ABIT AN8 32X ...Anyone here own one?

[MTDEW]

Anyone own the Abit AN8 32X board?

Im not to thrilled about the Asus 32x's PCI slot layout and having to cram my soundcard between two video cards.

SO i'm looking at the abit board, but cant find any reviews on the thing ANYWHERE!

What i want to know is.
1:Hows the voltages, do they flucuate or are they stable?(My 9NPA cpu voltages flucuate and i HATE that!)

2: Anyone running this board with the GURU PANEL or GURU CLOCK?

3: How well does the board overclock? / Do you wish you would have bought the ASUS instead?

4: I see the specs say it supports 8gb of ram....can you run 4x1gb sticks in DDR 400?

 

[MTDEW]

BUMP

 

[Heidfirst]

There's a few owners on the Abit-USA forum - initial reports are very good in fact I'm considering getting 1 myself.

It comes with the latest Guru Clock bundled so I'm assuming that most owners use it.

Supposedly overclocks very well.

As I'm sure that you know that depends heavily upon your CPU's memory controller & if you can it will almost inevitably be at 2T.

 

[MTDEW]

Yeah, ive been all over the abit forums.

I didnt know it came with the uguru clock bundled, it wasnt pictured on newegg.

I just ordered my the board and bought the clock on ebay....LMAO

Oh well, so i might have two uguru clocks.

 

[MTDEW]

Ahhhh.
I see now on the Abit site it lists the Guru Clock as "optional".
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=310

Guys on the Abit forum say it used say "included" but no longer does.

Fine by me , because if the older guru clock like the one pictured in the link above was bundled with the mobo, i would still have bought the newer version of the uguru clockanyway.

 

[Heidfirst]

You've got it the wrong way around - the 1 that you have linked as the newer version is the older 1.
http://www.abit-usa.com/innovations/guru_clock.php is the latest

 

[Heidfirst]

I knew that I had seen it said that it was bundled with the Guru Clock!
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/news/newspop.php?pDOCNO=en_0510122s

Please let me know if it does come with 1.

 

[MTDEW]

Ok, so ive got it backwards.
Well then i like the older versions looks better and thats the one i bought on ebay.

My board should be here around the middle of next week, i'll be sure and post back here and let ya know it the clock is bundled with it. :thumbsup:

 

[GhostInTheShell]

Hey,
I just ordered the board. I aslo managed to pick up an Uguru panel on newegg. As soon as I bought it they were no longer in stock, lol, but keep your eyes peeled.
I will post something when I set it up and let everyone know how its working.

 

[MTDEW]

Hey now, Newegg was supposed to "autonotify" me when they had more Guru panels in stock.

Now i dont feel bad for ordering my board from Zipzoomfly since they had Free 3 day shipping.

 

[GhostInTheShell]

HAHA,
Well I was supposed to get notified too, but I think they only had one, lol.
I love newegg, I have had to RMA a few things and they rock as far as customer service and communication.
But, monarch and zipzoomfly are nice as well.
I found a guru panel on ebay yesterday too, I ordered it and the guy refunded my money saying it was "no longer in stock" .
We will probably get our boards and it will already have one
I hope this thing beats up the Asus!

 

[MTDEW]

My uGuru clock i got on ebay just arrived.

Smaller than i expected.

But VERY cool nonetheless. :thumbsup:

Hopefully my mobo will be here by Wed. or Thurs. so i can check it out.

 

[MegaWorks]

Interesting board!

 

[chiguy2891]

anyone know how this compares to the asus A8N32?

 

[MTDEW]

My motherboard arrived this afternoon.
It did not have the uguru clock bundled with it.

So i'm glad i already got one beforehand since i wanted that.

I have not installed the board yet, i will tomorrow, but as we all know, even once its installed it will be a few days before i can post about how well it overclocks and stability.

But if anything seems to stand out as worth mentioning during my setup and testing, i'll be sure to post my initial impressions here.

And of course, any questions i can answer for anyone who's looking to maybe purchase one of these boards, just ask and i'll answer whatever i can.

 

[Heidfirst]

Thanks for feedback on the Guru clock not being bundled.
Looking forward to the rest of your impressions.

 

[GhostInTheShell]

Mine arrived today.
No guru clock in there as the dewman said, good thing I have my guru panel . I have to work all weekend so I will have to get back on my settings, results etc.
I will update asap on what the limits are for cpu, dram voltage etc if my comrade doesn't beat me to it.
I must say also, the bundle it did come with was quite nice, in a thoughtful kind of way. I say this because there is no less than 3 floppies for a raid install, including a 64bit raid floppy (having had to find working raid drivers for 64bit os install in the past it was hell).

Also it has a little sticker sheet with all the jumper settings and front panel headings on it, which is nice since your usually searching back and forth through the manual for them.

Woohoo! I am excited to see what this baby can do!

 

[imported_Hitman]

Hi,

I'm new, and I'm looking at ordering a computer with this motherboard, my first gaming system. You'll have to excuse me, but, what is a uGuru clock? Is it for oc'ing only? I noticed on the Abit website, it says the mobo has uGuru technology. What is that? Thanks for bringing me up to speed!

 

[GhostInTheShell]

Well one of my previous motherboards was an ABIT av8 "3rd-eye" which came with the old style guru clock.
http://www.abit-usa.com/innovations/guru_clock.php
There is the basic info on it from abit.
Basically its just a cool little thing that sits on your desktop and displays temps, voltage etc. These things are nice to know of course, and with the guru clock you can monitor them even when your in a game or application.
They also have other nice feature such as being able to switch to a set overclock profile, so say you decide in the middle of a big css battle you want a 10% overclock to boost your performance you can do it with the click of a button, uh oh my cpu is getting hot, lets go back to normal etc.
Thats how I would explain it, if you want more detailed information let me know.
Thanks!

 

[imported_Hitman]

Oh, Man...That thing IS cool... It was close between the asus and the abit, but I'm liken the abit a lot now! It even displays room temp. Thanks!

 

[GhostInTheShell]

Okay,
Up and running, install was a breeze. Right now I am running at 240x11 with my memory at 2.5, 3, 2, 8 1t. Totally prime95 and memtest stable.
Cpu is at 1.5v Dram at 2.78v temps are nice and cool, under 50 degrees under full load.
I am waiting for my second gpu that I was forced to rma to get back to me, but the only negative so far is I doubt I will be able to install both cards with a dual slot coolinig solution and have my sound card in there, but we shall see. The guru panel works flawlessly and is a nice add-on.

My system:
Thermaltake shark case
AMD Dual Core 939 Opteron "Denmark" @2640 (240x11)
2gb Mushkin Redline (2x1gb)
Thermaltake 680 Watt SLI PSU
Abit An8 32x
WD Raptor 150gb Sata drive
Windows XP Home

 

[Chris97038]

I baught a Asus A8N32 first, it was ok untill i started overclocking it. After i started tuning it up i ran into some stability issues. Some of it was related to the bios overclocking the video card (i never was able to get the video card clocked the way i wanted) . I also thaught the bios was WAY to complicated. I experienced some static noise problems with the ob sound. For some reason i had a hell of a time getting the video card seated properly it was like the slot was 2mm to short. So i returned it and picked up the AN8 32X i really wanted to get the new MSI but it was not in stock. The first thing i noticed was the the video card went in with no problem. The bios was super easy and familiar to me from past boards. Overclocking it was SOOOO easy and it has been super stable. 3D mark scores are about 200 higher at stock settings and about 300 higher with my mild overclocking (same overclock on both). Stability has been FAR superior then the ASUS was. Mostly because of the funky overclock the Asus does to the video card. I never could figure that out. If i set the video card to 450 and rebooted it would show the video card at 475, but if i set it at 500 and rebooted it would show 426. At this point i would say that the Abit is a superior product. The only thing i really liked better about the Asus was the heat pipe getting the the SB chip. On the Abit the heatsink on the SB is getting hot to touch. I wish they offerd some sort of fan for it.

 

[RyoOhki2]

I just bought the ABIT AN8 32X bundled with a A64 X2 4200+. Hope it's as good as rumored. I'm a big ASUS fan, but need to upgrade a bad motherboard (MSI) and was sold on this bundle deal (Helps when the girl selling the stuff was cute and actually knew her stuff .
Any case, I was wondering if someone could post what their best settings for overclocking this system?

 

[GhostInTheShell]

Well,
So far I have tried some different overclocking settings. I can tell you that this board has an awesome overclocking bios, you have a huge range of adjustments and settings available. It has been so long since I have had a southbridge chip to work with that I am still figuring everything out as you can adjust the htt multiplier three different ways, you will see what I mean if you go into the bios.

The uGuru software also works great if you don't want to go into the bios, but you cannot tweak the memory timings then so its not as flexible.

The board is very stable, and runs very cool as well, so far the lowest temps I have seen with this combination of parts in 4 different mobo's. I have yet to reset my cmos which is also very good.

I am currently running at the settings I listed above. 240x11, which is a dual core cpu (opteron 175) running at 2640, this is better than an fx-60 ! That is with a 1.45 vcore, very low and cool. I have run the cpu at 250x11 and 270x10 also, but I am very picky about what a stable overclock is. Core 0 on my cpu doesn't like to run prime 95 at those clock speeds. Core 1 will run it at 2800, I wish they were both like that .

I am not acheiving a higher overclock so far with this board on this specific cpu, but I am acheiving it with less voltage and less heat, always a good thing.

I can tell you the only thing I have had trouble with so far, is when running sli I cannot overclock very far. I am not sure if thats a limitation of the board, or just my limited experience in overclocking in SLI mode.
I am still learning the bios, as it has alot of options, and still tweaking my "optimum" overclock. I am sure you realize your overclock is primarily going to be limited by your cpu, but I can tell you if you have the same experience I do, this board will do a stable and cool job of allowing your cpu to reach its maximum potential.

(on a last note, SLI with a dual slot cooler (eg arctic cooling silencer) is a no go as far as room)

Hope that helps! Peace!

 

[Skott]

Glad you are happy with your mobo. I have heard people before saying they cant OC as easily or high with SLI as opposed to single card setup so its probably more to do with SLI and the mobo limitation than your own ability.