ABIT AW8-MAX presentation and bundle
ABIT's in-yer-face packaging certainly looks the part. The extra-large box is required to hold the motherboard, soundcard, and two accessory boxes. ABIT needs to add an additional audio riser card due to the lack of space present in the I/O section. Like the others, it's driven by Intel's High-Definition ICH7 audio and, in this case, the audio stream is converted by Realtek's ALC882M 8-channel CODEC. Similarly, it also meets Dolby Master Studio Technology's specifications. We'd be surprised if many i955X boards don't feature the Dolby Master Studio sticker on the box.
One of the accessory boxes contains another excellent main manual from ABIT. There's also separate manual for the board's µGuru features and briefer quickstart literature. 6 SATA cables match the number of ports, and it's nice to see that the cables clip into the ports, thereby eliminating the possibility of loose connections when on the move, say, to a LAN event.
The black-coloured bracket carries connectivity for 2 1394b (FireWire800) and 2 USB 2.0 ports. ABIT also bundles in a handy optical cable as well as rounded floppy/IDE ones. The AW8-MAX is compatible with ABIT's µGuru clock, although that's an optional extra on this model.
Speaking of µGuru, ABIT provides a newer iteration of its Windows-based tweaking software. One can see identical voltage/speed manipulation and reporting in a Windows environment.
