Slots

The highlights here are of course the two PCI-E x16 slots which can be used for Crossfire. Even though an SLI bridge is included, NVIDIA does not (yet) allow SLI on Intel chipsets.
Having only one PCI slot might become a problem for many users who want to use an external sound card and wireless networking. When using two video cards, access to the single PCI slot is lost if a two-slot cooler is used.


Abit puts the on-board logic on a separate PCB which you may or may not install. When overclocking you don't need audio, so you don't need to plug in the card. According to Abit separating audio PCB from motherboard PCB improves audio quality.

Cooling

Abit uses their new SilentOTES2 to cool the Northbridge and Southbridge. The cooler works very well, even with little airflow around the heatsinks. When overclocking a lot, you should consider getting some airflow around the heatsinks or maybe add a small active fan to one of them.

Chips

Abit uses their proprietary UGuru chip on all motherboards. It implements many of the special features that you can set in the BIOS.


Winbond's W83627 is monitoring temperature, fan speed and voltages. It's one of the three most popular monitoring chips.


The two Gigabit Ethernet ports are done with Realtek chips. The RTL8111B is an Ethernet chip with an excellent price/performance ratio.


Abit's AW9D-MAX has a total of eight SATA-II ports. The chipset supports only four, that's why two Silicon Image SiI3132 chips have been added to the board.


As clockgenerator the ICS 954127 chip is used.


The Realtek ALC882M audio chip is a high-end audio chip which can do 7.1 audio.


The board's Firewire port is connected to this Texas Instruments chip.

Capacitors

All capacitors on the board are of this style. They are high-quality low ESR solid state capacitors which have a much longer lifespan than the cheaper regular ones.