..:: Introduction ::..

It’s been a few weeks now since the release of Intel’s latest line of chipsets, codenamed Alderwood and Grantsdale. Both of these chipsets bring forth an incredible amount of new features such as integrated high definition audio support, PCI-Express, and much, much more. Throughout our time with these chipsets, we have found that the i925X lacks any real spunk over the i915P w/DDR-II. This fact has been seen across the board, and hasn’t been looked upon too well by the enthusiast community. Rumor has it there is also an overclocking lock that has been implemented into these chipsets, but ABIT, along with other motherboard manufacturers have claimed to have found a work around. We haven’t heard much from ABIT over the last few months on the Pentium 4 front, and today we’re going to break that silence with the first of two reviews. Today, we’ll be looking at ABIT’s AA8-DuraMAX based off of the Intel i925X chipset. Has ABIT been able to break the overclocking lock? How is performance in comparison to Intel’s solution? Read on to find out this, and more.

..:: ABIT AA8-DuraMAX Specifications ::..

Processor

• Designed for Intel® 90nm Prescott LGA775 Processors w800MHz FSB
• Supports Intel Hyper-Threading Technology

Chipset

• North Bridge : Intel i925X
• South Bridge : Intel ICH6-R
• LAN Chip : Realtek RTL8100S
• HD Audio Codec : Realtek ALC880
• I/O Chip: Winbond W83627HF-AW

Memory

• 4 DDR-II DIMM 240-Pin Slots
• DDR-II 533/400MHz RAM
• Max: 4GB

Expansion Slots

• 1 x PCI-Express x16
• 3 x PCI-Express x1
• 2 x PCI
• 1 x UDMA/133/100/66
• 1 x FDD
• 4 x SATA
• 2 x IEEE1394
• 2 x USB 2.0

Back Panel I/O Ports

• 1 x Parallel, 2 x Serial
• 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse
• 6 x HD Audio I/O
• 1 x IEEE1394
• 4 x USB 2.0, 1 x RJ-45 Port