT CPU ThermalGuard™ Technology

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
• 6 x SATA connectors
• 1 x Ultra DMA 100/66/33 Connector
• 2 x USB 2.0 headers, 1 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, 1 x Parallel Port
• 1 x S/PDIF In/Out(AL8 only)
• Audio connector (Line-out, Line-in, MIC-in, Center/Subwoofer, Rear Surround, Side Surround)
• 2 x USB + 1 x IEEE1394a Connector
• 2 x USB + 1 x RJ-45 LAN Connector

Miscellaneous

• ATX form factor 305 x 245mm