ABIT AN8 32X

Rounding things up...

There are a lot of things to like about this board, but there are also some areas of the board where we feel there is some room for improvement. There were several layout problems on the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard, but there are also some layout niggles on the ABIT AN8 32X too.

Our first minor niggle with the AN8 32X was the positioning of the 4-pin 12V ATX power connector, which could have been positioned a little closer to the edge of the board. Another related issue is the position of the 4-pin supplementary power adapter located at the bottom of the board next to the second PCI expansion slot. You could add the positioning of the floppy disk connector too, but the number of people still using a floppy drive is dwindling.

Another niggle that may affect a buying decision is the positioning of the two PCI-Express x16 slots. There is only a single slot between the two of them, meaning that two dual-slot cards will be running side by side with limited of air flow getting to the card in the primary slot. Also, many water cooling enthusiasts may find that their choice of GPU waterblocks are not compatible with this motherboard due to the lack of space between the two PCI-Express x16 slots.

While on the subject of the PCI-Express graphics slots, the clip system is one of the best designs we've seen - it's simple but effective. However, this could also prove to be a problem for someone with a pair of dual-slot video cards, as you'll find yourself having to reach right under the card to release it from the secondary slot. Moving the bottom clip to the back of the slot means that you'd have to remove the top card from the system to remove the bottom one, but it might be a better solution when taking cards with dual-slot coolers into consideration.

The lack of legacy connectors on the back I/O panel is pleasing to see - how many of you still use parallel printers these days? We know that there are a number of LCDs and VFDs that use serial ports, but all newer models use USB2.0. We wish that other manufacturers would pick up on the trend that is being set by brands like ABIT, DFI and Sapphire because a lot of enthusiasts find themselves not using them - some go to the extreme of de-soldering them from the motherboard in order to reduce the back panel clutter.

The BIOS has lots of tweakability, but we feel that ABIT has only provided a taste of what is possible from this board. With more voltage options, we feel that this board would be even more attractive to enthusiasts and overclockers alike. Having said that, the lack of voltage adjustment isn't going to stop overclockers from getting a soldering iron out and installing their own voltage adjustment controls. The important thing is that the range of voltages available for the tweakable options are comprehensive and ample for most overclockers.

On the subject of overclockers, the overclockability of the AN8 32X was more than impressive. While we weren't able to get the HyperTransport bus up to the heights of what we achieved on the RD580-based ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe, we were able to run the CPU external clock at an impressive 340MHz using the 333MHz memory divider.

Value:

The ABIT AN8 32X seems to be reasonably competitive with the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard on price, give or take a couple of pounds here or there. We found the ABIT board in stock and available for purchase on Scan for £136.99 including VAT, while the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe is also available on Scan. Although, it's slightly cheaper at £133.91 including VAT.

Obviously, there are cheaper boards out based on the nForce4 SLI chipset, using a pair of PCI-Express x8 slots electically when the board is running in SLI mode. However, we were surprised to find that DFI's excellent LANParty nF4 SLI-DR motherboard is still priced up close to the £130 mark, making it a competitor to the two nForce4 SLI x16 motherboards. Alternatively, there are cheaper versions of the LANParty nF4-series, including the SLI-D, which is priced at 108.74 including VAT on Ebuyer.

On the CrossFire side of the fence, the ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe motherboard is available for the same price as the DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR. The A8R-MVP is the cheapest of the bunch and is available for £72.71 including VAT on Ebuyer.

Final Thoughts...

ABIT has created a very solid and overclockable motherboard in the AN8 32X - it competes well on price with its competitors and performs about how we would expect it to perform. It's also remarkably stable too. The board overclocks well, and the tweaking options are reasonably comprehensive, but we feel that it could be even better with more tweaking options available to the enthusiast. In that respect, it's not in quite the same league as the DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR, which we've run stabily at upwards of 400MHz HTT with our memory running on a divider and at 337MHz HTT with our OCZ PC5000 nF4 Special memory running at 1:1.

If overclocking is your number one concern and you're looking for an nForce4 SLI motherboard to cater for all of your needs, we still recommend the DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR above just about anything else. However, the ABIT has an arguably better and more excessive feature set, while still maintaining a lot of the overclocking characteristics of DFI's supercharged SLI-DR. Those enthusiasts looking for an excessive feature set to rival the one that comes with the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe should definitely give this motherboard a second look.

We really like the AN8 32X a lot and it's very close to being a board that we'd recommend you buy above anything else in its price range. We're looking forward to getting our hands on some of ABIT's upcoming boards - this is a great step in the right direction for the Taiwanese motherboard maker.