Abit IP35-E Review (500MHz FSB board)...$90 @ NewEgg + $6.61 ship

[dolenc]

Review, for now i think its the only one.


It says it uses Realtek ALC888, but nothing about dolby live, can someone please look in the control panell if they have this simbol. Picture

Im asking becaus there realy isnt any good card on pci that support dolby live i found only one and it uses some cmedia chip, so it makes no diference if its onboard and it saves me money

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: Aznguy1872
Anybody know much about the IP35 non Pro? I been trying to find reviews for it everywhere but can't. Im in a debate whether to go with the IP35 Pro or non pro. Does the IP35 overclock just as well as the Pro does? Is the 30 dollar in price difference worth it?

IP35 is virtually identical to IP35-E...about 488MHz FSB with my sample. I've seen post with 500MHz. I don't see the need to push FSB speed higher than this unless you have a water cooler rig with +1.55Vcore and a 7x multi chip.

 

[Miramonti]

Mwave has the IP35 (middle flavor) for $113AR + shipping. The link says $138-$20 rebate, but the pdf download is actually a $25 rebate.

 

[jvhb]

New review of basic IP35 (non -e):
http://www.overclockersclub.co...views/ip35_darkraider/

 

[Aznguy1872]

Wow, 138- 25 dollars MIR. I think thats actually worth going for rather then the IP35 Pro. The Ip35 does have fancier heatsinks, but doesn't make a big difference in cooling. I would only go for th IP35 pro if I was gonna use all of its features but I don't plan to. IP35 is I think the best choice at this price. Save that 60 dollars and invest it into another component.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: jvhb
New review of basic IP35 (non -e):
http://www.overclockersclub.co...views/ip35_darkraider/

I don't think that reviewer was a capable overclocker. You'll also need a chip and RAM capable of running @ +480MHz FSB. My E6320 sample and IP35-E had no problem with 488MHz (Orthos/S&M/Memtest stable). See the bottom link of my original post.

 

[WolfLover]

dolenc, IP35 uses Realtek ALC888. The output options are 2/4/6/8 channels at 44.1/48/96/192 kHz - no Dolby Live.

 

[WolfLover]

I have been following this thread for a while. It was the first review of the IP35-E that I could find on the web. (Much thanks to SerpentRoyal for his detailed comments!) I was looking for a replacement for a P5B-Plus board that failed to post after attempting to flash the BIOS. Whoops :shocked:. I decided to spring for the IP35 when I found the rebate offer at mwave. I received and installed the board a week ago.

With the IP35 Dark Raider I am overclocking my E6420 at 425 X 8 for a stable speed of 3.4GHz - not a single crash during several days of use and hours of testing (memtest/orthos). In the BIOS Vcore is set at 1.41V, DDR2 at 2.0V, with all other voltages at default (lowest) settings. For the CPU abit EQ reads 1.38V at idle and 1.34V at full load with maximum core temps of ~55C (20C ambient). One odd thing I found was that if I set Vcore any higher that 1.41V in the BIOS that the monitored voltage drops to around 1.31V even with EIST disabled. I don't understand this behavior. Has anyone else encountered this?

Due to their relatively low power consumption I think the IP35 series boards are a good foundation for a quiet PC. My only disappointment with the IP35 was discovering that the two auxiliary fan headers are not voltage controllable. I solved this problem by making a wiring harness to drive the 3 case fans from the system fan header. Under abit EQ all the fans run at 30-50% of their max speeds most all of the time for a quiet system.

Overall I am very pleased with the stability and performance of the IP35 Dark Raider.

P.S. (off topic but relevant) I absolutely love the Hyper TX - it is an excellent match for this board. I spent days researching coolers on the web and found several reviews where its holds its own against much larger heatsinks. The fan is reasonably quiet at full speed and nearly inaudible at 30-50% speed and the shroud blows air directly onto the PWM heatsink of the IP35. Check it out if you are looking for cool and quiet!

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: WolfLover
I have been following this thread for a while. It was the first review of the IP35-E that I could find on the web. (Much thanks to SerpentRoyal for his detailed comments!) I was looking for a replacement for a P5B-Plus board that failed to post after attempting to flash the BIOS. Whoops :shocked:. I decided to spring for the IP35 when I found the rebate offer at mwave. I received and installed the board a week ago.

With the IP35 Dark Raider I am overclocking my E6420 at 425 X 8 for a stable speed of 3.4GHz - not a single crash during several days of use and hours of testing (memtest/orthos). In the BIOS Vcore is set at 1.41V, DDR2 at 2.0V, with all other voltages at default (lowest) settings. For the CPU abit EQ reads 1.38V at idle and 1.34V at full load with maximum core temps of ~55C (20C ambient). One odd thing I found was that if I set Vcore any higher that 1.41V in the BIOS that the monitored voltage drops to around 1.31V even with EIST disabled. I don't understand this behavior. Has anyone else encountered this?

Due to their relatively low power consumption I think the IP35 series boards are a good foundation for a quiet PC. My only disappointment with the IP35 was discovering that the two auxiliary fan headers are not voltage controllable. I solved this problem by making a wiring harness to drive the 3 case fans from the system fan header. Under abit EQ all the fans run at 30-50% of their max speeds most all of the time for a quiet system.

Overall I am very pleased with the stability and performance of the IP35 Dark Raider.

P.S. (off topic but relevant) I absolutely love the Hyper TX - it is an excellent match for this board. I spent days researching coolers on the web and found several reviews where its holds its own against much larger heatsinks. The fan is reasonably quiet at full speed and nearly inaudible at 30-50% speed and the shroud blows air directly onto the PWM heatsink of the IP35. Check it out if you are looking for cool and quiet!

Turn off C1E and EIST in BIOS. Save and reboot to windows. Go into Power Options and change to Desktop mode. Now check Vcore with CPUz. Note that CPUz will not properly detect voltage above 1.46. You'll need to download Speedfan.

 

[WolfLover]

I am happy to report that the CPU voltage setting irregularity is solved.

First I loaded the optimized settings in the BIOS and disabled the C1E and EIST functions, but the problem reoccured at all CPU Core Voltage settings above 1.41. The voltages strangely wrapped around - 1.43 same as 1.35, 1.45 same as 1.37, etc.

Then I cleared the CMOS, reconfigured the BIOS, and ran the tests again. Now the CPU voltage settings are working as expected with the idle readings being 0.04V less than the BIOS settings all the way from 1.35 to 1.53.

I had cleared the CMOS during the installation of the board but somehow the voltage settings had gotten corrupted. Now I should be able to push the FSB a little higher for stability testing but will probably leave it at 425 for daily use.

Thanks SerpentRoyal for your prompt reply and suggestions. I like SpeedFan and have used it for years on my abit BM6 board to control the fans. However on the IP35 I prefer to use the onboard fan control in conjuction with abit EQ in part because it kicks in right away. The CPU voltage reading in abit EQ coincides very closely with the temp that SpeedFan (and CPU-Z at the lower settings) report so I have confidence in it.

I will be glad to answer any specific questions that forum members have about the Dark Raider.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Thanks for the update.

Still waiting for new BIOS to eliminate the double post during cold boot....

 

[Thor86]

How much Vcore droop on this board from idle to full-load on the cpu?

 

[WolfLover]

Vcore consistently drops 0.04V from idle to full load (orthos) on my board at 1.41V - 1.45V setting in the BIOS.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Vdroop on my IP35-E is also around 0.04. E4300 @ 3.46GHz, 1.465Vcore. C1E and EIST enabled in BIOS. Speedfan's reading is closest to BIOS setting.

One way of minimizing Vdroop is to use C1E and EIST to drop CPU voltage and multiplier at low load. This will allow you to overvolt in BIOS by 0.02Vcore without forcing the CPU to run at this higher voltage level all the time. Stick with the default CPU multiplier when using this strategy. Lowering the multi can cause voltage mis-match.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: WolfLover
I am happy to report that the CPU voltage setting irregularity is solved.

First I loaded the optimized settings in the BIOS and disabled the C1E and EIST functions, but the problem reoccured at all CPU Core Voltage settings above 1.41. The voltages strangely wrapped around - 1.43 same as 1.35, 1.45 same as 1.37, etc.

Then I cleared the CMOS, reconfigured the BIOS, and ran the tests again. Now the CPU voltage settings are working as expected with the idle readings being 0.04V less than the BIOS settings all the way from 1.35 to 1.53.

I had cleared the CMOS during the installation of the board but somehow the voltage settings had gotten corrupted. Now I should be able to push the FSB a little higher for stability testing but will probably leave it at 425 for daily use.

Thanks SerpentRoyal for your prompt reply and suggestions. I like SpeedFan and have used it for years on my abit BM6 board to control the fans. However on the IP35 I prefer to use the onboard fan control in conjuction with abit EQ in part because it kicks in right away. The CPU voltage reading in abit EQ coincides very closely with the temp that SpeedFan (and CPU-Z at the lower settings) report so I have confidence in it.

I will be glad to answer any specific questions that forum members have about the Dark Raider.

Do you have an external 1394 HDD? Firewire performance on the Abit IP35 Pro is low, according to one website. My IP35-E lacks 1394 and RAID. USB 2.0 performance is on par with the best boards; 31.7MB/s continuous write throughput.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa.../07/12/abit_ip35_pro/7

 

[WolfLover]

No, I don't have any Firewire components so am unable to test the performance. I may never use the Firewire port but I can see that the lackluster performance mentioned in the review would be of concern to anyone who is dependent on it.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

I'll repost some 1394 numbers if I can find a buddy with an IP35.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Had some bench time with an Abit IP Pro. 1394 connection is very slow...only about 14.4MB/s with my external HDD. One would expect 1394 to be 10% faster than USB 2.0, somewhere in the range of 34MB/s.

The Pro version lacks a selectable 4-pin/3-pin fan option found in the IP35-E. Therefore, this "Pro" board cannot control the speed of a 2-pin fan. To take advantage of the onboard fan speed control, the fan must come with a 3rd RPM sensing wire. Additionally, the 4-pin CPU plug will only trim the speed of a PWM-capable fan. The NB runs a tad cooler, thanks to the copper-bottom heat pipe. Overclocking capability (E4300 @ 1.465V), however, is still the same as the IP35-E.

The Abit IP35 Pro is still a fine board, but the tests don't show any performance gain over the much cheaper Abit IP35-E. Perhaps the E4300 @ 3.46GHz is the bottleneck, and I need to test with a +500MHz FSB CPU to explore the true capability of this MB. Yes, the board is not affected by the double post problem found in IP35/IP35-E, but most PC users don't need to push their CPUs much above 460MHz FSB. If you must have RAID, then go with the IP35.

 

[cyrusm]

looks like an awesome board but
tigerdirect doesnt have it
canada computers doesnt have it

...any canadian store have this?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

NewEgg doen't ship stuffs to Canada?

 

[WolfLover]

Originally posted by: cyrusm
looks like an awesome board but
tigerdirect doesnt have it
canada computers doesnt have it

...any canadian store have this?

Have you tried NCIX online? They have an online store as well as stores located in BC and I believe they stock all three IP35 series boards.

 

[cyrusm]

no i wish they did. id buy everything there.
and wolfy thanks for the response; ncix online DOES have it

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Fry's had IP35-E on sale last month for $95 AR. Best price now is @ MWAVE ($108 AR). There's a difference of 4% between US and CAN $.

 

[amking]

Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
No RAID on the IP35-E. The maximum continuous read/write speed is capped to about 50MB/sec with the current crop of HDDs. Real-world throughput speed would only be affected if there are audio, video, and broad band devices in full use at the PCI ports.

A lot of fancy stuffs found on high-end boards are there for the WOW factor. You'll have to spend an arm and a leg to achieve that last 3% improvement in speed.

so does that mean that on an ip35 pro with a small x-fi xtremegamer and potentially some sort of tv (hd?) tuner card in the pci slots, i will have a performance hit due to the lan issue?

the gfx card is separate from this, right?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

NO. The HDD's write speed is normally capped at 40MB/s. US broadband is good up to 10MB/s. The addition of sound and a HD TV tuner will not overload the 133MB/s PCI pipeline.

Video card is connected to PCI-E x16, which is independent from the PCI slots. Also note that you have two PCI-E x1 slots...ideal for HD TV tuner card or any other bandwidth-intensive devices.