ABIT AW9D Owners... Hows it running? :)

I plan on upgrading early next year (feb/march) and I plan on picking up Abit's AW9D (non max maybe), and would like some feedback from those of you who wish to express your experances.

Does this board undervolt?, overvolt?, have voltage drop/drup?

Does this board calculate temps or measure temps? Are the temps correct?

Is this board quad-core ready? (or will there be a new Abit board based on intel's Bad Axe 2?)

Anyone using it's internal 7.1 sound? Anyone using it with a 7.1 setup? Does the mic work? [IC7 owner here] [[I do have a Audigy 2 zs, but I may need its one PCI slot for a tv-tuner]]

Will I be able to run the ram I have selected below at it's factory timings?

Is it a real pain in the a$$ to setup sata raid?

Here is what I plan on getting within the next 3~4 months:

Motherboard:
ABIT AW9D Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127014

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M sharing L2 Cache LGA 775 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115002
(or mid-range quad core)

RAM:
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Timings: 4-4-4-5
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231086

Video Card:
Radeon X1950XTX 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 VIVO PCI Express x16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814195024
(or hopefully newer ATI R600)

Hard Drives:
2x Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144417

I'm pretty happy with my AW9D-Max. Just wish Abit would finally release the new official 1.3 BIOS update.

Yes, the AW9D undervolts like most motherboards.

Temps reported using uGuru are not accurate. Use CoreTemp or other programs to find out actual core temp.

Abit claims it is quad core ready.

I use the onboard sound and find it acceptable. Audio is subjective and personal though, so listen for yourself. I only use 4.1 sound. Never tried the mic jack yet.

Plenty of RAM timing settings.

Not using RAID, but I've not heard of any significant problems setting it up.

I think you could save some cash and get the E6600 instead of the E6700. They both O/C about the same max clock. That is unless you plan to use phase cooling.

The RAM you picked out is sort of overkill too. Most DDR2-800 RAM that use D9 chips will O/C close to what you listed and will be cheaper.

Im happy with mine as well

I use the onboard sound with the Logitech X-530 5.1 Speaker System and it works fine.

To OC an E6600 to 3.4Ghz is a walk in the park on this board and the temps are fine even on air, Water is better for 3.6Ghz but hell Im doing it on air 24/7.

A little over 440 is the max fsb at this time, lets hope the next bios will help.

For me uGuru shows the temps about 5c lower than coretemp

Thanx for the tips.
The CPU will most likely change. (I'm waiting to see what a mid-range quad-core will cost/and perform.
I was gona stick with PC1066 ram (instead of 800) because in my past exerances, higher FSB performed better than higher CPU clock.

my 2.8c was faster running at 3.1 (217 fsb with PC-3500 ddr) than running at 3.5 (200 fsb with 4/5 divider)

Maybe thats not the case anymore


And batboy, wow, you've been here forever I remember seeing your name (and icon) way back when I had a celeron 300a on a BH-6. And helped get as much as I can out of my TH7-II

Yep, been here for a long time, about 6 years now.

Just for an example, I have an AW9D, E6600, and DDR2-800 RAM. Stock speed is 266 FSB. Overclocked I can do 400 FSB stable. Using the 1:1 memory ratio which seems to be ideal with these rigs, that is exactly DDR2-800 speed. Now if you really want to run a higher memory ratio, that's fine, but you really won't gain that much extra performance. If you were getting the E6300 and trying to run a cutting edge O/C of 500 FSB or something like that, then yeah, you might need faster RAM.

G. Skill DDR2-800 "HZ" RAM (see link) will often O/C up to DDR2-1000 speed with more voltage and slightly relaxed timings. Newegg is currently out of stock, but I posted it just as an example.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231065

Im using the Max version. in terms of stability, its rock solid. I dont use the integrated sound so I cant vouch for it. NB cooling on this board is lacking. I have a swiftech cooler on the way to me. I really want to push this board. All in all im pretty happy with it though

I just updated to 1.3 and life is good! All of my gripes seem to be solved, so I cannot complain, except for i still cant get my FSB over 350 no matter what I do. I'm thinking im going to pull the OTes cover and AS5 that. Naviq said that works. ...Wish my multiplier was > 8.

After you clean up the OTES and reinstall with Arctic Silver, try bumping up the MCH voltage to maybe 1.6v and see if that don't allow higher FSB. I know the AW9D will definitely run higher than that... I can run 400 perfectly stable. I was able to do a max screenshot (see below, obviously not stable). Think I was running 1.8v MCH for that attempt (higher than I was comfortable with).