Thoughts
ABIT, then, has taken VIA's K8T890 core-logic and engineered a stable, fast, and inexpensive motherboard that carries a reasonable feature-set. Presentation, as usual, is excellent, and enthusiast-orientated options are up to ABIT's usual standards. £79 buys you a decent introduction to S939, and performance, coupled with any compatible CPU, is always going to be impressive, especially so in gaming.One area of concern, however, was a lack of FSB overclocking potential exhitbited by the sample board. It's difficult to ascertain whether the low FSB clock is peculiar to this sample, or whether it's representative of AX8s in general. If so, enthusiasts best look elsewhere for their thrills and spills. There's really not too much else one can say about the ABIT AX8, either postive or negative. So, assuming your budget is limited and you want to explore S939's power with a solid board, the AX8 makes a good a case as any current motherboard.
HEXUS Awards
HEXUS Right2Reply
Commenting under the HEXUS Right2Reply initiative Michael Littler from ABIT UK had this to say about our article:
I am pleased that Hexus have identified the AX8 as an excellent value enthusiast and performance board for the AMD Socket939 platform.
Whilst we have several products in our current line-up that go all-out for features and performance, such as the Fatal1ty platforms, we are also aware as a company that balancing price and performance is what enables our customers to build durable, performance orientated systems with exceptional value for money.
It is a shame that your reviewer was not able to push the FSB so far - it does appear to be peculiar to that particular sample. Certainly you are right to say that some other reports suggest an FSB limit of around 250Mhz, which is what we ourselves have also found in our own independent user testing.
Michael Littler
Business Development & Public Relations
ABIT UK
