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Review: ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE i925XE Mainboard

by Tarinder Sandhu on 3 May 2005, 00:00

Tags: abit

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabd6

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Specifications

ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE
CPU Support All LGA775 processors (except dual-core models)
Northbridge Intel i925XE
Memory Support 4 slots, DDR-II only. Supports DDR2-400MHz, 533MHz, and 600MHz at 200MHz FSB. 4GB max, dual-channel
AGP None
PEG x16 from i925XE
Southbridge Intel ICH6/R
Audio 8-channel high-definition feed from ICH6/R to Realtek ALC880 CODEC
Audio Connectivity 6-port add-in audio card, optical S/PDIF input/output
PCI 2x 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.1 slots
PCI Express 2 x1 slots
IDE 1 ATA100 compliant port from ICH6/R
IDE RAID None
SATA 4 ports from ICH6/R
SATA RAID RAID0, 1 and 0+1 from ICH6/R (Intel Matrix Storage Technology)
Additional SATA RAID None
Networking Dual LAN Ethernet Controllers. Intel Gigabit (82541) and 10/100 (82562)
USB 8 USB 2.0 ports from ICH6/R. 4x I/O USB 2.0 and 4x onboard
FireWire 3 ports from Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 3-port controller, 1 on I/O, two via supplied bracket
Other I/O PS/2 (no legacy ports)
Onboard connectors and pin headers Audio daughter card, floppy port, ATA100 port, 2x USB2.0 (4 ports), 2x FireWire400. 4x SATA1, 1 unused fan header
Form Factor 305mm x 245mm, ATX
Expected price £150
Additional features OTES cooling. RAMFlow cooling, debug LED, power on/off buttons


The Fatal1ty name derives from one Johnathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel, master gamer and endorser of the Fatal1ty range of boards from ABIT. The design brief is simple; engineer the fastest, highest-performing motherboard that will appeal to die-hard gamers looking for ultimate performance. That's why, even though this is a premium i925XE chipset-based motherboard, additional RAID and WiFi support have been omitted in favour of enhanced board cooling in the form of OTES. The premise, I suppose, it to allow enthusiasts to dial up the FSB and still experience rock-solid stability. This will be put to the test later.

Other than special board-specific cooling, ABIT incorporates Dolby Digital Live into the Fatal1ty AA8XE, which provides for real-time Dolby Digital encoding (5.1) from any audio signal, much in the vein of MVIDIA's SoundStorm technology integrated into select nForce2 chipsets.