ABit's upcoming 760MPX dual socket A motherboard.

[donny_paycheck]

I had posted news of this before in the ABit AMD motherboards section of the forums, but with the advent of this nifty SMP section I thought it would best be posted here. Skip feel free to move it if my judgement lapsed. The ABit WA2A looks to be a good 760MPX motherboard. I first saw news of it at 2cpu.com. I have emailed ABit's sales staff about a prospective release date. Here is their reply:

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The WA-2A should be available in about 4 weeks, possibly 3. I'll forward your request to sales and they should be able to help you out.
Thank you for your interest in ABIT.

For more information on ABIT and ABIT products, please visit our website at http://www.abit.com.tw

Regards,

Lyle F. Wagner

Marketing Specialist
ABIT Computer

Taipei, Taiwan
phone: 886-02-8751-8888 ext. 1593
email:[email protected]

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So if you're in the market for a 760MPX system then keep your eyes peeled for this bad boy. If it's anything like ABit's past products it'll have great BIOS tweaks and be very well assembled. The preliminary model is shown below. Note the 24-pin power connector reminiscent of the Tyan Thunder K7. Hopefully this won't be on the WA2A when it's released because it would seriously limit power supply options. The ABit web page does say that the board is ATX PSU compatible though, so I think this means we don't have anything to worry about. Also, note the presence of the recently defunct 4-bolt holes around the sockets for mounting heatsinks and waterblocks. Hopefully these will stay. I'm betting the board was designed before AMD got rid of that standard but hopefully release 1.0 will still have them. Unlike many ABit boards, this one has onboard sound, which is something I don't care for but since it can just be disabled in CMOS, that's no big deal. This has onboard USB ports so I think this late in the game it's fair to say that the USB will be functional. It will also have an onboard NIC, which is a cool feature. Check out the specs in the link above. Anyhow, I'm waiting for reviews of this, the Epox and the Iwill boards before I choose one. Once I find the best 760MPX board I'll wait until I can get my hands on some Thoroughbred MPs and then it's game on for a new system. If only U320 SCSI would hurry up and become available....

 

[OKCFUNKY]

swweeettt...... the board looks tidy and appears to have far more room for mounting sinks to it than other mpx boards. Hope it is the best ocing compared to the other mpx's

 

[pmurgs]

I'm also waiting on the WA2A, hoping it has the bolt holes open for oversized waterblocks and the bus, multiplier, vio/vcore options in the bios so I can overclock it. Another nifty feature would be able to lock the PCI bus at 33Mhz like one of the Tyan dual AMD boards has.

Onboard sound and lan are a plus for me, as I plan to use two sound cards and with only three 32bit/32mhz pci slots, having them onboard saves me using up two of the pci slots.

Come on Epox, Iwill & Abit. Release the boards with fixed USB... some of us are tired of waiting...

And if NVidia would get around to making their drivers properly multithreaded for games which support SMP...

And if DDR333 Registered ram in 512Mb dimms would hurry up...

Well... I guess I can dream can't I...

My new case, 400 psu, fourteen fans, chipset coolers, memory heatsinks, multiplier and mp support unlocking kit, artic silver, swiftech watercooling kit, adaptec duoconnect card and other odds and ends for my dual AMD machine are lying in the corner of my room is starting get covered in cobwebs waiting for the right motherboard to arrive.

Patience is a hard lesson.

 

[OKCFUNKY]

whoa.... checked their info site donny paycheck gave, it gave the hint it will allow dual durons!!??!!

 

[tainice]

why duron? t-bred all the way! just kidding, i think i have seen this reveiw on xbit, where they did a comparsion between two t-bird and duron 900/900 and duron performed well, almost like its big brother..but since duron is only at what?..1300? then it is no match to t-bred or XP..sweet choice, but no raid?

 

[i_like_penguins]

Hmm... The lack of a raid kinda seems detramental insanly fast computing. Right now I am working on a MP 1900 system that I will use for video editing. Raids do wonders for video editing where the ability to shove 70+mb/s is a real plus. If you are looking for a cheap Raid, go dumpster diving and get an old Promise 66 or 100 ide controller and do the raid mod. I think i got the Promise 100 card for 30 bones. The mod was not that hard to do. It is even easier on the Promise 66 card. If I rember right the mod for that card could be done by shoving a resistor into the ide cable and reflashing the bios. Granted this will clutter up you box, you will at least have one more thing to tweak, solder, and/or deatroy.

 

[donny_paycheck]

Onboard RAID is cool but when I go to a dual with my next system I'm going to get an Adaptec ASR-3210S U160 dual channel RAID controller. U320 should be out by then so the U160 stuff will get cheaper.

 

[good_sense]

Onboard RAID is cool but when I go to a dual with my next system I'm going to get an Adaptec ASR-3210S U160 dual channel RAID controller. U320 should be out by then so the U160 stuff will get cheaper

That would be good and bad. The good is for when I buy more X15's...the bad is for when I sell them

 

[DS]

I would like to see the test results of this board. I would also like to see Abit release a dual Tualatin board. If for no other reason than to keep the rivalry going between AMD and Intel.

 

[donny_paycheck]

I would like to see the test results of this board. I would also like to see Abit release a dual Tualatin board. If for no other reason than to keep the rivalry going between AMD and Intel.

Yeah, like the VP6 with FCPGA-2 compatibility...that would be sweet indeed.

 

[funnyperson1]

Yeah, like the VP6 with FCPGA-2 compatibility...that would be sweet indeed.

and if that also included compatibility with Celeron tualatins then even my cheap self would consider getting a dually...