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Abit AB9-QuadGT first thoughts...

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NinjaZX6R

RAM Junkie
Joined
Nov 19, 2002
Location
In slots 2 & 4!
I don't like it. Well, there's a lot more to it and I hope I change my mind.

First and foremost, I cannot for the life of me install the 24 pin ATX power connector! I have pushed on this thing until the point where I hear creaks and cracks from the board. Something is up with that. So, it sits in there losely as we speak. Seems to work until I bump the computer :)

The bios options are great. I didn't write it all down, but the DDR2 voltage goes up to 3.0v, the NB voltage to 1.9v and that's really all that's important to me.

There are some quirky bios issues in the "Cpu options" menu. Wither enabling EIST or C1e makes the computer not boot. I haven't narrowed it down to which is causing this, but I will with further testing.

Overclocking is pretty impressive, I must say. I booted up at 500x7 on my E6600 and it seemed rock solid. Ram was running 1:1 at 4-4-4-10 at 2.35v and the NB voltage was set to a meager 1.35v.

Sorry to be so vague and leave out screen shots, but I plan to do a LOT more testing and I'll post screenies as I progress. It's going to be a long night with this thing, I can tell already.

-Collin-
 
OK, looks like most of my issues were coming from the USB settings in bios. Strange...more testing to come shortly.

Gautam brought up a great point...this board should be wicked fast if I can get a decent FSB overclock at the 800mhz strap. Let's try it!

-Collin-
 
NinjaZX6R said:
First and foremost, I cannot for the life of me install the 24 pin ATX power connector! I have pushed on this thing until the point where I hear creaks and cracks from the board. Something is up with that. So, it sits in there losely as we speak. Seems to work until I bump the computer :)
-Collin-



Seems kind of odd, my OCZ GamerXtreme 600 went right in. So far I have to say I love this board, Even tho I'm using for my HTPC it does all I want it to and more. I can't wait for a mature BIOs to come out for it and see what it can really do.
 
Wicked Klown said:
I can't wait for a mature BIOs to come out for it and see what it can really do.

I really think that is the only weak point for this board right now. I sat there for hours trying to figure out why I couldn't boot into windows. Who'd have ever thought it was changing USB mouse support to BIOS rather than OS? Thank god I read the anandtech review and caught that.

Needless to say, this board clocks much higher than my P5W DH, but I need to do some performance comparisons. How high have you been able to get on the 800mhz strap?

-Collin-
 
I have the board and I love it. Took my E6400 to 475MHz FSB (3.8GHz) right out of the box with the 1066MHz strap. I havent had any stability issues so far, everything is running great.

As I dont use a Raid Array I dont have any problems with my optical drives, but I'm sure Abit will solve that issue soon.
 
NinjaZX6R said:
How high have you been able to get on the 800mhz strap?
-Collin-



Sitting at 235FSB right now as this is my HTPC. I care more about it being stable rather then trying to set another world record. Highest I got up to when I first installed it was 250FSB went for 260FSB and corrputed my OS. Took me 3 flippin days to get it to boot from my dvd rom.
 
Klown, try jumping straight to 300...the 800MHz strap is probably precisely why you got stuck at 260. Unless you set it manually, you probably need booting at 266 at least for the 1066 strap to be activated.

The point at where you were that caused the corruption is what's sometimes called an "FSB gap."
 
Gautam said:
Klown, try jumping straight to 300...the 800MHz strap is probably precisely why you got stuck at 260. Unless you set it manually, you probably need booting at 266 at least for the 1066 strap to be activated.

The point at where you were that caused the corruption is what's sometimes called an "FSB gap."



Alright for you I'll try 300FSB. Any idea what Vcore I can safely use with air cooling to get there? After all worse thing is I would have to repair my install.
 
1.4-1.5v in general, but I don't think 1.4v would have much trouble.

Just make sure the strap is 1066.


Btw Collin, Gary Key from Anandtech topped at only 320MHz on the 800 strap :-/, I'm sure all his voltages were sky high too.
 
Wicked Klown said:
Alright for you I'll try 300FSB. Any idea what Vcore I can safely use with air cooling to get there? After all worse thing is I would have to repair my install.

if you don't want to worry about file system corruption, you can stress
test using prime95 and memtest86. you can boot and run both (one at a time)
from a CD using Ultimate Boot CD. as for how high to go, i'd keep it under 60° C
and bump the volts a little at a time until you notice diminishing returns.

good luck :beer:
 
I also have this board, and the latest beta bios, which fixes the jmicron/raid issues, and what I don't like is no matter what I do, I'm stuck at 6x multi, even though the bios says I'm at 8x. All benchmarking softwares like cpu-z, orthos, etc. say 6x, when the bios still says 8x. Any ideas?
 
Last edited:
I have a question, though it may have been asked before in round about ways.

Is the AB9-QuadGT a product to get to replace the AW9D-Max, or is the AB9-QuadGT a product to get if you are trying to save some cash?
 
The QuadGT is the higher end AB9, i965 based, and the AW9 is 975X. More or less different boards with different strengths.
 
I guess that's what has peeked my curisoty.

The GT is off a lower end chipset but almost as expensive as the best board with the higher end chipset (AW9).

Are it's strength enough to warrenty an avid OCer to replace his AW9D-Max board with the QuadGT board?


I haven't ordered my AW9D-Max board yet as my tax return hasn't came back yet, so I am curious as to what the QuadGT has to offer versus the AW9.
 
It wouldn't be worthwhile to replace an AW9 with an AB9, no. Nor would it really be vice-versa either. If you're in the market for a new board, I'd say either would be worth considering, especially based on going market price.

Generally, the 975 is a better choice for E6600 and up, 965 better for 6300/6400.

The AB9 will hit higher front side bus speeds, but will do so with slightly less performance. The QuadGT in fact is special in that it lets you select the 1066 strap as opposed to the 1333 we usually see, so the performance gap between 975 and 965 tightens a bit.
 
LordFrank said:
Are it's strength enough to warrenty an avid OCer to replace his AW9D-Max board with the QuadGT board?
I wouldn't recommend it, unless you are willing to put up with an immature bios, and next to no help from Abit thus far on the issues. They have released two beta bioses so far, and not really even official public betas either, got to get them from Abit themselves, and so far both betas have indeed fixed the usb and voltage issues, as well as the raid issues, but in the meantime crippled features that worked fine in the original bios, like the ability to disable c1e, which inadvertantly locks your multi down to 6x for me and a slew of others that post on the Abit forums.
 
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