Presentation and Bundle
abit use a martial arts theme on the double-wide box. Cool if you like muscle-bound men with massive, err, swords, but it's not my thing. Big-ass boxes usually mean loads of goodies, and sliding off the outer slip cover reveals the windowed top section holding the mainboard, then removing that shows you two inner cartons full of bits.
Bundle contents run to 8 SATA cables with clips for holding them in tightly, very long rounded floppy cable, red rounded ATA cable, optical TOSLINK cable for the AudioMAX riser, FireWire and USB ports for the backplane and a selection of driver floppies, software CD and a really sweet set of manuals and quick start and connector guides.
The main manual for the AW9D Max is especially good, giving you clear and concise guides to all board features, including CrossFire operation and correct cabling for that, helping you get the most from the mainboard. Really impressive and worth a mention.
The bundle bits are nothing more than the right cable runs for the board, but they're good quality and the entire thing is presented excellently. Oddly, our sample also came with an SLI bridge connector.
For a high-end board it's presented well, with everything you need to make the most out of the board spec.
