ABIT AT8

[W1zzard]

ABIT is one of the most popular motherboard manufacturers for enthusiasts and gamers. Their products are full of innovations like UGuru or SilentOTES. The AT8 is the latest Crossfire capable board from ABIT and uses ATI's RD480 chipset. As southbridge the ULI M1575 is used. What makes this board even more interesting is its competitive price which will lie in the USD 120 range.

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[Bull Dog]

Good review. I'd get one of these boards but my DFI nForce4 Ultra-D is still humming along just fine and I don't plan to X-Fire my X1900XT anytime soon.

 

[Quake2owns]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813154007

I cant decide between the Abit at8 and THAt sapphire crossfire motherboard.
The sapphire is alittle better 4.0 vdimm and i think 1.8 vcore. But sapphire has non existant usa support thats the bad thing.

 

[AMDCam]

yeah but screw support, if we (and by we I mean most enthusiasts) need it fixed either we'll fix it ourselves or if it has to go to support it'll take at least a week anyway. But I love Abit and Sapphire, I just thought Sapphire was focussed mostly on graphics cards so I have no idea how high quality their boards are.

 

[Quake2owns]

yeah but screw support, if we (and by we I mean most enthusiasts) need it fixed either we'll fix it ourselves or if it has to go to support it'll take at least a week anyway. But I love Abit and Sapphire, I just thought Sapphire was focussed mostly on graphics cards so I have no idea how high quality their boards are.

So if the bios in the sapphire motherboard is buggy and no support it doesnt matter how are you gonna fix the problems? edit the motherboard bios yourself? hell no support is a must. My motherboard has a poorlay out compared to the at8 well not really because x1800xt block the pci slots on the at8 doesnt on my ECS ka1 mvp extreme cf board.

www.ecsusa.com amazing support.

 

[AMDCam]

well dang dude don't get all defensive. An easy solution to "helo har are ryou dooring torday?" is using THIS website as an easy way to fix it. I never call support unless I'm missing a piece of hardware or the thing doesn't boot in a wierd way (like it boots but no video even though the card's in, the BIOS is running, the RAM is under load, the hard drives are loading, and the graphics card ran the last time right before you restarted). Just saying, support to me is like a "10 year powertrain warranty" on a new car or a "5 star crash test rating". SCREEEEEEEEW crash test ratings! I didn't buy a car to go crash it, and if it does I don't care, I would love that car and want to die with it, plus I don't buy anything but American so I guarantee the powertrain is gonna last well over twice that "10 year warranty" thing. That's obviously just a comparison but I'm showin you where I'm coming from, I've got different views from a lot of people, I'm just saying if the bad happens you deal with it and either way it won't be easy, so just don't plan so much for the bad to happen.

 

[Quake2owns]

well dang dude don't get all defensive. An easy solution to "helo har are ryou dooring torday?" is using THIS website as an easy way to fix it. I never call support unless I'm missing a piece of hardware or the thing doesn't boot in a wierd way (like it boots but no video even though the card's in, the BIOS is running, the RAM is under load, the hard drives are loading, and the graphics card ran the last time right before you restarted). Just saying, support to me is like a "10 year powertrain warranty" on a new car or a "5 star crash test rating". SCREEEEEEEEW crash test ratings! I didn't buy a car to go crash it, and if it does I don't care, I would love that car and want to die with it, plus I don't buy anything but American so I guarantee the powertrain is gonna last well over twice that "10 year warranty" thing. That's obviously just a comparison but I'm showin you where I'm coming from, I've got different views from a lot of people, I'm just saying if the bad happens you deal with it and either way it won't be easy, so just don't plan so much for the bad to happen.

No support means bios updates and chipset updates.

 

[AMDCam]

yeah but websites are worldwide, so unless Japan doesn't issue BIOS updates to their country then there shouldn't be a problem. I understand the literal meaning of "no support", but I'm not even sure if a company can get away with that. I also checked the website, and yeah they do have BIOS/driver updates for their motherboards so I don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Quake2owns]

yeah but websites are worldwide, so unless Japan doesn't issue BIOS updates to their country then there shouldn't be a problem. I understand the literal meaning of "no support", but I'm not even sure if a company can get away with that. I also checked the website, and yeah they do have BIOS/driver updates for their motherboards so I don't know what you're talking about.

They have no support for helping you solve issues .

 

[AMDCam]

An easy solution to "helo har are ryou dooring torday?" is using THIS website as an easy way to fix it.

There's your answer. If you want we can just agree to disagree because you seem to be TRYING to find problems with your Sapphire board.

 

[W1zzard]

i havent seen a single issue in the latest sapphire bios, have you?

 

[Quake2owns]

i havent seen a single issue in the latest sapphire bios, have you?

How about a review of the sapphire crossfire motherboard?

 

[W1zzard]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/PI-A9RD480/

 

[Quake2owns]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/PI-A9RD480/

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowI...ssFire ATX AMD CrossFire Motherboard - Retail

Take a look at that sapphire crossfire board it's different from the board in your review, the names called the PC-A9RD480Adv , do you know which one is the higher end model? If you look the sata ports are in a totally different position from your review board.The ide ports the cmos battery the floppy port are all in different placements and this PC-A9RD480Adv also has 3 pci slots your review board only has 2.

 

[wiak]

do anyone have the FF issue?
that you have to reboot and then reboot again to get it to boot right?
check specs for system ^^

 

[W1zzard]

do anyone have the FF issue?
that you have to reboot and then reboot again to get it to boot right?
check specs for system ^^

i saw that once or twice

 

[BigD6997]

well im looking at getting a xfire board, and i am looking at the sapphire board, but it is 30 bucks more expensive than the asus.... how is the asus xfire board cuz a lot of the companys boards are having problems.... i might go with the sapphire board, any sugestions?

 

[wiak]

chose AT8 for godsake!
its has 4x SATA 3Gbps !, and is pure gold (just kidding) but its way stable and boot friendly! as it booted right out of the box with my old ram, when i got AV8 (my old mb) it took some time to get it right

 

[BigD6997]

thanks for the imput... i was taking a good look between the abit board, asus, and sapphire, but the abit looks to be the best constructed witht the best bioses....

 

[Quake2owns]

thanks for the imput... i was taking a good look between the abit board, asus, and sapphire, but the abit looks to be the best constructed witht the best bioses....

The sapphire board is actually better. Using crossfire x1800xt or x1900xtx would block both pci slots on the at8 rendering them useless.

 

[Quake2owns]

chose AT8 for godsake!
its has 4x SATA 3Gbps !, and is pure gold (just kidding) but its way stable and boot friendly! as it booted right out of the box with my old ram, when i got AV8 (my old mb) it took some time to get it right

By the time 3Gbps shows improvement over sata1 all of it will be out of date.

 

[LAj]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowI...ssFire ATX AMD CrossFire Motherboard - Retail

Take a look at that sapphire crossfire board it's different from the board in your review, the names called the PC-A9RD480Adv , do you know which one is the higher end model? If you look the sata ports are in a totally different position from your review board.The ide ports the cmos battery the floppy port are all in different placements and this PC-A9RD480Adv also has 3 pci slots your review board only has 2.

Attention please!
PI-A9RX480 is not the mainboard reviewed by TechPowerUp!
PI is the only mainboard that haven't xfire and go up to good overclock. Its price is around 180€.
PC-A9RD480Adv is a redesigned version for particular user that have to install a full ATX pcb vga and sata HD. This version isn't supported for overclocker!
See www.sapphire.com forum! I read it thinking that support lack and bios release isn't fast!
PC-A9RD480 is a mainstream mainboard.

 

[LAj]

@ Wizzard!
Will you update this review when ABIT will release a new bios to fix memory problem?
Would you test the board with samsung TCCD and found overclock limit ?
Thank you.

 

[wiak]

hmm
good = works out of the box right away
bad = kinda clumpsy places to set PCIE x1 & PCI slots
btw: what do you see in the picture?

 

[Quake2owns]

hmm
good = works out of the box right away
bad = kinda clumpsy places to set PCIE x1 & PCI slots
btw: what do you see in the picture?
http://img.techpowerup.org/060208/ny 005546.jpg

wiak I see a pci video card or tv tuner lol something anyway is that a x1800xt or a x1900?