Presentation and bundle
ABIT's presentation skills have never been in question. The box displays all the pertinent information, including the inclusion of Power Director and Power DVD titles.
ABIT provides the user with two manuals. The one farthest right is an 80-page multilanguage guide that's intended for users with some previous graphics card experience. The main user manual does a decent enough job of explaining the ins and outs of installation and usage. However, ABIT also covers the more expensive Radeon 9800 XT. Would it be too much to ask for separate manuals for cards that aren't in the same performance league?.
To make full use of the card's VIVO abilities and to reduce general clutter, ABIT includes a handy little box that accepts both coaxial and S-Video inputs and outputs. ABIT also adds a bit of class to the package by specifying personalised, silver-coloured cables. As expected, a DVI-to-VGA connector is present. VIVO hardware needs compatible software, so ABIT includes CyberLink's easy-to-use PowerDirector 2.55ME editing and authoring program.
The installation CD contained ATI's 4.1 CATALYST driver set, CyberLink's PowerDVD 5.0, DirectX 9.0b and scant little else. For a company that's built its reputation on catering to the enthusiast and one that proudly proclaims the use of high-quality Japanese capacitors and a 6-layer PCB, it's disappointing not to see even a basic overclocking program or pre-boosted core and memory clocks. PowerStrip confirmed that ABIT's card ran at around 500MHz core and 600MHz RAM.
