Abit AX8 Motherboard, Its nice.

[furballi]

I'm building an Abit AX8 with AMD 64 3000 Winchester. Will post results soon.

 

[TStep]

Thanks for the good info. It's nice to see minnie reviews of hardware that is off the beaten path.

 

[SkaarjMaster]

Anyone know how the Abit AX8 compares to the Asus A8V-E Deluxe for people that aren't overclocking? I'm helping my brother look for a new MB and we've narrowed it down to these two boards. Which one is faster? Which is more stable? Thank you.

 

[Lukozer]

There's really no comparison between the AX8 and the A8V-E mobo's. The Asus board is a shining example of how NOT to make a motherboard, it is truly horrendous... Possibly Asus' worst motherboard in years. The AX8 however has been a real joy to use. I've been using one for a couple of weeks now and am extremely pleased with it. Problem is, i'm using a real cheap crappy vid card so my benchmarks aren't so good... That will change Thursday though when my X850XT arrives.... Looking forward to that...

 

[furballi]

I have the Soltek 890Pro and currently building a system using the AX8 board. Soltek has MUCH better email tech support. Haven't received anything from Abit support, yet. The Soltek power circuit APPEARS to be a more robust design.

The AX8 board looks good. Note that the bottom right mounting slot on the motherboard is partially obstructed by the number two PATA connector. The positioning of the USB and 1394 headers on the motherboard may prevent the use of second PCI-E slot. The board comes with one flat PATA IDE cable (no round IDE cable) and four SATA cables. I'd rather have two round IDEs and two SATAs. I had no problem installing the Zalman 7000Cu CPU cooler to this MB. There exist a 1/4" clearance between the Zalman and the northbridge blue heat sink. I can also remove the RAM in slot 1 with with heatsink in place.

The board's layout is average...may work for some, but not for others. Unlike the input/output terminals, the back shielding panel is not color coded. Japanese caps are used throughout the board.

 

[prosser13]

Looking forward to your say on it Lukozer Custom PC just reviewed it, the mag is out on Thursday, so I'll see what they say and post it here. Damn, they better say very nice things about it ;D

 

[SkaarjMaster]

So, what's wrong with the A8V-E Deluxe exactly?

 

[Lukozer]

Originally posted by: SkaarjMaster
So, what's wrong with the A8V-E Deluxe exactly?

It has serious stability issues. Xbit labs couldn't get it to run unless they used 2T Command Rate no matter what RAM they used. Asus never bothered to add extra features to make up for the thread-bare features available on the aging VT8237 southbridge. The thing was just very shoddily built and stinks of a rush job...

 

[SkaarjMaster]

Well, that pretty much settles that. I'll tell him to order the AX8 then. Thanks.

 

[yelo333]

Originally posted by: Lukozer

Originally posted by: SkaarjMaster
So, what's wrong with the A8V-E Deluxe exactly?

It has serious stability issues. Xbit labs couldn't get it to run unless they used 2T Command Rate no matter what RAM they used. Asus never bothered to add extra features to make up for the thread-bare features available on the aging VT8237 southbridge. The thing was just very shoddily built and stinks of a rush job...

I am not sure if this is the right place for this, but would you mind enlightening me on whether or not the A8V Deluxe(the agp version) has the same issues with the command rate?

Also, more on topic, I am very close to buying this board, however, It does look like there are only 2 pci slots. While PCI-E is nice, how can you really get by with just 2 pci slots?

For example, say I install a sound card and a capture card. Now my pci slots are full, and I would not have any room for _anything_ else, like my PCI GF2MX I use for a secondary monitor. Why did abit not go with a more sane 3 pci slots/2 1x PCI-E/16x PCI-E configuration?

Edit: one more question about this board: Does CnQ work under linux even though it has uGuru?

Hmm, this looks to be my 500'th post

 

[prosser13]

I noticed that as well, but as I don't plan to use a sound card I am fine. Maybe get an All-In-Wonder??

 

[Lukozer]

Originally posted by: yelo333

I am not sure if this is the right place for this, but would you mind enlightening me on whether or not the A8V Deluxe(the agp version) has the same issues with the command rate?

Also, more on topic, I am very close to buying this board, however, It does look like there are only 2 pci slots. While PCI-E is nice, how can you really get by with just 2 pci slots?

For example, say I install a sound card and a capture card. Now my pci slots are full, and I would not have any room for _anything_ else, like my PCI GF2MX I use for a secondary monitor. Why did abit not go with a more sane 3 pci slots/2 1x PCI-E/16x PCI-E configuration?

Edit: one more question about this board: Does CnQ work under linux even though it has uGuru?

Hmm, this looks to be my 500'th post

The Command Rate issue seems to be limited to just the A8V-E Deluxe board, the A8V Deluxe is fine (to the best of my knowledge, i haven't actually used one but no reviews have ever mentioned it and i'd say it's a big enough issue to mention if it was there)

I get by with only 2 PCI slots quite well since other than my vid card, the only other card i use is my sound card. Unless you get a video card that has decent dual monitor support, you could be having problems, or forced into making a compromise. As for CnQ, i honestly couldn't tell you, i don't use it at all.

 

[furballi]

So you're running a PCI vid card instead of PCI-E card? Any auto detection issue with this AX8?

Also, are you using SATA HDD? Some have said that it is possible to install one single SATA HDD without the use of the 3.5" floppy. Have you encountered SATA detection issues?

 

[Lukozer]

No, i'm running a PCI-E card, just not the one i will be using permanently (that should be arriving Thursday). I'm also running IDE drives, no SATA drives, so i couldn't tell you if it's possible to install one with the 3.5" floppy. The fact that the mobo comes with such a floppy disk though would suggest that you can't, but i think that's a Windows issue rather than an issue with any motherboards...

 

[furballi]

The AX8 is running at default BIOS settings.

-350 watts Mad Dog/T Flower power supply with 20A @ 12VDC. All rails are shown as +0.1VDC over specs in BIOS. My only complaint is that I cannot lock-in the QUIET mode using the speed button at the back of the PS. After reboot, the PS will reset to AUTO mode.

-2 x 512MB KingMax DDR400 SuperRAM set to AUTO (2.5-4-4-8-1T).

-NEC 3250 DVD burner.

-Mitsumi floppy.

-160GB Seagate SATA HDD.

-Zalman 7000Cu cooler with 120 front mounted Stealth fan in Antec SLK3000B case.

-Connect 3D 300X 256MB video card.

-USR5610B hardware based 56K modem.

Probably the easiest method to install ONE SATA HD is to reset the BIOS using the jumper on the MB. Now go to ADVANCED BIOS and set the removable/floppy to 1st boot, HDD to 2nd boot, and CD ROM to 3rd boot. Put the WXP CD in CD ROM, and SATA floppy in the floppy drive. Save BIOS by hitting F10 and reboot PC. The WXP CD will autorun. At the first blue screen, you will see a prompt to hit F6 to load special disc controllers for windows. At the next blue screen you will see another prompt to hit "S" to load the special disc controllers. After hitting S, you will be presented with THREE drivers for SATA. Chick the first one to load the driver. Now click "S" to go back to the drivers screen. Select the 2nd driver. Repeat for the 3rd driver. After selecting all 3 drivers, hit ENTER. At the end, windows will instruct you to remove the floppy from drive A. Also remove the WXP CD from the optical drive before you reboot the PC.

I have read reports about thermal reporting issues with the AV8/AX8. I suspect this is a windows software issue because all 3 of my temperature readings are consistently under 37C in the BIOS.

Will test this system for a few days before I attempt to overclock.

 

[Lukozer]

Testing is going well for me with the AX8 since changing the HSF for the stock one (which is doing a great job)... Guru clock shows 22c idle temps and 40c load temps... Perhaps most impressive of all is the 28c northbridge temps under full load... Not bad for a passively cooled PCI-E Athlon 64 chipset. I haven't overclocked beyond the slightly overclocked default settings that the AX8 seems to use (204fsb, giving me 2652mhz clock speed) but that will change soon enough since those temps are giving me every indication that i have plenty of headroom. I've run a few benchmarks but PC Mark 2004 and 3D Mark 2001 seem to be the only ones that i have run that aren't dependant on the graphics card, so here's the link if anyone wants to compare...

3D Mark 2001 (28696) - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8543935
PC Mark 2004 (5250) - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm04=2926266

 

[SkaarjMaster]

Anyone know what srea is talking about? (NB/SB voltage problems on AX8?)
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=386969

 

[Lukozer]

I can barely understand what that guy is saying. He seems to have some kind of gripe with the passive cooling on the northbridge and the NB fan header on the mobo. I just plugged in one of my case fans to that header and had no problems. Also, i don't see the need to replace the passive heatsink, Guru clock has been constantly showing me that with the passive heatsink, the NB temp has never gone above 30 celsius no matter what i am doing... I'd say that's fine, especially when i see so many NF4 setups where their chipset controller is going above 40 celsius with active cooling...

 

[SkaarjMaster]

But my brother is having problems with low SB voltage and srea seems to be saying that it's not the SB but the NB and putting a fan on the passive HS might help this. Is this a Bios issue and how can this be solved?

 

[Lukozer]

If it is a BIOS issue then it isn't one i have come across... Abit haven't released any other BIOS for the AX8, just the initial release, so if this is a BIOS issue, there isn't a fix for it yet. Like i say though, it hasn't happened to me... I haven't run into any problems or issues with this board yet...

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Are you using the POWER1 connector?

 

[Nickel020]

I'm also thinking about getting an AX8, since I really want a passively cooled NB.

Now, can anyone who has this board tell me how tall the NB heatsink is? I want to know because I want to use a Thermalright XP-120 and a passive Gigabyte X800 XL for this system. Also, what RAM slots do you need to use to get dual channel with 2 double sided sticks? Thermalright's website says that I can't use the RAM slot closest to the CPU when using the XP-120.

 

[xsilver]

Originally posted by: Nickel020
I'm also thinking about getting an AX8, since I really want a passively cooled NB.

Now, can anyone who has this board tell me how tall the NB heatsink is? I want to know because I want to use a Thermalright XP-120 and a passive Gigabyte X800 XL for this system. Also, what RAM slots do you need to use to get dual channel with 2 double sided sticks? Thermalright's website says that I can't use the RAM slot closest to the CPU when using the XP-120.

The NB heatsink is very low, I doubt there will be problems there
the 2 memory banks furthest away from the cpu can be run in dual channel so that should be ok too.... however there still may be a need to bend some caps

 

[SkaarjMaster]

"Are you using the POWER1 connector?"

If you're talking about plugging one of the power connectors to that port in the bottom left corner of the MB, then yes he did that.

 

[furballi]

I'm using the KingMax SuperRam PC3200 RAM with a Mad Dog 350 watts power supply (20A on 12VDC rail). 220MHz FSB with 9x multiplier for the AMD 3000 Winchester. The hyper transport speed is set to 5x or 1:1 memory divider (1100MHz). No problem with Memtest 86+ and Prime95. I may drop the memory divider to 5:6 to push FSB to 250MHz.

Really surprise that this value RAM ($76 for 2 x 512) can run at 220MHz speed. Pushing the speed up to 236MHz will occasionally cause boot problem. May bump up CPU core voltage or RAM voltage to compensate.

The CPU temp as reported by the BIOS is between 35 and 40C at full load. The Zalman 7000Cu CPU cooler is set at 1380 rpm.

The nortbridge voltage is 30C. All numbers are reported by BIOS since I haven't added the windows overclock utility, yet.

Per my previous post, the Zalman 7000Cu clears the NB heatsink by about 1/4". You can run the Zalman without the Fan Mate controller for straight 12VDC input (full speed). This will generate more noise. However at full speed, there SHOULD not be any temperature issue regardless of what CPU you are using.