abit AW9D-Max Mainboard

The PC enthusiast crowd out there knows that for a long time abit was one of the biggest and best names in enthusiast class mainboards. However, for a long while abit slipped and their performance dropped compared to the other big names in the marketplace like Asus. abit is back at the top now with their newest mainboard for the LGA775 Intel socket that is compatible with the Core 2 CPUs all the way up to my test machines Intel X6800 Core 2 Extreme.

Features & Use of the abit AW9D-Max Mainboard

abit decked the AW9D-Max out with nearly everything that a PC enthusiast could want starting with the Intel 975x chipset supporting Intel CPUs with up to a 1066 MHz front side bus, dual DDR2 800, dual PCI-E 16x slots for CrossFire graphics, and a whopping 7 SATA 3G ports. Also included is one eSATA port for external drives, dual PCI-E gigabit Ethernet adapters, dual IEEE 1394 FireWire headers, 7.1 channel HD AuidoMax sound, silent passive cooling and abit’s own uGuru tech.

At first glance, the packaging is large and very attractive. The view through front panel gives you a look at the unique audio riser card and the OTES-2 passive cooling pipes. OTES 2 is what abit calls their passive Northbridge and Southbridge cooling system. Those in Europe will be glad to know that the AW9D-Max is RoHS compliant as well.

Abit went with an AuidoMAX riser card for their onboard sound solution to remove the sound as far from the noise generating components on the mainboard as possible. Onboard sound is a big deal on this mainboard because if you intend to run dual graphics cards, you will very likely not be able to get a soundcard into the system.

If you are like me and typically shun onboard sound for the likes of an X-Fi card don’t fret, you typically buy a soundcard to get the kind of sound quality abit delivers with the AuidoMAX card. In fact, the AudioMAX HD system is Dolby Master Certified and delivers fantastic Dolby Digital 5.1 sound via SPDIF optical output. There are also enough analog connectors on the riser card for 7.1 surround sound.

If overclocking is your thing, this board will do it abit utilized what they call OC strips on the back of the board to dissipate the extra heat overclocking of components generates. The uGuru software included also allows you to overclock your system voltages and your CPU from within the uGuru application. OC Guru AutoDrive will also automatically over clock your system for you.

Do it yourself types, abit used a very friendly overclocking bios that puts all the settings you need form timings to voltages and the FSB in your hands. uGuru also provides hardware monitoring of system temperatures, fan speeds and voltages.

With the AW9D-Max, abit opted to forgo all legacy connections so you do not get serial or parallel ports for printers. Interestingly, while abit ditched the parallel and serial ports they opted to keep the PS2 ports for the mouse and keyboard. I seriously doubt that buyers of this board will be using anything other than USB powered keyboards and mice. I would have rather seen abit ditch the PS2 legacy ports and go with more USB ports personally.

Dual PCI-E x16 slots allow you to run dual graphics cards, though a bit confusingly since abit includes an SLI connector and the board runs an Intel chipset that can support SLI, you can only run ATI’s CrossFire dual card solution on the AW9D-Max. Personally, I would have preferred SLI and I figure someone will release some hacked drivers to allow this board to support SLI.

For testing, I used an ATI X1900 XT and an ATI X1900 CrossFire edition card. CrossFire performed well and I noted no issues at all during testing. The sole problem I found with the AW9D-Max running dual graphics cards was that the second graphics card covered the BIOS reset jumper. I once ran a bit too much overclocking on the system and needed to reset BIOS to get it running again. I ended up having to pull the second graphics card to access the BIOS jumper, which is a huge pain and quite a problem on a board destined to see lots of overclocking with dual cards in the system.

Abit makes the solution to this BIOS reset problem in their uGuru panel that moves CMOS reset to the front panel along with overclocking functions and system monitoring. However, I was still surprised to see something that important overlooked in the design of the AW9D-Max.

The only other thing I can say bad about the abit board is that if you run dual graphics cards that use two slots per card say goodbye to all hope of running other expansion cards in the system. I was unable to utilize my X-fi and you won’t be able to get network cards or physics cards into the system either.

At the end of the day, I was able to over look the few shortcomings of the abit AW9D-Max thanks to the overwhelming amount of fantastic features and great performance of the board. If you overclock a lot, I suggest you either get the uGuru panel or expect to have to pull your second graphics card every now and then. Overall, the abit AW9D-Max is one of the best Core 2 compatible mainboards you will find.