Overclocking, thoughts & right2reply
Overclocking
Have another look at the benchmark results on the previous 5 pages. It bears repeating that S939's unique architecture takes away most of the optimising potential from either nForce4 Ultra or VIA K8T890 chipsets. Chipset designers, in view of this, need to concentrate their efforts on a top-notch feature-set and integration of the latest technologies. What the benchmarks have shown is basic performance, set with all components running at their default settings. If you're happy with that, the Fatal1ty AN8 isn't really for you. Go buy a £40 cheaper ABIT AX8 and you'll be missing very little, performance-wise. Where the Fatal1ty range should score big is in overclocking. Hell, the whole board just continually screams 'overclock me, now!'.
As per S939 overclocking protocol for establishing the driven clock ceiling , HTT multiplier was dropped to 3x, RAM was set to DDR266, voltages on all key lines were increased a couple of notches, fans were set to 12v, and, finally, an unlocked FX-53's multiplier dropped to 6x, to eliminate yet another potential bottleneck. The reason for focussing on the HTT frequency is down to AMD multiplier-locking (upwards, at least) all non-FX S939 CPUs. You want to go faster, you raise the HTT frequency to as far as it will go, and, boy, it went.
Absolute stability at 320MHz HTT. That's Prime95- and 3DMark2001SE-proofed, and all achieved with board-based cooling. The sample would also boot Windows XP at up to 335MHz HTT, although stability was heavily compromised. Add in another couple of fans and raise chipset voltage a touch further and 340MHz HTT is on the cards. Hands down, the best overclocking S939 board that I've had the pleasure to test. It's just as well, really, as the Fatal1ty AN8 becomes a perfect partner for one of these.
Concluding thoughts
ABIT Fatal1ty AN8's passes its biggest test, that is, being a supreme enthusiast-orientated S939 motherboard. What makes it so good is the sensible choice of a feature-rich chipset, nForce4 Ultra, and due care and attention that's given over to both frequency and fan-speed manipulation. These two factors combine to push the sample's stable HTT frequency to 320MHz - the highest yet seen at HEXUS. It's achieved without any additional cooling and it paves the way for the Fatal1ty AN8 to be paired with the best S939 overclocking CPUs available today, be they Venice or San Diego cores.
£120 is a lot to pay for a motherboard these days, and ABIT's Fatal1ty AN8 isn't the most feature-rich out there. What you're paying for, in essence, is a board that's engineered to overclock well. Weigh it up for yourself and decide what best suits you. Do you want masses of extra SATA, WiFi, dual Gigabit LAN?. If so, the £120 Fatal1ty AN8 will appear lacking. If, however, you're on the hunt for a board that will, more likely than most, hit 300MHz+ HTT frequency and open up the way to prodigious CPU overclocks, there's not much that's currently better than this. Indeed, strap in something like a Venice-based AMD Athlon 64, ramp up the HTT clock, and enjoy gaming performance that can only be beaten by an expensive SLI rig. With due consideration of gaming performance exhibited by AMD and Intel CPUs, this is the Fatal1ty to own. A product for a niche market, sure, but one that has significant intrinsic value to the right kind of buyer - the enthusiast/gamer.
HEXUS Right2Reply
Michael Littler from ABIT kindly provided the following response to this HEXUS.review:"The ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 is our first Fatal1ty product for the AMD platform. Since this product came to market, we have actually introduced the ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 SLI, which addresses some of the concerns raised in your review - not least the addition of 8-channel audio.
We will certainly be having a look at the layout issues you encountered; obviously the number of fans and cooling features have to compete for space on the PCB with other components and this can be a difficult balance.
It's great to see that HEXUS.net highlighted the range and scope of 'tuning' controls, and you are certainly correct to say that this is a board engineered for extracting maximum performance from a non-SLI rig."
