Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X

Richard's Thoughts:

In my opinion, overall Abit has achieved it's aim to produce a high end gaming motherboard. Despite the noisy fans, the fact is you're likely to be in a noisier environment with headphones on. The fans do add a little extra stability and overclocking potential, which is essential in not only keeping the system stable whilst loaded for hours on end, but getting the absolute most out of the system for those essential FPS that can mean the difference between frag or failure.

The package is solid as well, despite not having enough USB ports or even legacy stuff like parallel or serial but honestly, who takes 50 peripherals to a LAN? A mouse, keyboard and the occasional USB extra (like a phone charger) are about the only things a gamer can't do without. Having said that it's not like you can't plug in ten USB 2.0 peripherals (discounting USB hubs) if you have the spare adapters on your case or fan buses etc., because the board supports the complete complement from the chipset.

If you have your PC with a window on the desk next to you (at a LAN), this board will definitely turn some heads. Of course, since you can't turn off the red flashing lights it might also cause a seizure of epileptic proportions. The novelty factor reigns high but does wear off, however having said that, it hasn't stopped the sales of flashing lighted modding equipment for many years previous. Despite the lights, it looks great with its consistent theme throughout: putting on a huge heatpipe cooler alongside the OTES GT system looks kick ass, and having it in a case with a full red theme should give the ultimate pimp setup.

The lack of extra PCI slots is a serious killer to though. Any serious gamer will want an X-Fi card (or similar sound card) and the single PCI slot is lost when installing SLI with a dual slot cooler. It breeds the question; of how much design input Mr. Fatal1ty actually has? Or perhaps he's just a poor manager of his endorsements?

Not being able to use one with the other is almost criminal. I understand that you don't have to have use two cards in SLI because a single GeForce 8800 series card is more than enough for most people to be CPU limited for the time being, or a couple of single slot GeForce 7900 GTs (or similar) will leave the PCI slot open for use. But this is a motherboard of the highest end and should be balanced out by the highest end products in all other areas for maximum benefit.

Tim's Thoughts:

There is very little to add about this board's features on top of what Rich has already said. However, I think that the expansion slot layout could have been much better if Abit had moved the AudioMAX riser slot to the top of the board. Doing so would allow for a pair of PCI slots, and it would keep both gamers and enthusiasts happy, even if they're not using dual slot coolers in SLI right out of the gate. There's a chance that they will in the future, or alternatively, they've got a perfectly good TV Tuner (or another expansion card that hasn't been integrated into most motherboards) that they don't want to move over to USB.

The only big issue that I came across in the BIOS was the inability to turn the flashing lights off. I wasn't the only person in the office to find them to be a bit of a distraction. Aside from that and the expansion slot woes, both the board and BIOS were generally flawless.

Abit has priced the board quite reasonably too - it sits in between the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe WiFi Edition and DFI's LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G on the pricing ladder. Ebuyer stocks the Fatal1ty AN9 32X for just under £120 including VAT, while the best price we found on the M2N32-SLI Deluxe WiFi Edition was an awesome £113.

Stability & Overclocking:

I subjected the board to our normal stability testing, comprising of two instances of Prime 95, an instance of IOMeter and Far Cry running in the foreground at 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF with a pair of GeForce 7900 GTs in SLI. I returned to the board after more than 44 hours to find that the board was still running and all of the components were remarkably cool, considering the load the board had been subjected to. Abit has done a good job with this board on the stability front and good cooling is helping that too.

Overclocking was pretty easy on the Fatal1ty AN9 32X - we got the board running Prime 95 stable at 305MHz FSB with 1.3V HTT and an 8x multiplier on our Athlon 64 FX-62, resulting in a clock speed of 2440MHz. We tried searching for higher bus frequencies with the lower multipliers but that proved to be unsuccessful.

The Fatal1ty AN9 32X didn't fare quite as well as the likes of DFI's LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G or the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe WiFi Edition when it came to overclocking, but then Abit doesn't really class the Fatal1ty line as its premium overclocking line - that responsibility is given to the MAX series. The Fatal1ty line is designed with extreme stability in mind and the board excels on that front.

Final Thoughts

Overall the Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X is a good, solid motherboard with a few quirks; namely, the expansion port layout that the company has chosen on its current products. Both this and the AW9D-MAX come with just one PCI slot - something that many enthusiasts aren't willing to accept. However, if the expansion port layout isn't a problem for you, the Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X is well worth considering if you are building a Socket AM2 system.