abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 ..:: Introduction ::.. It has been nearly three months since the initial release of AMD's Athlon 64 microprocessors. Within that time frame, many hardware websites have been publishing reviews claiming that the ABIT KV8-MAX3 is one of the best motherboards you can drop a 754-pin processor into.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 Chipset - VIA K8T800 Northbridge VIA VT8237 Southbridge 3Com Gigabit LAN Realtek ALC658 Audio Silicon Image Sil3114 RAID Memory - 3 x 72-bit Single Channel DDR up to 2GB - Supports 3 DIMM DDR333 - Supports 2 DIMM DDR400 Expansion Slots - 1 x AGP 8X 5 x PCI 2 x UDMA/133/100/66 1 x FDD 6 x SATA IDE/RAID 8 x USB 2.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 Back Panel I/O Ports - 1 x Parallel, 1 x Serial 1 x PS/2 Keyboard, 1 x PS/2 Mouse 5 x Audio I/O 4 x USB 2.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 - 4MB Flash ROM Form Factor - ATX Form Factor (12 in. x 9.64 in.) ..:: ABIT KV8-MAX3 Product Package ::.. The box that the KV8-MAX3 ships in is a nice change from the typical ABIT box with the F1 race car on the front. The KV8-MAX3 can be easily distinguished from other motherboards considering that the shipping box has a large KV8-MAX3 logo stamped all over it along with the AMD Athlon64, OTES and µGuru logos on top.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 One aspect ABIT is well known for in the enthusiast community is their capability to provide the customer with comprehensive and detailed documentation for their motherboards, and you can bet that the KV8-MAX3 follows in this tradition.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 ..:: ABIT KV8-MAX3 Software Suite ::.. After the KV8-MAX3 has a fresh OS installed, the next thing you will need to do is install the drivers for the chipset and any integrated components you have decided to utilize. Simply insert the disc into your CD drive, and a window will proceed to pop up and display the correct drivers for each of the vital components, along with those of the optional hardware that you chose to enable via the BIOS.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 ABITEQ is a program that will monitor all voltages and component temperatures within your PC. This software seemed to work without error, and it has many options and available settings so that you can configure each individual value to a specific value that works best for you.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 BlackBox is an interesting and most welcome idea. ABIT claims that BlackBox will be able to record system crashes or failures, and then be able to report these errors to ABIT technical support for diagnostic purposes.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 Exhaust System) mechanism. So close in fact that installing or removing a heatsink would always scratch or bend the OTES. Luckily, ABIT has addressed this problem, and only the first 200 units that shipped out of manufacturing were plagued by this problem. If you were to purchase a retail motherboard today, you would receive a board with the modified OTES design that takes care of the heatsink mounting issues.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 Within the expansion slot area, there are two red colored FireWire headers that have been placed in-between the AGP slot and the first PCI slot. We think another location for these headers would be more appropriate, so the required cables won't block airflow or get entangled with the fan on your video card.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 To the immediate right of the USB 2.0 headers is the VIA VT8237 Southbridge. The two SATA ports that the Southbridge natively supports rest to the right of the VT8237, with a yellow colored Clear_CMOS jumper just beneath them. Although the Clear_CMOS jumper cap has an extended tip, the location of the Clear_CMOS jumper could be hard to grab hold of if you have the SATA cables attached to these two connectors.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 Our last stop on the KV8-MAX3’s PCB is the rear I/O panel, and as you can see, the design is very different from what can be found on the majority of boards on the market. The panel consists of the OTES exhaust fan at the top, two PS/2 ports, two S/PDIF ports to be used with the other five audio ports, one FireWire port, one RJ-45 LAN port, and finally four USB 2.0 ports. ..:: ABIT KV8-MAX3 System BIOS ::..
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 The image above represents what the ABIT KV8-MAX3 can offer a user for tweaking their installed memory of choice. These options are available in the DRAM configuration sub-menu found within the Advanced Chipset Features main menu. The actual memory timing settings for each one listed has a very broad range, so if you are planning on squeezing out a CAS 2.0-2-2-2-5-1T timing set, or to aim for a high FSB with CAS 3-etc., you need not worry.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 system became quite unstable. In the end, our congratulations go to ABIT for a job well done. If the OCGuru software could have achieved this overclock for us, it would have been twice as nice. ..:: SiSoft SANDRA ::.. The first benchmark we will be using today is SiSoft SANDRA, one of the most popular synthetic benchmarking programs.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 ..:: MBReview PriBench v1.04 ::.. Using our very own in-house benchmark, MBReview PriBench uses a computationally intensive algorithm to compute several hundred millions of prime integers. Unlike other synthetic benchmarks which rely on additional components within a computer system like the hard drive, PriBench does not rely on any of these exterior devices for the tests.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 However, you can see that the scores for the four million and eight million tests are missing for each K8 motherboard. This is because every time we ran these two particular tests, we were always greeted with a BSOD with a 0x0000009C error code. After checking Microsoft's Knowledge Base, this error points to a problem with memory communication or within the processor itself.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 ..:: Unreal Tournament 2003 ::.. The last gaming benchmark we will test our motherboards with is the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo with the HardOCP 2.1 version benchmarking add-on program. I have found that the add-on can save a lot of time when benchmarking, has a very simple interface, and is already pre-configured to test a variety of platforms equally instead of having to manually adjust any of the in-game settings myself.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 you start to look elsewhere without hesitation. However, the undesirable layout is mostly due to the fact that every feature you could possibly ever want on a motherboard has been squeezed into the KV8-MAX3 real-estate. ABIT’s latest MAX series motherboard definitely proves it can carry the MAX name with an impressive feature set, as well as a thorough product accessory bundle.
abit KV8-MAX3 Written by Chris Emry Friday, 04 September 2009 10:39 So, what has the KV8-MAX3 motherboard shown to us in its entirety? Well, if you are looking to show off a machine that has tidy cables with a user friendly layout, then by all means continue shopping. However, we can honestly say that this motherboard is currently one of the fastest platforms for a 754-pin K8 setup that has almost every feature you can possibly squeeze in a normal PCB dimensional layout.
